B is for Boring B-Movie

 EAST OF BORNEO (1931)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

This is one of those 1930's jungle adventure thrillers that serves up a title of a geographical location that is visually identical to any location in any other pre-Code adventure film. Borneo is the largest island in Asia yet any unique features to that island are not present in this film. "East of Borneo" is yet another B-movie flick that was clearly shot in the studio backlot (it was cheaper to do so in those days) and its only real authentic look is the inside of a prince's luscious-looking golden palace and obvious stock wild animal footage.

The mechanical plot is just a set-up - Rose Hobart is Linda Randolph, the "white woman" as prefaced by the Borneo natives who announce her arrival with a series of gongs and drums. She has travelled 6,000 miles to find her husband, Dr. Clark (Charles Bickford), a drunk physician to the island's charmingly devious Prince Hashim (Georges Renavent). There is much squabbling between Linda and Dr. Clark, and the Prince clearly wants the woman for himself (it must get lonely there despite the presence of Lupita Tovar as a servant and various other female servants). We do get lots of close-ups of tigers, monkeys and hundreds of crocodiles - in one particularly intense scene, a bunch of those hungry crocs devour a native and tear him apart. 

Still, there is not much to "East of Borneo" and the only real thrills occur during a volcanic eruption after the Prince is...well, if you feel the need, watch the movie for the early foreshadowing bit of dialogue by the Prince himself. Charles Pickford is a dullard at best and Rose Hobart merely stands around as window dressing (she fared better in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" with Fredric March). Georges Revenant is the only one who relishes his Prince role and gives it the spark it needs. The jungle footage, inadvertently thrilling, is indistinguishable from what you might find in a Tarzan flick or several other jungle adventure films. 

One fascinating aspect to "East of Borneo" is that an experimental filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, took clips from the film spliced with footage of an eclipse and did a 20-minute short called "Rose Hobart." Though not one of my favorite so-called "Surrealist" films, it is far more galvanizing than anything in this run-of-the-mill flick. 

Eccentric, impatient and in love

 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1931)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The famous Robert Louis Stevenson Gothic story has had many incarnations and though I profess to not have seen them all, this 1931 Fredric March version from Warner Brothers is easily the best. It is a frightening film, nightmarish in its look and atmosphere and in particular Fredric March's truly exceptional, layered Oscar-winning performance. It stands in the tradition of the Universal Monster flicks as a haunting, ghoulish classic.

The gentle Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March) helps patients with various disabilities or ailments yet he also can perform, um, well miracles to some degree (he gets a girl to give up her crutches and she starts walking - is he really a miracle worker or was this girl's disability only in her mind?) As a scientist in Victorian London, he is dedicated to proving certain thesis from the standpoint of presenting new ideas in the medical field. His latest thesis is that man has a dual nature, and the other side is the beast, the dark side that can be roused and separated from the good. Eventually Jekyll drinks a potent potion he concocted that allows him to unearth a beastly, simian-like appearance with canine teeth and an appetite for lust, women and drinks - "I am free!" he exclaims. He carries on with a top hat and cape walking the streets of London as passerby look on with disbelief, and he speaks and grunts and has no manners whatsoever at a bar and restaurant while insisting a blonde bar singer named Ivy (played by Miriam Hopkins, who has many ungentlemanly callers) sit at his table for a drink. Hyde is a carnivorous, sexual animal who performs demeaning acts unseen by the audience (even in pre-Code days, you could only suggest so much deviancy).

As Dr. Jekyll, he is kind, plays the piano proficiently, and is something of a true romantic to his fiancee Muriel (Rose Hobart). He is also in a rush to get married despite the objections of his fiancee's father. Meanwhile Jekyll's obsession over the potion gets to be overbearing and yet he can't help himself but drink from it and loosen those Victorian mores. Danger lurks when he starts changing into Hyde without drinking the potion. Uh oh. Naturally this results in disaster and an intense, chaotic ending that goes way beyond anything you would find in a Universal Horror flick of the 1930's - this Hyde means business.

Director Rouben Mamoulian ("Queen Christina," "Becky Sharp") uses the camera very subjectively and it leaves you almost breathless from the start of the first sequence, shot as if from Dr. Jekyll's point-of-view and it is meant to be distracting (Note the use of "invisible" mirrors as the camera seems to face Jekyll head-on while he dresses in front of the mirror). Also noteworthy are shots, unusual for a horror flick or any flick at that time, where characters seems to be speaking directly to us (a visual motif later used by director Jonathan Demme). Sometimes Dr. Jekyll seems to break the fourth wall when things don't go his way, as if he looks at us wondering if we are thinking the same thing. This technique helps to build sympathy for Dr. Jekyll's plight and we hope he can survive his transformative ordeal, though we know he can't.

