Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954)

Pretty women of Paris are brutally murdered and the police are stumped. At least until they suspect a dashing college professor who is clearly innocent. Who is the real murderer? Read the TCM description to find out.

Occasionally I see a film I hadn’t since I was a boy and images flash back as the events unfold. This is one such film. I don’t know if I was eight or eighteen when I saw it last, but I had distinct memories of key scenes. I enjoyed that.

A mannered period piece, Phantom has a similar feel to 1953’s House of Wax. Both featured lush sets and filmed in vibrant color and in 3-D. Maybe it didn’t live up to the earlier adaptation of the Poe story or audiences were done with the 3-D gimmick, but the film tanked. It’s poor showing convinced Merv Griffin (yup, THAT Merv Griffin) to abandon his dream to be a Hollywood leading man and focus on television. Blink and you’ll miss him.

Karl Malden is here being very, well, Karl Malden. In my youth I remember him most from American Express commercials, but he shows up from time to time. I'll discuss him more in my next post. Dashing suspects lovely fiancee is played by the lovely Patricia Medina, six years his senior. There was something nuanced about her performance that I remember from the previous viewing. I haven't seen her in anything else.

The inspector brings our poor suspected hero along to see crime scenes and listen to witnesses (of course) allowing him to piece together the story with only sparse information. Also, the Rue Morgue is mentioned once, and never visited. I should read the Poe story and definitely see the earlier version.

There’s no real mystery here (Thanks TCM!) and parts are silly, but I found Phantom of the Rue Morgue fun. Would I have had the nostalgia factor been absent? Maybe not, but I don’t care. AMRU 3.5.

La Strada (1954)

A travelling strong man (Anthony Quinn) pays a woman to take her simpleton daughter as his assistant. He isn’t nice.

I’m amazed how hard it is to sum up this film. A lot goes on in the story but it is all about how the relationship of the two characters (and a third) develops because of the events in their lives. I seldom have this problem with Hollywood movies. Ostensibly, he needs her for the act, but he is very mean and criticizes everything she does. Does he really need her? Does he even like her? Their relationship and expectations change over time. This is a refreshingly non-Hollywood movie.

Director Federico Fellini began shooting before securing financing. He got his wife to play the ‘waif’ and hired two distinctly non-Italians to play the other leads, then dubbed their voices. The film that nobody wanted ended up being a huge hit, winning the affection of the Motion Picture Academy and the Pope.

There seems to be a theme. Gelsomina's dead sister (and Zampano's previous assistant) was named Rosa, Zampano calls a prostitute 'red' (rosso), and a bride is said to be fresh as a rose. Interesting symbology for such a drab and unattractive film. I feel it must mean something, but I don't know what.

Drab and ugly, but captivating still. The players exist in a seedy, desperate world. It felt authentic and lived in. Maybe much like post-war Italy. La Strada is a sad, touching film, and I will see it again. AMRU 4.5.

The Big Store (1941)

Tommy Rogers (Tony Martin), an aspiring singer who owns shares in a department store, wants to sell so he can fund a music conservancy in the neighborhood where he got his start. But the bad guy doesn’t want him to sell for some reason and hatches a plan to kill him for some reason, but the Margaret Dumont character (Margaret Dumont) hires a detective (Groucho) for some reason.

Is Tommy a big star or trying to get his start? Are his shares valuable or almost worthless? Doesn’t matter because we get the deal. The Brothers clown around ostensibly trying to protect the cartoon good guy from the cartoon bad guys, roll credits. The plot isn’t secondary, it’s irrelevant. Truth be told the bits aren’t that bad, but the trouble begins with the inclusion of pointless musical numbers.

Chico does the same piano number as always and Harpo his harp number as always, just in case we haven’t seen it a dozen times already. To make matters worse, the story (such as it is) halts in the second act for a ridiculous swing number that went on forever. But it gets worse. There is a big finale that Groucho called “The most godawful thing I’d ever heard”. I tend to agree.

There is a big chase scene near the end that is a bit unusual for a Marx Brother's film. It was silly without being particularly funny, and I found it odd to see the boys, now in their 50s, behaving like 20-somethings.

Here is the eleventh of the twelve Marx Brother films, and it only took me a little over ten years to see them. The final is the somewhat hard to find Love Happy (1949) which was disowned by Groucho. So, yay. It has the lowest IMDb score of the lot and hopefully I can finish off the set this year.

I began the night with the intent of watching a Buster Keaton talkie but quickly aborted that plan. As disappointing as The Big Store was, there are worse films. To see Keaton, who should have been at the top of his game, in such a terrible production was heartbreaking. I saw maybe fifteen minutes before declaring it unwatchable trash. The Big Store, as uninspired as it was, was still watchable. Well, most of it was. AMRU 2.5.

The Wild, Wild Planet (1966)

People are disappearing in Capitol City at a ridiculous rate and this falls into the jurisdiction of Space Command, of course. Apparently Evil Corporation is miniaturizing people for reasons, with the help of creepy bald men and deflatable women, and Dashing Hero must bend the rules to save the day. Yea, none of this makes sense.

The kidnappers are unbelievably conspicuous, the evil plan is completely incomprehensible, the dialog confoundingly terrible, and the finale is predictable and stupid. Know that trope where the hero does one thing and the bad guy’s entire evil layer just blows up? Yea, that.

The story begins with people, we erroneously presume to be main characters, traveling to a space station. At lunch Dashing Hero character is dealing with Headstrong Female character who flirts with Obvious Villain character. Some scenes occur on the space station and some in Capital City, but we are never sure where and people appear to travel back and forth rather quickly. Bad visual storytelling, but the dialog is worse.

But let’s talk about the better points. The film makes heavy use of miniatures, which look like a pretty awesome toy set. The tiny cars match well the full size vehicles the actors drive but the flying vehicles swing wildly from an obvious string while the full sized units are completely stationary. Points for trying, though. Thing is, this story did not need to take place in space. Or the distant future. That is all window dressing. We just need Evil Corporation using advanced technology for whatever the point of this film is. That can be said for many science fiction films, but it is particularly obvious here.

The fatal flaw is how incomprehensible the story is. Bad Guys didn’t need an amazing plan, they just needed to have one that made sense. Filmed in Italian, I’ll forgive the dialog for being at least in part a poor translation and dubbing. But when the overall story arc is a mess, well, AMRU 2.5.