Nancy Drew turns into a manipulative beech

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (1939)
Starring: Bonita Granville, Frankie Thomas, John Litel, Louise Carter, Vera Lewis and Frank Orth
Director: William Clemens
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Teen detective Nancy Drew (Granville) swings into action when she comes to the conclusion that someone is trying to drive two little old ladies (Carner and Lewis) from their home by terrorizing them. The murder of their driver ups the stakes significantly, particularly since Police Captain Tweedy (Orth) becomes convinced the sisters killed him.


"Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase" is the fourth and final mystery film based on the popular juvenile mysteries for girls. Like the previous installments, I have the sense that the characters here aren't behaving at all like the ones in the books--Nancy Drew is supposed to be the living embodiment of charm, poise and self-possession, as well as being so smart and skilled that she can run circles around any adult and take on any challenge in order to solve a mystery and bring culprit's to justice. But that's not at all the character we have here, nor in other three films in the series.

The Nancy Drew in this film succeeds by being manipulative and deceitful... and by having a strange ability to convince her friend Ted (Frankie Thomas) to do anything she asks. Although by the end of this movie, during which she ends up getting Ted humiliated in front of much of the town because he ends up women's clothing, gets him fired from his summer job, and gets him dragged off to jail for evidence tampering, I can only assume that Nancy must be a "friend with benefits" (and she must be REALLY good at delivering those benefits) if he is to continue to put up with her and the trouble she gets him into. Nancy may be having fun and solving crimes, but Ted seems to be the one paying the price.

In fact, by the end of this film, the only thing that will keep Ted out of jail for real is the probable fact that Captain Tweedy (Frank Orth) is so inept that Nancy's father Carson (John Litle) probably has 90% of his practice built around suing him and the police department for defamation of character and wrongful imprisonment and that Ted will walk for that reason alone.

Like "Nancy Drew: Trouble Shooter", the film immediately preceding this one in the series, watching it evoked memories of reading juvenile mysteries back when I was a kid. The last half-hour in particular felt very much like the climax of those books. However, if they had plots as simplistic as this--what we have here is essentially a mystery with only one viable suspect--I like to think I wouldn't have enjoyed them as much.

Still, the film's old-fashioned charm, excellent performances by everyone in the cast--with Granville and Thomas being especially good--and an exciting conclusion makes it very fun to watch. (It also provides a window into life in America 70 years ago... a place where icemen delivered ice for literal "ice boxes" in homes, for example. Ted's summer job as an iceman plays a prominent part in the storyline.)


>

Moving Day for Bela and Boris

I'm getting fed up with Chinese spammers, so I severely curtailed the comment features at companion blogs The Bela Lugosi Collection and The Boris Karloff Collection.

If you're interested JUST in reviews of movies with one or both of those great actors, the tightly focused blogs remain intact and you can click on the links to the right to visit them... but you just can't leave comments.

However, since I've already reviewed most of the films featuring Lugosi and/or Karloff, everyone who was going to comment has probably already commented. But, just in case, I've moved reviews of all their black-and-white films to this spot. I am adding a tag that a couple of readers have requested--Apes and Ape Suits. (For reasons that I do not comprehend, putting guys in ape suits in horror films and comedies was a much-loved feature among producers at Monogram Pictures and elsewhere. Presumably, the public loved it too.)

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Uncomfortable

'Frozen Alive' is a sci-fi crime drama

Frozen Alive (1964)
Starring: Mark Stevens and Marianne Koch
Director: Bernard Knowles
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

In "Frozen Alive" a pair of brilliant scientists (Stevens and Koch) are on the threshold of perfecting cryogenic suspended animation for human beings. On the very night the pair decides to cross a scientific line and freeze Stevens, his shrewish wife is found shot to death in their apartment. The police believe that the scientist had himself frozen in the hopes of escaping justice. As evidence mounts that he did indeed murder him, Koch is faced with the choice of letting her beloved co-worker be successfully revived to face the police, or commit murder herself by sabotaging the revival process and let him escape the humilitation.


Primarily a German production, this light-weight sci-fi drama features a truly interational cast--British, American, and German. The acting is all quite good, despite the fact that the dialogue the actors are working with leaves a lot to be desired, and the script does have a number of holes and weakpoints in it. The best part of the film is the climax, which is a slight twist on the "ticking clock" model, and a great use of letting the audience know more than the characters on-screen do.

"Frozen Alive" is a good addition to a "B-movie Night." line-up... not something to lead with, but worth having in the mix.

