Red Light (1949)

The reunion between trucking tycoon John (George Raft) and his army chaplain brother is cut short when father-brother is plugged as revenge against brother John. The secret to the killer’s identity is apparently inside a missing hotel bible. John puts his business on hold to locate the bible and exact revenge. Virginia Mayo is brought in to assist with the search.

The movie plays out with Raft’s John obsessively getting closer to the bible while the presumed antagonists slowly reveal their hand. Many of the conventions of film-noir are dispensed with. There is no love interest nor femme fatal. And the religious subtext feels out of place. More on that later.

All-around nice guy Gene Lockhart plays John’s faithful company guy. Gene's daughter June recently turned one hundred. Our prime suspects include Raymond Burr, playing to type, and Harry Morgan playing opposite. Lucy’s wacky neighbor Fred Mertz (William Frawley) has a small role.

Based on a short story titled “This Guy Gideon”, it was renamed Red Light because the producer liked it better. I’m not really sure how the new title fits into the narrative. Revenge is bad, so stop? The religious overtones are a bit much, so much so that TCM host Eddie Muller joked that it could be called Biblical-noir. And the Virginia Mayo character was inserted as if they wanted a love interest element, without actually having one. Also, the brotherly love angle bordered on becoming a creepy folger’s commercial.

Red Light is a bit of a disappointment. The tone was almost there but it falls short. If you watch noir and wish there were more bibles in it, maybe this is for you. For me, however, AMRU 2.5.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

Retiring Captain Brittles (John Wayne) goes on one last patrol, this time to evacuate the women-folk. Oh, and one of them wears a yellow ribbon. It’s unimportant.

The ribbon signifies that the woman (Joanne Dru) is officially going steady. Between two young officers, she chooses the rich pretty-boy over the one with a promising military career ahead of him. I struggled to follow this sub plot and I needn't. It was very uninteresting.

A young John Agar appears as Brittles right hand. He was married to Shirley Temple at this time. Also here is Harry Carey Jr, not to be confused with Harry Caray. And also is Ben Johnson whom we recently saw in Shane.

The 41 year old Wayne was surprisingly believable as the 60 year old captain, impressing long time collaborator John Ford, who said he "didn't know the big son of a bitch could act!" I haven’t seen too many of Wayne from his young and fit years and he didn’t much resemble himself from his El Dorado years, which is a good thing.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon has a few strange elements, like Wayne getting a man thrown in the brig for some reason. Also, there is the element of Wayne trying to avoid hostilities with the natives rather than the more familiar narrative. Pointless love triangle aside, the major theme explores a man dealing with his obsolescence. Who is he if not the gruff captain the others look to for leadership. This is a theme I can relate to. AMRU 3.5.

The Queen of Spades (1949)

Herman (Anton Walbrook), a 19th century Russian army captain, has ambitions of greatness. He discovers that an elderly countess had sold her soul to learn the secret to win at card games, so he plots to learn her secret.

Recommended by a youtube channel, I found it streaming and gave it a watch. He liked it better than me. Walbrook’s performance was great, but the slow burn made it something of an endurance test.

Pretty Yvonne Mitchell plays a would-be love interest. She had a fairly successful career in film. Married to film critic Derek Monsey, they would divorce, then remarry in 1978 only for him to die the following year. One month later, Yvonne herself would die of cancer. And so it goes. The elderly countess would outlive both her and Walbrook.

A bit slow as I mentioned, but The Queen of Spades has great atmosphere and cinematography, excellent performances, features some unique storytelling, and they totally stick the landing. It’s not for everyone, and I don’t think I would rush to rewatch it, but I am glad I saw it. AMRU 3.5.

Strange Bargain (1949)

An assistant bookkeeper, struggling to provide for his family, gets a peculiar offer from his boss. One might say, a Strange Bargain. The boss, despite living a lavish lifestyle, is absolutely broke. Not wanting his family to abandon the lifestyle they've come accustomed to, he decides to commit suicide. He offers ten grand to good man Sam to make it look like murder, you know, because of the insurance. A young Harry Morgan is the hot shot investigator.

While there is mystery here, we know Sam’s exact role in the operation. Involved but not guilty of any real crime, he decides to lie to the investigators and act as guilty as humanly possible. Colonel Potter takes notice.

