Didactic Prison Melodrama

 THEY ALL COME OUT (1939)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

For almost the first third of the highly uneven "They All Come Out," the movie glides along at a zippy pace. We have the Blonde Girl Moll who is involved with the Gang. There is also the Driver, a drifter of sorts who doesn't have a penny to his name but he is quite adept at driving a car at very high speeds. Nothing here will seem less than reminiscent of any other road movie about crooks and director Jacques Tourneur ("Cat People") gives it a level of urgency. Still we have to also deal with the fact that this movie is federal prison propaganda, to let us know that the prisons are doing everything they humanly can to provide prisoners with a trade they can use in the real world. I don't doubt the federal prisons in the 1930's did their best to make that transition for crooks, robbers, etc. In this movie, though, it comes across as misleading and hurts the narrative.

Tom Neal ("Detour") is Joe, the Driver, and he can quickly careen from one road to the next without breaking a sweat. He just needs money and the Blonde Girl named Kitty (Rita Johnson) helps him out with a few bucks for a meal and a hotel room (he fixed her car after all). When Kitty reports to the leader of a gang named Reno (Bernard Nedell - truly devilish and slickly played), she suggests using Joe as their getaway driver for the bank robbery they are about to commit. Things don't work out too well when the whole gang is eventually caught and go to federal prison (there is also some hard cash totaling 30,000 dollars buried in a remote location). Reno is eventually transferred to Alcatraz and has no interest in any trade. Joe is sent to Chillicothe, Ohio reformatory and succeeds at being a welder - hey, the guy wanted to work for a living. Kitty is at a women's prison and learns how to give beauty treatment lessons. The other members of the gang also learn some trades and one quickly (and unbelievably) get proper mental health. Remember this was the Production Code era so criminals couldn't get away with any crimes, especially murder.

All this is maintained with precision by director Tourneur, ostensibly to give the Federal Prison system a good name (this was originally a documentary commissioned by MGM as part of the "Crime Doesn't Pay" series). Robbing, killing or any crime committed can be redeemed by learning a trade thus ensuring parole, a job and resulting in becoming a good citizen. None of this is remotely as interesting as the thrill-happy mechanics of the first third of the movie. The criminals all have tantalizing personalities and then they become boring tools of propaganda. This is a propaganda film, a didactic lesson and hardly an entertaining one. 

Alva's dreams of a New Orleans life

 THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED (1966)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Southern melodramas are always heated, and the hot, steamy weather certainly amplifies the rise in temperature of complex relationships. I always think of such textures in film adaptations of "The Cat on the Hot Tin Roof" and "Baby Doll," the latter having raised the ire of the Catholic Legion of Decency. It is no accident that Tennessee Williams wrote both of these terrifically steamy and insightful plays. "This Property is Condemned" is an unusual oddity, as it is on the surface a Tennessee Williams story (based on a one-act play) yet the meatier parts of character development slowly erode rather than enhance. Not to say there isn't enough to like and admire about "This Property is Condemned" yet it actually feels like a one-act play and in a movie, well, you need more than one act.

The setting is Dodson, Mississippi in the 1930's where a young girl walks on the railroad tracks, the precocious Willie Starr (Mary Badham) singing "Wish Me a Rainbow," reminiscing about her older sister, Alva (Natalie Wood). As we flashback to her residence, a boarding house adjacent to the railroad tracks, we keep hearing men chanting the name "Alva" while Willie tries to fend them off. Legate (Robert Redford) arrives in this small town by train, and he has money to pay for a room but nobody knows him or his business. It turns out Legate is in town to lay off railroad workers thanks to severe cutbacks...it is the Depression era after all. Meanwhile, Alva is wanted and kissed by every man, she is the highlight of this boarding house run by her mother, Hazel "Mama" Starr (Kate Reid). Alva has plenty of men groping her and wanting to dance with her but it is Legate's initial resistance that confounds her.

