Forty Naughty Girls (1937)

On the opening night of a Broadway play, the press agent is murdered. While the play is in progress, the police inspector (James Gleason) investigates while his lady friend (ZaSu Pitts) noses around.

The plot thickens, there are more murders, and the audience is comedically pointed in many different directions. All in all, Forty Naughty Girls is a fair mystery and comedy. Lets chat about Zasu.

Zasu was a silent film dramatic actress who transitioned into comedy. Her manner and voice will seem to some like a copy of Olive Oyl from the old Popeye cartoons, but in fact it's the other way around. It was Zasu who was being copied. Her name, by the way, was an apparent ploy for family peace. Two aunts wanted her named after them, so her mother named her after both. Eliza Susan. Her nicname is pronounced "Zay-soo". She had a long career in comedy and died at 69, the same as my aunt.

As said before, it's a fair comedy and mystery, better than some (I'm looking at you, Charlie Chan) but otherwise unremarkable save for Zasu's performance. It is also an excellent example of post-code movies being given a misleadingly racy title. AMRU 3.

Topper (1937)

Wealthy socialites George and Marion Kerby (Cary Grant and Constance Bennett) die in an automobile crash and their ghosts don't pass to the other side. They figure that while they've never done a bad deed, they've never done a good one either. So, they set off to do a good deed. They decide to enrich the life of a stuffy and henpecked bank president, Cosmo Topper (Roland Young). Bubble Witch Billie Burke does the pecking.

I hate it when Netflix offers sequels to movies but not the first. In this case Topper Returns, the third and final in the series. TCM was gracious enough to broadcast this for my viewing pleasure. What we have here is a simple screwball comedy, not overly funny but never tedious. Certainly AMRU 3-ish but doesn't encourage me to watch the two sequels. Nothing much else to say here, so let's take a look at hot cadaver Constance Bennett.

Constance, the oldest of three Hollywood sisters, had a successful Hollywood career. She died young at age 60. Sis Barbara didn't act much and nothing of note, but was the mother of TV asshole Morton Downey Jr. She died younger at 51. Baby sis Joan worked quite a bit including Father of the Bride opposite Spencer Tracy, and Dark Shadows opposite a very non-glittery vampire. She lived to the ripish old age of 80. Between them they had twelve husbands.

Grant is always witty and charming, Young was good as the befuddled Topper, and Bennett was truly stunning, but the script lets them down. As this is the highest rated of the the three Topper films, I'll likely pass on the other two. AMRU 3. I wonder if the 50's TV series or the 1979 TV movie is any better.

Macabre (1958)

Townsfolk blame a doctor (William Prince) for the death of his wife. They say he was drunk. The dead wife's sister (daughters of the town's richest man) has also died young and the calls for 'oll Doc Barrett to head on out reach fever-pitch. Doc's daughter turns up missing then his secretary receives a strange call saying that she is with the dead and has five hours before she suffocates. The frantic search begins.

Everyone is a suspect. Is the motive revenge? Inheritance? Or ... no, it's one of them two, almost certain. Anyhow, details emerge and new questions are raised. The suspects include the doctor's secretary, his new fiancee, the cop (played all butch by Thurston Howell himself), the undertaker, the baker, the candlestick maker ... the list goes on.

This is William Castle's first gimmick-horror. A $1000 life insurance policy was given to every participant in case they died of a fright (and that does play into the story). I'm sure Lloyd's of London had no problems issuing such a policy as Macabre is almost entirely unscary. The story plays out as a who-done-it (or, more accurately, a who-doin'-it) and falls closer to mystery/thriller than horror, but let's not split hairs.

TMC ran a bio of he man then featured this gem. He finally got to make the kind of movie he wanted to and had to mortgage his house to do so. It was a huge hit. He would go on to make a host of cheesy money-makers that I will eventually see.

So, how does the mystery/thriller work? Well, it does keep you guessing, but in the end it'll leave true mystery fans unsatisfied. For me, I found it well worth the investment in time. AMRU 3.

The Angry Red Planet (1959)

Earth loses contact with a rocket to Mars and is presumed lost. When it reappears, they find two survivors: the hysterical requisite hottie (Naura Hayden) and Colonel O'Bannion (Gerald Mohr) who is infected by a strange, bad makeup and an even worse Bogart impersonation. They grill the hottie to find out how to cure him.

Flashback time. Our intrepid crew lands on the red planet and sees that everything is eerily still. As if the plants were being controlled. Controlled to be ... still. Whatever, they venture out and are attacked by a carnivorous plant, then by a giant mouse-spider-bat-crab monster, finally by an ameboa. A big one. With a rotating eye. They try to return to Earth but they are held in place, as if there were a controlling force. Forcing them to ... well, whatever.

Finally they are allowed to return to Earth and the Hottie remembers enough so save the suave Colonel while they play the Martian's "don't ever come here" warning message. And they all lived happily ever after. Except the people who died.

