Bob le flambeur (1956)

Bob is a gambler with a checkered past and a heart of gold. After a run of bad luck, an opportunity too good to pass up convinces him to try one last caper. Things don’t go as planned.

Influenced by John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, it bears structural similarity to Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing as well. In fact, Kubrick stopped making crime films because, he thought, the best one had now been made.

Young model Isabelle Corey was cast in her first role. While quite beautiful, at sixteen she wasn’t much of an actress. And she would never become one as her career ended after five years. This was a pretty provocative role for a middle teen, but this is France we are talking about. Roger Duchesne had a more interesting story. After a fair number of forgettable films, his career was cut short when he was jailed for collaborating with the Nazis. This was a return after thirteen years, but would do only one more film. He was pitch perfect as the older, somewhat wiser gambler.

Bob le flanbeur is on the short list of a large number of famous filmmakers and critics favorite films. While enjoyable, I found it short of the two caper films mentioned above. But subtitled films with complex stories can be hard to fully take in. The text draws your attention away from the cinematography and performances, and the nuances that go along. I give it a 3.5 but I will rewatch it. There are things I missed.

Death Curse of Tartu (1966)

An archaeology professor, his wife, and four students visit a forbidden native burial mound in the Florida everglades. There, the ghost of the witch doctor Tartu transforms into animals to kill them.

Let’s get this out of the way. This is a very amateur production. I cannot stress that enough. For context, it comes in just ahead of the almost unwatchable Manos: The Hands of Fate. But while I will not knock it for what it could not do, I will for what it should have been. And it should have been vaguely interesting. Want to build tension? Have the characters walk slowly through the tall grass. Excitement? Have them walk quickly through the tall grass. While the acting and dialog were poor, the film suffers because frequently the characters say nothing at all. There are plenty of spaces for robots to crack wise about the nonsensical story, which was sorely missing. This is a dull movie, a fault I cannot abide.

So, let’s get on with goofing on the film, shall we? The four students (conveniently, two couples) decide to “roast some marshmallows” away from professor square and his wife. Instantly, the two women are in bikinis and making out with their fully clothed partners. Then the women do that one dance that all young people in the 1960’s know, until Tartu, in the form of a shark, eats some of them. The remaining woman screams and is instantly back into her normal attire.

There are many examples of low budgets and poor storytelling, like when the characters hide behind Tartu’s plainly visible sarcophagus before finally seeing it. Also, night scenes are normally shot “day for night”, where they film in daylight then tint to add a nighttime illusion. This effect is frequently unconvincing in low budget films, but here they forgot the tinting step. You wouldn’t know it was night had the actors not said so. It’s telling when you learn that filming was completed within a single week and the script was written in an afternoon, and your reaction is, what took them so long?

Writer/director William Grefe would go on to make some pretty average films and even did work on Live and Let Die. Death Curse of Tartu was never going to be a good film, but there were lost opportunities to make it interesting, or at least make sense. And it should have been twenty minutes shorter. AMRU 2.

Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Anne (Barbara Parkins) moves from a small town to New York City to chase her dream of doing office work. There she falls for a lady’s man, and makes friends with singer Neely (Patty Duke) and pretty no-talent Jennifer (Sharon Tate). Their lives go in unexpected directions and their paths occasionally cross. The one thing that ties them together is their love of dolls. Pills, that is. Dolls are pills. Dolophine, specifically.

Perkins’ pretty Anne is the moral center of the film. Not swayed by fame, she steers (mostly) clear of the pitfalls that trap her friends. Twenty year old Patty Duke took the controversial role of the pill-popping prima donna hoping it would help the public see her as an adult. She did mostly TV in the years following so it's unclear how well that worked.

I’ve known something of Sharon Tate’s story since forever but I wouldn’t have been able to pick her out of a lineup. She was quite striking. She appeared in fifteen episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, so I must have seen her at some point. Judy Garland was initially cast as an older, ruthless star but the substance abuse story element played itself out in real life. Judy would beat Sharon to the grave by 49 days. And so it goes.

The story of who was cast, what happened, and how much of a jerk director Mark Robson was may be a more salacious story than the Jacqueline Susann story itself. Many big names were offered roles only to turn them down, horrified by the script. You could go down a serious rabbit hole with behind the scenes stuff. On screen, however, the film is mildly interesting, soap-opera adjacent, and very 1960’s. AMRU 3.

"Boobies, boobies, boobies. Nothin' but boobies!"

