Spies and/or ghosts threaten sea voyage

Mystery Liner (aka "The Ghost of John Holling") (1934)
Starring: Cornelius Keefe, Edwin Maxwell, Astrid Allwyn, Boothe Howard, Zeffie Tilbury, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Howard C. Hickman, George Hayes, and Noah Beery
Director: William Nigh
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A passenger liner is used for a covert experiment that will allow ships to be remote controlled and thus revolutionize modern sea warfare (modern here being 1934). But, agents of "hostile foreign powers" threaten the project, the ship's captain (Beery) has gone insane, and a shadowy figure is creeping about the ship murdering people. Will Major Pope (Maxwell) save the day by untangling the mystery and unmaking a double-agent who is closer to the experiment than anyone suspects?

"Mystery Liner" has all the elements of being a really fun "detective thriller meets mad scientist" tale, but it's too talky, has just a touch too many subplots for a film that only runs an hour, and gets bogged down in the middle and becomes very, very boring. A couple of twists near the end will revive the interest of viewers who stick with it, but they really aren't interesting enough to warrant sitting throgh the lead-up.

With average camera work and staging, blah acting all around, and uninteresting, flat characters, the only strong part of this film is the core story concepts, and they're not interesting enough to lift it above a very low 4 rating.

(Triva: This film was based on a story by Edgar Wallace, a very popular mystery/thriller writer during the first quarter of the 20th century. Hundreds of films were made that adapted his work, and I think I've seen around a dozen. None have been all that good, however.)

500+ pages of quirky tales of battle action

Showcase Presents: The Haunted Tank (DC Comics, 2008)
Writer: Robert Kanigher
Art: Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, et.al.
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

During the 1960s and 1970s, writer Robert Kanigher turned out some truly masterful war stories for DC Comics. Of the ongoing series he created and penned, one of the oddest was was "The Haunted Tank" from G.I. Combat.

"The Haunted Tank" followed the adventures of US Army Lt. Jeb Stuart and the crew of the Stuart-model tank as it battled its way across Africa and Europe during the height of World War II. The combination of a Stuart tank commanded by a Jeb Stuart drew the spirit of legendary Civil War General J.E.B. Stuart and he became the crew's guardian spirit, helping them out of impossible jams and giving Lt. Stuart cryptic, helpful hints when particularly dangerous situations were about to arise. Only Lt. Stuart can see and hear him, and this leads to him occassionally appears as if he should be shipping out on a Section 8 discharge. But, no one can deny that Stuart's tank sometimes does the impossible.

The best stories here are really, really good, but there are also a number of them where Kanigher uses a formula that eventually gets tiresome; basically, the General makes a vague prediction and then the tank crew encounters two or three situations that fit the prophecy before finally running into the real danger. It's possible that if one was reading the stories several months apart that the similarity between them would not be as evident, but when they are collected like they are here, it gets a little dull.

Still, these tales are in the minority; for the most part, "The Haunted Tank" was a series that consistantly offered readers some great offbeat war stories... and even when the stories themselves were a little weak, the very detailed, very realistic art by Russ Heath and Joe Kubert is always amazing to look at.

"The Haunted Tank" is a great book for fans of World War II stories (so long as you keep in mind that it IS a comic book--some of the "blazing battle action" is as far-featched as the notion of a tank with a guardian spirit) and for admirers of great comic book art; Kubert and Heath are two of the greatest talents to ever work in the medium.

New faces a-plenty when 'Bulldog Drummond Comes Back'

Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937)
Starring: John Howard, E.E. Clive, Louise Campbell, John Barrymore, Reginald Denny, J. Carroll Naish, and Helen Freeman
Director: Louis King
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Adventurer Hugh 'Bulldog' Drummond (Howard) is preparing to marry the love of his life, Phyllis Clavering (Campbell), his past comes back to haunt him in a major way. Phyllis is kidnapped by Valdin and Soldanis (Naish and Freeman), a sinister pair of characters with very personal reasons for wanting to torment Drummond. As he is drawn into a deadly game of riddles and clues where Clavering's life is the prize, he calls upon his friend Algy (Denny) and loyal manservant Tenny (Clive) for help, and to keep Scotland Yard's Colonel Nielsen (Barrymore) from accidentially causing Clavering's death.


"Bulldog Drummond Comes Back" is the weakest of the Paramount-produced Bulldog Drummond films, but not through any fault of the actors. Every performer featured is excellent and they play their roles with great style and good humor or deadly menace (depending on what side of the Good/Evil line the characters fall on). The problem here is the script... the situations presented never seems believable or sensible, even when viewed through the screwy lense that captures the world of Hugh Drummond and his pals. As a result, everything seems frivolous and pointless.