High on the list of cheesy special effects is CineMagic! Here, black and white video is saturated with red to make it look ... well, bad. Then they have the actors interact with hand drawn props that look only slightly worse than the live action. Marvelous! There's nothing like being kicked in the groin to make you forget your splitting headache.

Oh, exagerating, am I? Judge for yourself:

Bad acting, cheeseball script, horrible special effects, and the stereotype of 50's B cinema. The plot holes were big enough to drive a giant mouse-spider-bat-crab monster through. While on the surface wearing space suits, one character gives his gun (Cleo) a kiss, demonstrating that the helmets don't have glass. And it only starts there.Despite the unbelievably bad effects and cotton candy plot, I kinda liked it. No, it won't make the year's best of list, but even though I fell asleep during it (had to re-watch the last 25 minutes on Amazon Prime after Neflix axed it), I have to say I'm glad I watched it. AMRU 3.

The Great Train Robbery (1903)

Bandits rob train. Posse chases bandits. Bandits are shot. Roll credits.

Here, at 11 minutes, is Hollywood's first western. And filmed in 1903, it depicts almost contemporary events. Other than that, not much to say about this one, other than the jaw-dropping scene at the end where a desperado fires his gun straight at the audience. That was Peter Jackson-type stuff back in the day. Other than that, short, linear, and public domain. AMRU 3.

 

The Unknown (1927)

Alonzo (Lon Chaney) is an armless knife thrower in a travelling gypsy circus. He is in love with the owner's daughter, the hot Nanon (Joan Crawford). Lucky for Alonzo, Nanon has a terrible fear of being embraced by men, and therefore feels safe around him. But he has a competitor: Malabar the strong man (Norman Kerry). Surely she would never fall for him.

Here is where we learn some secrets. Alonzo is not who, and what, he appears. The cops are searching for a man with two thumbs on one hand who has been committing thefts wherever the circus goes. And as Alonzo's obsession for Nanon grows we learn more of what he is willing to do to get her.

Here is the best silent movie I've ever seen.

Sound, I feel, is essential to telling a story. Silent cinema is a serious handicap that is almost impossible to overcome. But Lon Chaney was it's master. Dialog is unnecessary when looking at his expression. There is no doubt what is going through his mind. I wish I hadn't deleted it from my DVR.

Apart from Chaney's uncanny acting talent, what else is interesting? Until 1973 the only copies that existed were very poor quality bootleg versions, when it was revealed that a quality copy was found five years earlier but was hard to find because it was marked "Unknown". There are a couple scripted scenes that I'm unsure were ever filmed. If they were, I would love to see them. The movie is barely an hour long. Crawford long said that watching Chaney is where she truly learned to act.

There is not much more to say. Had Lon been born ten years later, and lived twenty years older, he would have been the undisputed king of Hollywood, but his lifestyle would be the end of him. Lon Chaney died of lung cancer three years after the movie's release. Director Tod Browning intended on using him in the title role of Dracula. The 6'2" Creighton wasn't a shadow of his 5'9" father. AMRU 4.5.

"Hands! Men's hands! How I hate them!"

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

Obsessed London wax artist Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) is going broke and doesn't seem to care. Business partner certainly does and has a solution. Burn the house down for the insurance money. They fight but the poor artist is knocked unconscious.

Years later in New York, Igor reappears with a new museum, but because of injuries sustained in the fire, he cannot walk or use his hands. He trains young artists to do his sculpting for him. A young socialite dies and the reporter covering the story (Glenda Farrell), also the roommate of the fiancee (Fay Wray) of one of Igor's young artists, happens to notice that the Joan of Arc sculpture resembles the dead socialite, and that her body was stolen from the morgue ... well, you get the picture.

After seeing Vincent Price's House of Wax, I wanted to see this version for comparison. Apart from a couple character constructs, there is little difference in the stories. The biggest difference was the tone. As the main character is a 30's reporter, there was lots of that quick witted, wise-crackie, Front Page-esque dialog. The tone, in fact, was very similar to Doctor X, also starring Atwill and Wray and released the year before. Another similarity was that both were filmed in the two-strip technicolor process, which I happen to like.

Mystery of the Wax Museum is listed as a pre-code film, that is, released prior to the full enforcement of the MPAA production code, but I'm not sure what rule it violated. There is a reference to a bootlegger, but who cares. Only thing I can think is that some of Igor's sculptures were (horrors!) topless. Got that sexy clay going on.

Atwill excelled, as he frequently does, in his role. Wray got second billing, but didn't get much screen time or any good dialog to speak of. Her job was to scream when Igor tries to turn her into Marie Antoinette. This was really Farrell's movie, being in the lion's share of the frames and getting almost all the clever dialog.

So, how does it stack up to the 1953 remake? I'd match Atwill's performance up against Price, which is high praise, but overall the silly tone and mystery focus of the former has it falling short. Still a worthwhile watch, but doesn't offer much that the remake doesn't do better. AMRU 3.

"I offer you immortality, my child. Think of it: in a thousand years you shall be as lovely as you are now!"