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Dr. Phibes (Vincent Price) is horribly scarred from a car accident while rushing to be with his sick wife. When she dies, he holds  her nine doctors responsible. Presumed dead from his crash, Phibes enacts his plan to murder them in the mode of the biblical plagues, with minor alterations for filming purposes.

Virginia North was adorable as Phibes’ assistant Vulnavia, whose presence here makes no sense. She previously appeared in the Lazenby Bond film. Caroline Munro was uncredited as Phibes’ dearly departed. She would later go on to be in a Moore Bond film. Susan Travers played an argumentative nurse. Previously she had a small role in the excellent Peeping Tom. She didn’t get to do a Bond film, but did get to work with Hitchcock. She seemed to play nurses a lot.

It was sad to see a late career Joseph Cotten stumble through his lines. There wasn’t much dialog but what little there was, was terrible. Price recited all of his lines in a studio as his character could only talk using the technology of phonograph. Worse than the dialog, though, was the police work. They interview people and fail to ask the most basic questions. Every aspect of their work borders on laughable, but maybe that was the point. Ostensibly set in the 1920’s, Phibes’ Phantom opera house inspired mansion resembled a cheap amusement park ride, complete with a clockwork band.

Billed as Price’s 100th film, it was 85th by my count. A pretty ridiculous movie, The Abominable Dr. Phibes plays right to Price’s strengths. Not a good film by any measure, and maybe more dark comedy than horror, but it holds your attention. AMRU 3. I don't know if I can bring myself to watch the sequel.

Pursuit to Algiers (1945)

Holmes (Basil Rathbone) is hired to escort a young Algerian monarch back home after his father is assassinated. Set almost entirely on an ocean liner, there are many suspects and more than enough red herrings.

Well, that ends it. Fourteen Sherlock Holmes films up, fourteen down, the first of which I watched five years ago. I’ve marveled how consistent they are in tone and quality, but the earlier ones were a bit more serious. Part of the consistency may be due to the frantic pace they were produced. All in eight years, twelve in five years. This somewhat mirrors Nigel Bruce’s pace of 78 feature films over twenty five years, including seven films released in 1940 alone. Movies are simply not produced at that pace anymore.

Marjorie Riordan was charming as a song and dance ingenue. She would soon get bored with Hollywood and leave for grad school. 6’5” former wrestler Wee Willie Davis had a minor career playing brutes and thugs. Here was no exception.

Pursuit to Algiers proved to be the hardest film for me to find, resorting to YouTube and tolerating the skippable ads every eight minutes. I’m glad I watched the set but I don’t expect to ever revisit them. I wish I could have seen more with mom. AMRU 3.

The Ring (1927)

The boxing champion hires a circus boxer (that’s a thing) as his sparring partner, and has eyes for his girl.

One of four Hitchcock films released in 1927, we follow ‘One-Round’ Jack from circus side show up the ranks of organized boxing to become a legitimate contender. All for the love of a woman. Shades of Rocky, anyone? The first Rocky, not the others were he fights space robots, or whatever foolishness. Lillian Hall-Davis plays ‘the girl’ that the men, for some reason, desire. Her career faltered in the early sound era, then she ended it all at age 35.

While never uninteresting, The Ring (not that Ring) drags a little, a victim of a one hour story with a two hour runtime. The twenty-something Hitchcock wasn’t yet the master of suspense he would later become. A more mature Hitch would have tightened it up a bit. Oh, and have left out the N word. AMRU 3.

And Then There Were None (1945)

Eight people are invited for the weekend to an island mansion. Including two servants, the ten guests discover the mystery host has ulterior motives, and the ten proverbial Indians are killed off one at a time.

Based on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, not the novel but her play adaptation. Interestingly, when she first tried to publish the book in the US, publishers insisted she change the title. Apparently the original title was too racist, even for 1940’s America. Go figure.

Essentially an Old Dark House mystery, the viewer is sent off in many directions, and everyone has their suspicions. Many great character actors are here but I want to point out Roland Young. He didn’t make an amazing number of films, but is always memorable when we cross paths. Also Judith Anderson who appeared in even fewer films, but some really good ones. I most remember her as the creepy Mrs. Danvers in Hitch’s Rebecca. Her big scene was the best thing about that movie, by far. And I must mention Angelica’s grandpa.

As mentioned, two of the ten guests were hired as servants. That was just a ruse to get them into the house, but they continued to function as servants, even after the killings began. I suppose British class structure is more rigid than I thought.

And Then There Were None is a better than fair mystery. Sure, details are kept from the audience to make it work but nothing felt deceitful. It was fun and amusing, and my mom would have loved it. AMRU 4. A slightly better copy would have been nice.