Only The Shadow knows who's in the closet

Invisible Avenger (aka Bourbon Street Shadows) (1957)
Starring: Richard Derr, Mark Daniel, and Helen Westcott
Directors: James Wong Howe and Ben Parker
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When Lamont Cranston--secretly the vigilant The Shadow (Derr)-- receives a plea for help from a New Orleans band leader for help, he is too late to stop his murder. But, along with his mystical mentor Jorgendra (Daniels) he soon becomes involved with a sexy femme fatale (Westcott) who is part of a spy ring set on preventing the rightful president of a Central American nation from retaking his leadership position from the military junta that overthrew his government.


This is one of two movies about venerable pulp hero "The Shadow" I've come across where, inexplicably, his name is not in the title, nor was even any of the iconic imagery associated with him used to promote the film, either now or then. Even if there WERE some sort of trademark issues that came up after the film was made, they could at least have made a picture of a guy in a black suit, wearing a black fedora and wielding a pair of automatic pistols. As it is, there is NO hint anywhere to identify this as a film about the Shadow until you're watching it.

But this one gets even more strange.

The filmmakers made the odd choice of ditching Lamont Cranston's fierce and loyal lady friend Margo Lane in favor of a close friend and mystical mentor, Jorgendra... and the two come off as confirmed bachelors, long-time companions, and just about every shade of ambiguously gay that it's possible to cram into the film's 70-minute running time.

Yes, while the superhero code of "don't ask, don't tell" is in full effect here, there seems to be little doubt that Lamont and Jorgenda were going where no mystery men had gone long before "Brokeback Mountain" was being hyped as wholly original. (Hmmm... I wonder how useful that whole "power to cloud men's minds" was when Lamont and Jorgenda were on the prowl for some man-meat....)

Not that there's anything wrong with an ambiguously gay dynamic duo fighting spies, as it gives rise to plenty of unintentional comedy as the film unfolds. However, getting rid of Margo Lane and replacing her with a the effeminately Euro-trashy mystic is one of those pointless changes that Hollywood idiots love to impose on properties they adapt... a change that serves absolutely no purpose other than the egos filmmakers (who need to show they know better than the hacks who created long-standing, commercially successful properties that they paid a bucket of money to use in a film), as it's a change for the sake of change.

In fairness to "Invisible Avenger", it was originally intended as a TV series pilot, but the series never happened, Perhaps the producers figured they'd start in the early years of the Shadow, and then have him meet the lovely Ms. Lane as the series progressed... and she'd straighten him out with the love of a woman!

Also in fairness to the film, it has a fast-moving plot that never gives the viewers time to get bored. It's also a fair demonstration of why co-director James Wong Howe one of Hollywood's most respected cinematographers for some three decades, as most shots are expertly framed and there is a great use of light and shadow throughout the picture. The use of camera angles to augment the painfully low budget when it came to showing the Shadow's power to "cloud men's minds" is also very cleverly implemented. The acting isn't stellar, but I've seen far worse.

And I suppose I should also say that, in fairness, the filmmakers back in the 1950s probably didn't realize quite how much a pair of flaming love muffins that Cranston and Jorgenda come across as. When viewed with a modern eye, however, I'm certain that anyone who loved "Brokeback Mountain" just for the gay sheepherder aspect will love "Invisible Avenger" just as much. (It might not be a bad idea to pair the films up a part of a "Macho Men in Love"-themed movie night.)

'Stop Me Before I Kill!'' is flawed but watchable

Stop Me Before I Kill! (aka "The Full Treatment") (1960)
Starring: Ronald Lewis, Claude Dauphin, and Diane Cilento
Director: Val Guest
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

A race car driver, Alan Colby (Lewis), recovering from a near-fatal car accident finds himself possessed by nearly uncontrollable urges to murder his wife (Cilento) whenever they are intimate. She convinces him to seek the help of a psychiatrist (Dauphin), but things go from bad to worse when the good doctor proves to have agendas beyond helping his patient recover.

"Stop Me Before I Kill!" (a far weaker title than the original, "The Full Treatment"), has the makings of an excellent psychological thriller, with a cast of characters who each seem simple enough on the surface, but who also each have enough murkiness in their backgrounds that they may be driven by motivations more sinister than the obvious. While it offers some clever twists, it ultimately the film ends up where you expect it to, but enough doubt is thrown on the outcome along the way that the film is still enjoyable.

However, a couple of key missteps keep it from being as good as it could have been.

First of all, the film is a bit too scattered as far as its point of view goes. While most of the film, correctly, is focused around our main protagonist--Alan, the strangely unhinged accident survivor--and events unfold as seen from his point of view, a couple of parts are focused around his well-meaning fiance. While the second of these isn't that damaging to the overall film, especially since it is part of the final confrontation between the film's main characters, the first one is feels like a detour from the rest of the movie that needed to be handled very differently.