I suppose we call this film noir, but it lacks much of the attitude we come to expect, ambiguity in particular, but it is what it is. On an interesting side note, Harry Morgan would reprise his role thirty eight years later for an episode of Murder, She Wrote, although I understand the story details differ. Its available on Prime, and I'm curious.

Strange Bargain is an entertaining, but ultimately forgettable film. For much of the film we just worry that a good man doesn’t get in trouble for his role in insurance fraud. Or accidentally accused of murder. Morgan, impressively charismatic in his role, would have made for a better protagonist. And better movies have better protagonists. AMRU 3.

Abandoned (1949)

Pretty Paula (Gale Storm) travels to LA to look for her missing sister, who had a scandalous baby. A smart alack reporter (Dennis O’Keefe) takes a shine and helps her investigate. Raymond Burr is a shady PI.

The story centers on an illegal adoption racket that would make headlines a year later. Reporter Mark behaves more like a detective, coming and going as he pleases, roughing up suspects, and creeping on the lovely Paula. Old friends may remember Gale from the Christmas film It Happened on Fifth Avenue.

Black market babies is an unusual topic for a traditional noir, and there are aspects of the story forbidden by the censors. Specifically, the identity of the baby’s father. He is not identified, but there are hints.

Abandoned makes for an interesting story with a unique angle on the noir genre, but is otherwise unremarkable. I enjoyed the watch but won’t be revisiting it. AMRU 3.

The Window (1949)

Tommy (Bobby Driscoll, by special arrangement with Walt Disney) sleeps on the fire escape to escape the summer heat, where he witnesses a murder. His parents don’t believe him because he’s a kid, and also because he’s a big fat liar. Well, normally. Things escalate when his murderous neighbors catch wind that he may know something.

Filmed in 1947 and shelved because it was “not worth releasing”, it became a sleeper hit in 1949. RKO had been purchased by a man who knew nothing about business. What was his name again? Oh, yea, Howard Hughes. The Window stretches the Noir definition a bit, with a few of the standard elements missing. Most notably the hard-boiled protagonist is played by an imaginative ten year old. Let’s talk about little Bobby Driscoll, shall we?

A talented child actor, he was awarded the outstanding juvenile Oscar for 1949. Similar acclaim came for his roles in Song of the South, Treasure Island, and a whole host of films I’ve never seen. And he was quite good here, even if I found myself occasionally rooting for the baddies. But sadly for Bobby, tragedy struck. Did I say tragedy? I meant puberty. Puberty struck. His voice changed and his drug troubles followed him wherever he went. Washed up by 30, dead at 31.

An interesting side effect of the film is watching how ten year old kids behaved in post-war America. Not just sleeping on fire escapes but playing in abandoned buildings and being locked in their bedroom while the parents went to work. This I’m sure rang true back then but would be strange in my youth, and completely alien to kids today. Now they lock themselves in their bedrooms.

The Window is a well made, well paced film. Despite the child protagonist, it isn’t just a kids movie. I might quibble with the ending, but all in all it’s a pretty good watch. AMRU 3.5.

Tension (1949)

Nice guy Quimby (Richard Basehart) plots to murder the lunkhead who stole his wife (Audrey Totter), and meets nice girl Mary (Cyd Charisse) along the way. When the lunkhead turns up dead, things become complicated.

Audrey Totter was delightfully nasty as the unfaithful wife. She drips with venom. Totter built a career as a femme fatale, her look being perfect for the woman of danger. When those roles dried up she transitioned to television. I had only seen Cyd Charisse in Singin’ in the Rain, and thought of her just as a dancer. She did no dancing here, and was quite charming in her good girl role. William Conrad (TV's Cannon) has a sizable role.

The tension in the title refers to the amount of tension the investigating officer needs to apply to suspects before they break, like with a rubber band. It’s a corny but forgivable analogy. As we know what happens pretty early on, this isn’t much of a mystery. The real star here is the delicious dialog which makes every scene pop. We care about the protagonists, hate the antagonists, and the story sizzles when it needs to.

Were I to criticize, it would be how the protagonist must act stupid so that the story can progress. The entire film would have been wrapped up in the second act had they just answered the police’s question. Also, the ending wasn’t quite as smart as it could have been.