As the story progresses, "This Property is Condemned" holds one's interest and Sydney Pollack directs with ease and a measure of romanticism without shying away from the economic difficulties of the time period. Natalie Wood is purely electric as Alva, emanating the sassiness and sex appeal of a woman whose sole purpose is to make men feel welcome at the boarding house (the play made it very clear she was a prostitute yet watching this movie, she is more like everyone's favorite dance partner). She sees a future beyond the guys who clamor for her attention - she wants to go to New Orleans yet her mother will not allow her to go free. Alva's future almost seems certain when she falls in love with Legate. Once the story shifts to New Orleans, Alva's past with one man she married on a whim, or on a dare, comes back to haunt her and her future with Legate becomes uncertain. This would not seem such an odd way for a Tennessee Williams story to conclude except it feels like a kick in the teeth - the mother returns to retrieve Alva and we hear from Willie in a flashforward about Alva's fate. As written by Francis Ford Coppola, Fred Coe and Edith Sommer, the film suddenly devolves into a hasty resolution that feels like a cheat. Considering it is based on a 25 minute one act play that centered only on Willie and a kid named Tom, this film is overstuffed with too many characters justifying itself as more Williams-centric than the Williams play itself. Ironically, it still resembles a one-act play either way.

"This Property is Condemned" is often spirited, sometimes brassy in tone, and deeply evocative of a time and place in history. It is fun seeing actors like Charles Bronson and Robert Blake, two of Alva's beaus, playing hard-working railroad workers who know they will lose their jobs (excepting Bronson to a certain degree, both actors are in their early prime here before being typecast as tough guys). Natalie Wood has the uncanny ability of making us believe she cares and adores all these men, even if she doesn't seem to have much chemistry with them. I can't say if this film works better than "Inside Daisy Clover" in terms of a long-standing relationship, which also starred Redford, yet I am not sure if Redford is really Alva's type (which may be precisely the point). A far too abrupt ending almost ruins the film but I still give it a pass for what works 6/10 of the way. Tennessee Williams hated it. 

The Man Who Saw too Much

 X: THE MAN WITH THE X RAY EYES (1963)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

“The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the LORD has made them both" (Proverbs 20:12; ESV)

Ray Milland excels at playing cold-hearted, remote, indifferent men who look at life in a clinical rather than emotional manner. That is why he would be the perfect actor to play a scientist who has developed a chemical formula that allows him to see with X-ray vision. Unfortunately, due to the fact that Milland is so good at playing such aloof men, it is difficult to build much sympathy for the lead character.

Milland is Dr. Xavier (clever name considering the film's title), the scientist who can see beyond or thru anything, including walls and pages of his fellow doctor's notes. While out on the town with Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vlis), he does the twist and can see people without their clothes on! Oh, my! After the doctor's research into this scientific breakthrough falls through, Xavier tries to prove his case by claiming that another doctor's diagnosis of a little girl is wrong. In a scene that is one of many unbelievable moments, Xavier cuts the doctor's hand with a scalpel in the operating room and proceeds to save the girl - the scene never has a payoff so we don't know if Xavier saved a life versus the other's possible misdiagnosis. Then Xavier is confronted by another sympathetic doctor who tries to calm him down with a sedative, and Xavier accidentally pushes him out the window and to his death!

That is not all. Xavier doesn't stay hiding from the police; instead he works for a devious carnival manager (a terrifically greedy Don Rickles) and the magical act consists of Xavier wearing only a blindfold while reading scribbled pieces of paper from patrons. He can see through his eyelids now, and the more drops he puts in his eyes, the worse the condition gets. Xavier takes it even further at a Las Vegas casino where he wins without much effort because, you know, he can see through the playing cards.

Ray Milland's Xavier keeps us at a distance and it is hard to work much sympathy for a man who has little to no interior emotional life - he never seems to enjoy his abilities and keeps making it worse for himself despite headaches and developing the blackest eyes you can imagine. Xavier has no interest in romancing the willing Dr. Diane - he just has a perverted side because he enjoys seeing women naked. His intentions with the x-ray eyes are never made clear and an ending during a religious service could have led to him, gee I don't know, thinking that he saw God. Well, it seems like it but then...oh, I will not give it away. Director Roger Corman never exploits this novel idea far enough and never builds the character beyond being just some average scientist without a care in the world. The solarized special effects serving as Xavier's point-of-view only serve to further distance us.