Second, the creepy psychiatrist gets way too creepy, way too fast. He is so strange and unpleasant from the very outset that there is never any question in the minds of viewers that he is a Bad Guy. Partway through the movie, as he gains the trust of the protagonist, a little bit of doubt about whether we've misjudged him begins to creep in, but even before we're done second-guessing ourselves, the film proves that we were right all along: Not only is a he a Bad Guy, but he's a Very Bad Guy.

The film, which director Guest co-wrote the script for, would have been much better served if the psychiatrist had come across more likable early on, and then taken on a little bit of shadow and sinisterness as Alex grows increasingly paranoid and obviously nuts. It would have helped the film's overall "just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you"-vibe. It would also have strengthened the what-is-now a fairly half-hearted effort to make the wife look like she is out to get Alex, too. Her background hints that she may have reasons, but the way the film is structured never quite makes it believable that she may have it in for him. And in films like this, it's important that at one or more points in the story, the protagonist appears to be all alone and beset by enemies on all sides.

Fairly typical of the thrillers and dramas that were Hammer's bread-and-butter before the studio discovered full-color monsters and babes in flimsy nightgowns, "Stop Me Before I Kill Again!" is not necessarily a film I would go out of my way to seek out, but it's a bit of non-offensive filler in "Icons of Suspense," the multi-film DVD collection of Hammer's black-and-white co-productions with Columbia Pictures.

Webb Wilder: The Human Cannon Ball

One of the CDs in my collection that I haven't thought of in years is the 1990 spot of rock wackiness "Webb Wilder: Hybrid Vigor." Then I spotted this video at Rip Jagger's Dojo:



It's a fun a song, and a fun music video that's all in black-and-white (so it fits the theme here). It prompted me to find the CD, play it, and discover that it's every bit as good as I remember it.

Webb Wilder is apparently still around, still rocking two decades later, with a new CD released last year. He has even starred in a few movies, where he played a hillbilly hardboiled detective. I think I'm going to have to track those down!

Click the link to visit Amazon.com's Webb Wilder Web Store to listen to samples of this band's fun music.


And here are words to live by...

Extra Picture Perfect Wednesday: Creig Flessel and the Sandman

Illustrator Creig Flessel was there to help kick-start the comic book industry in the late 1930s, drawing covers for numerous titles, and providing pencils for many early "Sandman" tales. He wasn't the first artist to draw the character's adventures--that was Burt Christman--but it was Flessel's art that introduced the character to most readers, as he drew the cover for "Detective Comics" #40, the character's first appearance in a regular comic book series.


Flessel passed away on July 17, 2008. The illustrations in this post are all from the collection of Rob Stolzer, on digital display here.

Most date from the mid-1990s, but this 2006 drawing shows that he was a serious fine artist--because only serious fine artists draw nudes, right?

Click hereto read a review of The Golden Age Sandman Archives, Vol. 1 at Cinema Steve.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Anita Ekberg, Miss Sweden 1950

They don't come much more picture perfect than Anita Ekberg. After earning the Miss Sweden title in 1950, she came to the United States. She first worked as a model, but then spent five years under contract to Universal Pictures in parts that demanded little more of her than to be gorgeous to look at. She returned to Europe, and by the late 1950s, her career had taken off, and she spent the next 30 years appearing in everything from sword-and-sandal fantasy flicks, horror films, comedies, and murder mysteries.

Abbott and Costello vs the Alien Amazons!

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (aka "Rocket and Roll") (1953)
Starring: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Mari Blanchard, Robert Paige, Horace McMohan, and Anita Ekberg
Director: Charles Lamont
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

When two workmen (Abbott and Costello) accidentally launch with an experimental space rocket, they think they end up on Mars. The truth is, they end up places far stranger than Mars... New Orleans during Mardi Gras and then Venus, a planet governed by immortal Amazons.


As my summary above states, Abbott and Costello never get to Mars in this film, despite the intentions of the builders of the top secret rocket and the movie's title. Instead, they move through a thin plot that is stretched to the breaking point to fill the movie's 77-minute running time, and every joke is beaten to death, particularly during the New Orleans segment. Things pick up a bit when the action moves to Venus (where Costello is made King), but it's only a slight improvement. I'm not even sure if it's the distraction of all the scantily clad beauty queens that tricked me into thinking the film got better.

This is one of the weakest Abbott & Costello pictures, and everyone but truly hardcore fans of their work should probably not bother with it.