That aside, Tension was an absolute delight to watch. Tight dialog, great characterizations, and excellent acting. The whole thing simply popped. AMRU 4.

Love Happy (1949)

A theater troupe struggles to finance their show (named Love Happy), jewel thieves are trying to locate a million dollar necklace they stole, and the brothers clown around. There is a lot going on, little of which is of much consequence.

This last Marx Brothers film came together somewhat accidentally. Harpo planned it as a solo project, but couldn’t secure financing unless Chico and Groucho came along. Harpo playing the Harpo character and doing all of the Harpo bits without his brothers doesn’t really make sense anyhow. Many of Groucho’s scenes appear to be filmed at a different time, improvised and poorly shot. He serves as the story’s narrator but interacts somewhat during the third act.

Vera-Ellen is charming as the plucky and lovelorn dancer. Baroness Frankenstein herself Ilona Massey is the exotic and enigmatic leader of the thieves. Her performance is peculiar but I blame the source material. Raymond Burr is one of her thugs. Marilyn Monroe had a very short and entirely gratuitous scene. That, and conspicuous product placements, may have been part of the financing agreement.

Like the worst of the Brother’s films, it transitions from a mostly uninteresting story line, to unfunny comic bits, to tedious song and dance numbers, then back again. To be fair there were a couple amusing bits, one in particular involves a handheld mirror. Unfortunately Harpo chooses to repeat it, just in case the audience was napping.

The Marx Brothers were a moment in time. Their downtrodden but irreverently upbeat act played well during the Depression, but became increasingly anachronistic as we inched towards the affluent and optimistic 50’s. Besides, only baby Groucho was under sixty at this point. It was a good time to move on.

So, this is it. The last of the Marx Brothers films. Famously Groucho omitted in his autobiography, naming A Night in Casablanca as their last. But the Brothers did appear, separately, in one more film, but I think I’m done here.

The boys did thirteen films together, but I can only recommend their second through seventh. Love Happy might be the worst of the lot, Groucho apparently thought so, and unless you feel compelled to complete arbitrary lists, it is completely skipable. AMRU 2.

I Was a Male War Bride (1949)

Cary Grant is French Captain Henri Rochard with a Cary Grant accent. He goes on one last mission and for the purposes of the story needs an American WAC to come along. That woman is Lieutenant Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan), with whom they’ve had a troubled personal history. Details there are scarce. After implausibly falling in love, they face difficulties getting him into the US.

The film begins with Grant being chauffeured across a bombed out German city with up-beat and patriotic music playing in the background. The language barrier is played for laughs. This scene may not have bothered me had I not recently watched films like Two Women and Bicycle Thieves. Here, the consequence of war is that America is strong, rich, and happy. I can no longer ignore the other consequences.

Part one has our heroes looking for a German black marketeer named Schindler to convince him to move to Paris for some reason. In actuality, it is about our two heroes bumbling around, getting into predicaments, and expressing hate and distrust for each other. Through the power of a haystack, they fall in love.

Director Howard Hawks cast the supporting characters as he saw fit so the 52 year old chose his nineteen year old girlfriend. I’m not sure how much better an inappropriate relationship is than a casting couch, but here we are. The production was beset with illness, with Sheridan coming down with pleurisy and Grant contracting hepatitis, appearing visibly thinner in the second half.

The title refers to the plot point that while there is a process for a male soldier to bring a war bride back to America, there is not for a female soldier bringing home a foreign husband. I’m curious how true this is. They designate him a war ‘bride’ and hilarity is expected to ensue. To be fair, there was one joke that made me laugh out loud. It involves a sign post written in German, but much of the rest wasn’t very inspired. They bicker, there are misunderstandings, things go wrong for him, stuff like that. It’s “funny because it happens to somebody else” type comedy but it doesn’t work because Cary Grant is our hero. Well, my hero.

Grant called I was a Male War Bride one of the best comedies he had done. While it’s not his worst, it is far from his best. He and Ann Sheridan had little chemistry and their predicaments were mostly unfunny. I feel I am being generous by giving it an AMRU 3.