Still, the film is great fun to watch. With John Howard replacing Ray Milland in the role of Drummond, the energy and charm of the character is ratcheted up several notches, bringing a rapidfire pace to the film that will be a hallmark of the series for the six.

E.E. Clive also comes fully into his own as Tenny in this film, establishing a scene-stealing dry wit that gives rise to some of this film's funniest moments. He also plays fabulously off the other actors, and he makes a much better on-sceen partner to Howard than he did to Milland.

Louise Campbell, who takes over the role of Phyllis Clavering, is not quite as beautiful as Heather Angel, but, like Clive, she establishes the Phyllis Clavering character as she will appear in the future films--not quite as fully realized as Drummond and Tenny, but the foundation is put in place: As a spunky, self-reliant heroine who can give Dummond and the boys a run for their money. (And she does this while still remaining feminine and mostly proper. As one of the original "spunky heroines", Clavering is an interesting and fun character.)

Barrymore's first outing as Colonel Nielsen is greatly entertaining, although a bit out of character. His persuit of Tenny and Algy in a series of provides as many highpoints to this episode as Tenny and Drummond's banterings.

The rest of the cast performs expertly, as I mentioned above, with Naish being particularly strong in his first turn as a bad guy in the series (he shows up again in "Bulldog Drummond in Africa").

The great performances by the cast, and some snappy dialogue, almost lifts "Bulldog Drummond Comes Back" to the high-end of average... almost but not quite.

War can be a queer thing

Desert Peach: Beginnings (Atlantic Books, 1989) 

Writing and Art: Donna Barr 

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

"Desert Peach: Beginnings" reprints Donna Barr's earliest chronicles of the quirky adventures of "Peach," the flamingly gay younger brother of famous WW2 German General Erwin Rommel. Like his brother, "Peach" Rommel is a capable military commander and loyal to Germany, but he is of a far more gentle disposition and is more interested in hanging out with the boys than he is in waging war against the Allies. 

 In this first collection, we get to meet the Desert Peach, key members of his unit, their Allied prisoner (who is treated more like one of the gang than an enemy) and a variety of other odd and funny characters. We even get to meet the Desert Fox, Rommel himself, as his visits his brother. The highlight of the book is a surfing expedition off the North African coast as the Rommel brothers ride some waves on home-made surfboards... only to be menaced by American submarines. 

 "Desert Peach: Beginnings" is a different kind of WW2 comic book. It's presents funny and in some ways even touching tales of likeable and decent German military men in the middle of the Nazi cesspool of the Third Reich. And given the nature of the historical Erwin Rommel, the protrayal of him and his fictional brother "Peach" doesn't seem all that far fetched. It's a well-drawn and well-written change of pace from the usual tales set in the period.

 
<

The Invisible Man takes on the Nazis!

It's 65 years since Nazi Germany was broken and tossed on the scrapheap of history. I'm marking that great acheivement with a mini-blogathon.

Invisible Agent (1942)
Starring: Jon Hall, Cedric Hardwicke, Ilona Massey, Peter Lorre, and J. Edward Bomberg
Director: Edwin L.Marin
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

After he is threatened by Axis agents, Frank (Hall) decides to put the invisibility formula invented by his grandfather to use in the War Effort. He parachutes into Germany, teams up with a beautiful allied spy (Massey) and sets about destroying the organizers of a Fifth Column operation in the United States (Hardwicke and Lorre).


"Invisible Agent" is the second real sequel to "The Invisible Man". It's also an average WW2 propaganda film that shows the the Axis to be as foolish, evil and treacherous as can be imagined, while the Allies are brilliant and right-minded. Sort of.

While the Nazis are as nefarious as possible--decietful, backstabbing Hitler-worshipping sycophantic cowards every last one of them--our hero is also a bit hard to root for. Frank, as the invisible super-spy, is either dumb as a post or the invisibility forumula has a different effect on him than it had on those how used it in "The Invisible Man" and "The Invisible Man Returns". Instead of turning into the sort of megalomaniac who would try to get to Hitler and replace him as the leader of the Riech (which Griffin from the original film would almost certainly have done), Frank instead plays pranks on the Nazis at inopportune times--endangering both himself and deep-cover double-agent Massey--and falls into deep, coma-like sleeps at even worse times. Is it the invisibility formula at work, is Frank a moron, or is it just bad writing? Whatever the explanation, the Invisible Agent isn't much of a hero to root for... unless you're a 13 year old (who are probably the target audience for the film).