Mighty Joe Young (1949)

An oversized ape is brought to America by a greedy promoter. Things go poorly. Sound familiar? Depictions of African rituals are handled with amazing accuracy and sensitivity.

Sixteen years after King Kong, RKO brought back much of the same team to make Mighty Joe Young. They even reused Fay Wray's screen. Here, a rich little girl on an African plantation buys Gorilla Joe as a baby and they grow up as great friends. And Joe grows to a great size, between eight and twelve feet, depending on the situation. Much larger than real gorillas but tiny compared to Kong’s fantastical 18 to 60 feet, depending on the situation. Pretty Jill is convinced by the promoter (Robert Armstrong) to bring her friend to America for fame and fortune, so no need for gas grenades here. While it was easy to sympathize with the monster Kong, Joe is intended entirely as a sympathetic character.

This was Ray Harryhausen’s first job as special effects animator, and there are a lot of effects on display. Not just Joe, but lions, people, cars, and a climatic building fire. It is easy to criticize the end result (visible wires, overlaid scenes sometimes shake) but this stuff was very new at the time and the effects took fourteen months to complete. I would guess that some sort of special effect was on screen for the majority of the 84 minute runtime.

Ben Johnson played the awe-shucks cowboy sent to Africa to rope the wild animals. He did a lot of westerns so our paths haven’t crossed much. But he was very memorable in The Last Picture Show. Less so in The Outlaw. Many familiar contract players appeared, particularly in the night club scenes. Specifically Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton) and Irene Ryan (Granny Clampett). Charles Lane had appeared in 241 feature films, this being the eleventh I’ve seen him in. He died thirteen years ago at a hundred and two, and somehow has a short film coming out soon.

It is mentioned that Jill’s contract was not legal because she was under aged. Maybe that meant she was under 21 (actress Terry Moore was twenty when the film was released) but in 1949 I suspect that means under 18, which makes the 30ish Johnson going off with her a bit suspect.

Mighty Joe Young isn’t a bad film and the effects were fun, but it comes off as sappy, especially when compared to the masterpiece. It felt targeted more for children. AMRU 2.5. In lieu of a good quote, I’ll leave you with one of Terry’s:

“I hate silicone, because now everyone can have what I have.”

In The Good Old Summertime (1949)

A remake of The Shop Around the Corner (1940), now set in an 1890’s American music shop, and with color, songs, and Judy Garland! What could be better? The original, in every way.

Let’s make a few things clear. Technicolor does not necessarily make a film better, the songs were tedious, and Judy was a poor actress. But let’s give it some credit. The change of setting was a good idea. A music show makes sense given that it’s now a musical. It’s nice to see the older Buster Keaton get a paycheck. Van Johnson wasn’t a terrible substitute for Jimmy Stewart and Judy should have been an improvement on the forgettable Margaret Sullavan. So what went wrong?

It is an almost scene by scene remake of the original excluding the most dramatic parts! The tone was all wrong giving it a more comedic, almost slapstick quality. We are not charmed when the love interests are introduced. I was annoyed. We are left with the formula of add nothing except forgettable songs, subtract much of the charm and drama, and replace actors with poor substitutes. Cuddles Sakall might work in small roles but he was not up to the task of taking on Frank Morgan. And let’s face it. Ernst Lubitsch was the master.

In The Good Old Summertime is not remembered as one of Judy’s best, but fans will like it because that’s what they do. Given my druthers I would have watched Meet Me in St. Louis this season but a DVR issue sabotaged that idea. And after watching this and The Clock, I think I’m done with Judy for a while. If anything good came from this experience, it’s realizing how much I actually like The Shop Around the Corner. AMRU 2.

Holiday Affair (1949)

Hot war widow Connie (Janet Leigh) is a ‘comparison shopper’, meaning someone who buys items for examination by a competing department store, and then returns them. She is caught by hunky Steve (Robert Mitchum) who must ban her from the store, effectively costing her the job. But he shows compassion and doesn’t report her, costing him HIS job. They keep accidentally meeting up causing friction with her safe and boring boyfriend/fiance Carl (Wendell Corey). Guess who gets the girl? Good money is on Steal-yo-girl Mitchum.

Good old Corey was Jim/Jeff’s cop buddy from Rear Window. He was ready for a long, successful career in Hollywood, and what’s better than that? Booze, that’s what. Wendell Corey, dead at age 54. His last few films include such gems as Cyborg 2087, The Astro-Zombies, and Women of the Prehistoric Planet. I'm not ashamed to say I kinda want to check them out. Hey, look! It’s Colonel Potter himself, Harry Morgan! As a cop no less!

Hot hot Janet Leigh was charming as the hard working widow trying to do right by her son, although at 22 maybe a little too young for the role. She was fourteen years older than little Timmy. We don’t feel too sorry for poor Carl. He isn’t made out to be a bad person but clearly not right for our Miss Leigh. And he may have been a little too understanding.

Holiday Affair is a decent little Christmas story but otherwise unspectacular. Wasn’t a success upon release but apparently is remembered well thanks to TCM. It was on my list to watch with Mom and I think she would have loved it. AMRU 3.

“Carl isn't the real threat to me. Maybe I'm not to him. This isn't two fellows and a girl, you know. This is two fellows, a girl and her husband. I can't fight a shadow - I tried - competition's too tough. You were even going to play it safe and settle for someone you didn't love so you wouldn't be unfaithful to your husband.”

Ma and Pa Kettle (1949)

Poor rural family with fifteen children is about to be evicted from their home when they unexpectedly win a free house of the future. 1949 future, that is. When the oldest Kettle child (Richard Long) returns from college, he tries to help the clan acclimate to this fancy living.

Not unlike The Beverly Hillbillies, the Kettles are fish out of water. They originally appeared in 1947's The Egg and I, a fish out of water story in the opposite direction. Newlyweds Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert move to a chicken farm and meet the Kettles. The Kettles were so popular they stared in (oh my god!) nine low budget comedies. If IMdb rating are to be believed, none were particularly better or worse than the others.

So, we are to laugh at the Kettles for their backward was (even by bumbkin standards). They are poor, dirty, lazy (well, Pa anyhow), and uneducated. Except Tom, who returns from college with a gentleman's diction. He has invented a new kind of chick hatchery. You see, a better place for the young chicks to live means they will have a better future. Get it? A modern HOME for CHICKS so that they have a better chance to prosper! Seriously, you get it, right?

Old friends will remember Richard Long from House on Haunted Hill, a schlock favorite of mine. I also remember him from Big Valley of my childhood, and maybe Nanny and the Professor. He did a pile of television before dying at the ripe old age of younger-than-me. I should get my heart checked.

Just about every stereotype of poor southerners are played for laughs here. Except racism, thankfully. No black people are to be seen and the Indians were trusted friends.

These low budget, quick production numbers were quite successful, but not all that funny. There wasn't a gawfau to be found. I am sort of glad a saw it so that I know what the Kettles are all about, but I don't think I'll force myself to see another. Fairly short and not painful to watch. AMRU 2.5.

The Fall of the House of Usher (1949)

Man travels to comfort his troubled friend. There we learn that his family is cursed because dad apparently killed a dude for boning his wife. Wife is now an old hag who stays in the temple where dead dude's head is stored. They try to burn the head, but that doesn't go well. The stone house burns to the ground. Everyone dies, almost.

I skipped a lot of the story, but there's not much to see here. Stilted acting and heavy handed direction, overbearing score and a very made-for-TV feel. The sets were nice but not terribly well photographed. Adapting a Victorian short story to film for a post war audience presents many challenges, and those challenges remained unmet. Sequences that were intended to be dramatic or frightening ended up looking silly. Real MST3K stuff. Short and kinda likable, but clumsy and very skippable. AMRU 2.5.

The Third Man (1949)

Writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) travels to Vienna, still ravaged by the war, to visit his boyhood friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles). It seems Holly's pulp novels aren't selling all that well and jumped at the opportunity to mooch off his old friend. Sadly for him, good 'oll Harry is dead. Seems he walked out in front of a truck. Bad news for Holly.

The local police chief, who didn't seem to have bent too far backwards investigating the death, isn't too torn up over it. Seems he has quite a lower opinion of Lime than Holly. Something to do with penicillin and the black market. So, with nothing better to do, and to redeem the good name of his buddy, he decides to start asking questions. Soon he discovers discrepancies in the police report. It says two men helped Lime to the side of the road but a witness clearly saw three. Maybe Lime's death was no accident. Maybe it was murder. And the first person to ask is The Third Man.