The target audience might also be the reason why it feels like a couple of punches were being pulled in this movie. While the Nazis are definately decadent scum in this movie, their evil doesn't even come close to approaching that displayed in indepdent productions from the time like "Hitler, Dead or Alive" or "Beast of Berlin", films that share many thematic and propaganda-content elements to this movie. Either, the fantastic elements of an invisible spy led Universal to choose to target it at a younger audience--and thus toned down some of the more unpleasant aspects of the Nazis--or maybe the very fact that Universal was a major film studio and corporation with international interests even in the 1940s and the two other films I mentioned were made by small operations limited the studio's desire to make a film that savaged the Axis as fully as it deserved.

The film is fun enough and the invisible man effects are decent--as is the idea that the invisible man here chooses to make himself visible using cold cream and a towel draped over his head instead of somehow finding yards worth of bandages everywhere he goes. The actors also give good performances, with only Peter Lorre failing to convince; he plays a Japanese intelligence agent and he is about as unconvincing as I would be if cast in the part of a Somali pirate captain. I can only imagine how bad the "Mr. Moto" films must be....

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Tax Time

This image was borrowed from motivatedphotos.com. Click on the link to check out thousands of similar amusingly captioned photos.

East Side Kids vs Fifth Column Propagandists

This post is part of my month-long observance of the 65th anniversary of the Nazi Germany's defeat in WW2.

Ghosts on the Loose (1943)
Starring: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Sammy Morrison, Bobby Jordan, Billy Benedict, Bobby Stone, Ava Gardner and Bela Lugosi
Director: William Beaudine
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

When a gang of inner-city kids decide to fix up a house as their gift to a newly wed couple, they run afoul a cell of Nazi propagandists covertly working out of a purportedly haunted house next door. Hi-jinx ensue.

I suppose I might have liked this movie if I was more familiar with the characters. I've seen listings for numerous "East Side Kids" movies, and I understand they are a spin-off from an early feature. Perhaps with a clearer understanding of who these kids are, I'd find them a little less annoying and a little more interesting.

As it is, I only got some mild chuckles out of this picture, mostly because almost every character is dumb beyond words. But it's not a funny kind of dumb like what you get from an Abbott & Costello or Mel Brooks picture, but rather a brain-hurting "I can't believe anyone can be that stupid" sort of dumb. I get the feeling the writers expected the audience to be amused first at the industriousness of the boys, then at their hijinx in the "haunted house", and then at the back and forth as they fight against the Fifth Columnists.

Speaking of the Fifth Columnists, if infiltrators and sabateurs were as stupid as the ones in this film, no espionage or terrorist rings would be able to function. Sure, these dastardly villains had invested a lot of time and money in making their hideout seem haunted, but once discovered they could either have a) stayed safely in their hidden room until the activity died down, or b) carried their printing press and papers out the secret tunnel and to the far end of the back yard where no one would have seen it until a truck could be brought in to take it away. But, if they'd been smart, there wouldn't have been a movie.

These Nazi agents aren't even particularly sinister, even if they are led by Bela Lugosi. In fact, Lugosi is wasted more here than in any other film I've seen him in, except perhaps the 1940s version of "The Black Cat."

Unless you're the world's biggest fan of the East End Kids, this is a movie you can skip. The only other reason to possibly see this movie is for the moment when Bela Lugosi puts William Beaudine's reputation for never doing more than one take a scene to the test. During one of the film's gags, Lugosi utters a four letter word ("shit"), partially masked by a sneeze. Beaudine nonetheless stayed true to his nickname of "One Shot" and Lugosi's obscene language was immortalized for the ages.

The fairer sex plays the dirtiest game

I continue to mark the well-deserved ass-kicking Nazi Germany received 65 years ago.

Miss V From Moscow (1942)

Starring: Lola Lane, John Vosper, Howard Banks, William Vaughn, Kathryn Sheldon, Paul Weigel and Noel Madison

Director: Albert Herman
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When a top female Nazi spy is killed by the Allies, a Russian agent that bears a striking resemblance to her (Lane) is sent to Paris to infiltrate the Nazi intelligence apparatus. But when she draws the attentions of a love-struck Wehrmacht colonel (Vosper), an over-sexed downed American bomber pilot (Banks) and the suspicions of Gestapo operatives (Sheldon and Madison), her mission and very life are placed in jeopardy.