Happen to know what a zither is? If not, it's a traditional eastern European stringed instrument that makes a uniquely annoying sound, certainly not the kind one would master in hopes of impressing the lady-folk. In the world of western cinema, there is room for exactly one film to make exclusive use of it, and this is that film. If there exists another movie in creation that uses this instrument exclusively, that movie should be torn up, burned, then the ashes fed to rabid snakes.

That said, this noir film seems to work well with the comically upbeat zither. In fact, most of the movie works well. The acting was fine, the setting and atmosphere were great, the story had me guessing, and the hottie (Alda Valli as Lime's grieving girlfriend) was hot.

Not wanting to spoil anything, I'm going to leave it there. It's a very good mystery that bears rewatching. AMRU 4.

"Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

The Inspector General (1949)

Rumor has it that Napoleon's Inspector General is on his way to investigate graft and corruption. This alarms the city leaders of Brodny, who know that corrupt officials get the firing squad. And they are as corrupt as the day is long.

In the outskirts are a group of gypsies (hate those people!!) selling an elixir to cure what ails you. After an amusing scene and song, our hero Georgi (Danny Kaye) lets slip that it's a fake. The townsfolk attacks the gypsies and the gypsies cast out Georgi. He travels to the the city of Brodny, who jail him in an effort to clean up the streets in advance of the Inspector's visit.

Well, then Georgi is mistaken for the Inspector and is given royal treatment. The illiterate Georgi plays along thinking he'll get the axe if found out. He tries to leave (to the great relief of the city leaders) but is stopped when his old gypsy friend spots him and uses the situation to bilk the town out of a kings ransom. Or a pipe organ. Whatever.

This is a Kaye vehicle from start to finish. He does silly songs, gets into and out of silly situations, does a few pratfalls, and everything turns out just grand in the end. He even gets the girl. Sorry if I spoiled it. If you were looking for a grim ending to a Danny Kaye film, you're out of your tree.

That girl? That would be the young Barbara Bates. Rocketing to stardom in the late 40's, she started to go bonkers. Out of Hollywood by the mid fifties, she toured the has-been circuit. When her elderly husband died, she chose to off herself.

The film also had old friend Elsa Lanchester in a small role and even the Skippers' dad. Wanna hear some dirt about Elsa? She said in her autobiography that she and hubby Charles Laughton never had children be cause o'll Chuck was the G.A.Y. Nonsense, says Maureen O'Hara (still living). The reason Elsa never had babies is because of a botched abortion! Said Elsa of Maureen: "She looks as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, or anywhere else." Hmmm.... I don't know. She could totally melt my butter.

I remember some of the scenes. Mostly the music, but little of the story. My boys watched. They didn't seem all that interested, but in the end they said they really liked it. I thought it was a little weak. Well done with decent acting and nice sets, but for some reason it didn't sparkle. Better than a lot of movies I've given a 3.0 to, so maybe I was expecting too much. My boys loved it so I added The Court Jester to my DVD queue. AMRU 3.5.

"Your Excellency - he took bribes, he drank all my wine, he-he-he yelled out the windows, he even made love to my wife! How could I doubt that he was an Inspector General?"

King of the Rocket Men (1949)

Because of disk problems with Seven Samurai, my hundred and first post is my one hundredth movie. Because this one is a serial, I actually had a choice of what would be my 100th. I started watching episodes of Rocket Men first, but saw another movie before I finished. I chose this to be my 100th because it didn't totally suck. Boy, can't you wait for my next post!

Jeff King (Tristram Coffin) is a scientist and member of "Science Associates". Top scientists are being killed off by the mysterious "Doctor Vulcan" (no, he doesn't use a death grip). One scientist thought killed was saved by King and hides in a cave doing research. Where they got the tons of scientific equipment to stock this cave, and where do you rent a cave with proper electrical and plumbing facilities, I won't ask. He finishes working on a Rocket Suit, so King (King of the Rocket Men? Get it?) uses it to do battle with the Evil Doctor Vulcan!