"Miss V From Moscow" is a fun little spy movie where many chuckles will be had at the interchanges between the beautiful Russian spy who is passing herself off as one of Hitler's favorite agents, and the German Army Colonel who is smitten with her, partly because of her beauty but mostly because of her connection with his beloved Fuhrer.

One scene is both hilarious and chilling, when Miss V and Colonel Heinrick attend a speech by Hitler. Heinrick is so enraptured during that scen that one keeps expecting him to throw his underwear at the stage, or perhaps even faint after squeeling like a school girl, but he is also not really listening to what Hitler is saying. The scene would perhaps be even funnier if it wasn't for the fact that it is probably an accurate portrayal of how much of the German people reacted to Hitler.

For the most part, though, the humor arises from the Russian agent using double-entrendres to respond to Heinrick whenever he prasies Hitler--giving what to Heinrick sounds like equally adoring and loving comments.

Aside from Lola Lane and John Vosper, no one really stands out. The rest of the cast are decent enough but they are playing as part of the background, not rising above the supporting roles that they play. (Howard Banks is extremely annoying as the "dashing airman", but I blame 1940s cinematic tropes more than I blame the actor for this; he's basically filling the role of "wise-cracking trouble-maker" that would be a reporter or a private detective if this wasn't a movie about a lady spy.)

This is a fun, fluffy flick if you have a taste for old-time low budget movies, but it's not worth going out of your way for. It's not bad, but it's also not especially good.

Bulldog Drummond meets the love of his life

This is the first of eight Bulldog Drummond films produced by Paramount in the late 1930s. It's a series of light-hearted action/adventure tales linked by the constantly rescheduled wedding of Drummond and the love of his live, Phyllis Clavering. Click here to read some background on the series and its cast at companion blog Watching the Detectives.


Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937)
Starring: Ray Milland, Heather Angel, E.E. Clive, Guy Standing, Reginald Denny, Porter Hall, Fay Holden, and Walter Kingsford
Director: James Hogan
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

As "Bulldog Drummond Escapes" opens, daredevil adventurer Captain Hugh Drummond (Milland) is returning from an extended trip abroad. Over the objections of airport officials, he lands his private plane in thick fog before jumping into his sports car and speeding off to his country estate. Along the way, he comes across Phyllis Clavering (Angel), and before the night is out, he has to decide if she's a damsel in distress, or a mentally unstable woman, as her sinister wards (Hall and Holden) would have him believe. Before this most unexpected adventure is over, Drummond finds himself not only captured by a ring of spies, but finds himself heads-over-heels in love with Calvering. But will either of them live long enough to make good on the promise of romance?


"Bulldog Drummond Escapes" spends its first few minutes introducing the viewers to the main character and the supporting cast, and then proceeds to present a story that is not only engaging, but which features subplots that will continue to develop over the next five sequels, such as Algy's relationship with his wife and his struggle to balance a life of adventure with his friends Drummond and Tenny with that of a responsible husband and father; Colonel Nielsen's ongoing attempts to force Drummond to just behave like a normal citizen and stop sticking his nose in government business; and Drummond and Clavering's marriage plans that are forever interrupted by various bad guys and disasters.

Despite the fact that the first "Bulldog Drummond" films appeared in the 1920s, you would be well served to ignore those and just start your viewing with "Bulldog Drummond Escapes" and the other Paramount-produced films that follow it, particularly if "Bulldog Drummond at Bay" is any indication of the quality of the films that came before the Paramount series.

What makes this film, and its sequels, so much fun is the interplay between the characters and the snappy dialogue. The relationship between Tenny and Drummond is particularly fun.

Cast-wise, everyone does a fantastic job. Milland is adequate as Drummond, but he is greatly bolstered by excellent performances from E.E. Clive (as the ever-unflappable manservant Tenny) and Reginald Denny (as the ever-stressed and freaked-out Algy, who is trying to help Drummond out of his latest jam while supporting his wife as she gives birth to their first child). Heather Angel's character of Phyllis Clavering is something of a non-entity in this film, but she does as good a job as can be expected with the part... and she's as cute as ever.

With its fast-paced, well-constructed script and solid characterizations of a likeable group of people who are joined together by a sense of adventure, fun, and mutual respect, "Bulldog Drummond Escapes" is a good start to an excellent series of films.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Blitzkrieg!

Part of the celebration of the 65th anniversary since the defeat of Nazi Germany.