So, basically, King flies around, narrowly escaping death, gets into two fist fights per 13 minute episode, and slowly gets closer to the baddies. And his suit is a real hoot. It has three dials. One reads ON and OFF, another UP and DOWN, and the third SLOW and FAST. To take off, he runs and jumps superman style, then turns ON, UP, FAST. To land he turns the dial to DOWN. SLOW is never used.

This and serials like it delighted kids back in the day when they would walk to the cinema (alone) every week. They would see another cliffhanger episode before the feature. Today, this is boy-repellent. All three of my sons would run from the room in disgust when I would play one. And it didn't help that favorites like Star Wars and Indiana Jones were based on serials just like this one. And the dude looked strangely similar to iron man. No sir-ee bob. They'd have nothing to do with it.

But I liked it. Maybe I would have liked it better had Netflix put them into the correct order. I saw episodes 1 to 3, then 7 to 9, followed by 4 to 6, then finally 10 to 12. Sad thing is that I caught on after watching episode 9. I decided not to start from the beginning.

Glenda Thomas, cub reporter, was played by Mae Clarke, described as an all time great sci-fi hottie, and for this role no less. Sorry, no. Maybe back when she was dating the good doctor Frankenstein, but not when pushing 40. Her role was get-in-the-way girl. Not a love interest. AMRU 3.

White Heat (1949)

White Heat is the story of Cody Jarrett (James Cagney), a ruthless gangster trying to evade the law after a train robbery. He figures it's only a matter of time before the cops catch up with him, so he arranges to be convicted of a lesser crime. He'll stay in jail for a couple years and be released when the heat is off. They cops don't buy it but don't have enough evidence to convict on the train job. They send a cop into the prison to pose as a cell mate and gain his trust.

Unlike most cop dramas I've watched, the police here aren't stupid. In fact, they are very resourceful. Their techniques for tailing cars and keeping track of the baddies was fascinating, this being before GPS and cell phones.

Cagney is the star and totally shines. Virginia Mayo (Cagney with a side of Mayo? Naw...) is his loyal trophy wife, stage actress Margaret Wycherly is his fixated-upon mother (think Ma Barker). While Cody's sanity is questioned, his brutality is not. he is unflinching when offing police, robbery victims who might be able to identify him, and gang members who become liabilities. I've never watched a Cagney film (not counting that crap he did in drag with some dude named Lacey), and I recognized every mannerism copied by comedians and cartoons. What they could not copy is his ability to fill the screen and capture the eye. A master at work.

Cody's last line, "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!", has been referenced in songs, movies, TV shows, and cartoons. Kevin Garnett shouted it during his post game interview after winning the NBA championship. This is a fascinating, complex story, well written, acted, and produced. It will appeal to people who think it won't. AMRU 4.

"You know something, Verna, if I turn my back long enough for Big Ed to put a hole in it, there'd be a hole in it."

Adam's Rib (1949)

Adam (Spencer Tracy) and Amanda (Katharine Hepburn) are married attorneys who find themselves on the opposite side of a headline grabbing court case. It seems a man was fooling around on his wife, she found out, found him with his lady-friend, and shot him. 

Tracy, sensing familiarity, takes his case. Hepburn, sensing irony, takes hers. Now, I love these two actors, really I do, but what must have been going through their minds? Imagine Tracy's wife going to this movie and saying to their two children "That's your bum of a father and the trollop he flashes around town. Today she is apparently AGAINST philandering husbands!" Unbelievable. 

I don't want to blow the story, but suffice it to say little in this court case played out vaguely the same as it would in a world that resembled reality. Also, I saw little chemistry between the two leads. Tracy at one point becomes so enraged at Hepburn that the movie loses what little humor it had. 

I liked their songwriter neighbor who is unabashedly woo'ing Hepburn right in front of Tracy. What a douche. He was wonderful. Also, I had a moment when Tracy and Hepburn were going about their daily life and one of them lit their stove. I thought for a moment, two high-powered lawyers and that's the only stove they can afford?, before I realized that in 1949, that WAS a good stove. 

Judy Holliday was great in a small role as the accused and abused wife but this wasn't Tracy or Hepburn's best work. AFI called this the seventh best romantic comedy ever. It's not a bad film by any means, but if I see this movie again it would be to figure out why others are so high on it. AMRU 3.