Ultimately Fredric March is amazing to watch in his performance as he shows gradations of both the good and evil nature of his psyche, giving us a character of color and depth as Dr. Jekyll and showing us a rampaging monster as Hyde - the latter of whom knows he has gone too far in his exploits especially in the abusive relationship with the mortified Ivy (Miriam Hopkins, truly stunning performance). This Jekyll and Hyde flick holds your attention and keeps you on the edge of your seat, unsure of what unspeakable horror is around the corner when Jekyll is trying to restrain his transformation. It is not just hopped up, frenetic entertainment designed to titillate - at times, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is genuinely terrifying. 

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.  

Living with a crime

SCARLET STREET (1945)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

 
"Scarlet Street" is one of the strangest noir tales ever told on screen, primarily because it seems rooted in almost something farcical. Here is the story of a modest cashier who makes a conniving woman believe that he is a world-famous painter. This could be a comedy but under the hands of German director Fritz Lang ("Metropolis"), it takes on the existential - showing that one person's actions can result in a hopeless situation.

Edward G. Robinson plays Chris, a sullen cashier working for an anonymous bank company. His one joy in life is to paint, a habit not taken seriously by a single character in the film. One night, after hastily leaving a celebration in his honor, Chris sees a woman in the street robbed by some guy. The victim is Kitty (Joan Bennett), a purely electrifying doll, funny yet devious with a devilish smile. The thief gets away yet Chris is mesmerized by Kitty, taking her out for a drink (initially coffee, as always with a noir protagonist). He asks to meet her again, and his love for painting makes Kitty suspect he is a renown painter with lots of money to spare. Kitty thus uses Chris, and we discover the thief from earlier is actually her boyfriend, Johnny (Dan Duryea), whom she passes off as her cousin. Chris sees Johnny as an intrusion but nevertheless, he falls hopelessly in love. He is so in love that he steals
money from his bank so he can rent her a luxurious Greenwich Village apartment!

Chris also sees the apartment as a studio where he can paint, away from the constant squabbling of his unhappy wife, Millie (it is more spacious than the bathroom he uses in his apartment). But Kitty has other plans - she sees Chris's paintings as an avenue for success and profit, and so does the
irascible, persistent Johnny. Therein lie the twists.

"Scarlet Street" has lots of comical scenes, mostly provided by Bennett who performs enough double takes and lascivious stares to make her the almost cartoonish version of Joan Crawford. All her scenes with Robinson are set in bedrooms or closed-in restaurants, and they are all perfectly flawless, exuding
both humor and tension. Bennett also makes Kitty ambiguous - we are never sure what to make of her, and her sensuousness and supposed sensitivity reinforce her two-sided nature. She is out to make a buck anyway she can, but is she as amoral as Johnny, who goes so far as to sell Chris's paintings himself?

Robinson is at his most restrained and sympathetic, even when his actions become questionable, we know he will do anything for the love of his life. Counterbalancing between being blindsided and naive, his final act of love resulting in tragic consequences is a marvel to witness - his pained gestures
show a man slowly coming apart at the seams. This is an extraordinary performance, almost as good as his similarly repressed protagonist in "Woman in the Window."

Fritz Lang, who previously directed "Woman in the Window," does wonders with the film showing just about every single facet of noir - smoking, shadows in the night, wrongful murders, accusations, double twists, and an unseen electrocution. "Scarlet Street" is a terrific film, brimming with humor and
horror in balanced doses. Most significant is Lang's inevitable ending reinforcing the hopelessness of Chris's situation. Though the ending initially had problems with the censors, it is justified and shows a degree of punishment - living with a crime is often more punishing than actual punishment from the
law.

Making her world a happy place

 CURLY TOP (1935)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Watching the delightfully sunny smile and pouty mannerisms of curly Shirley Temple is always a treat, including her singing and dancing to her heart's content. Underneath the formulaic notions of a predictable love story between a millionaire composer and a young orphan woman (not Temple), there is nothing more in "Curly Top" than the adorable presence of a young girl who wants to make the world, her world, a happy place.

Temple plays a 7-year-old orphan girl, Elizabeth, living in a rather dank orphanage known as Lakeside. Elizabeth's older sister, Mary (Rochelle Hudson) does a lot of the cooking and cleaning of this place. Elizabeth has a habit of getting herself in trouble - like too much singing and dancing during group meals, and wanting to make sure the pony doesn't get pneumonia for standing in the rain. So Elizabeth brings the pony to an adjoining bed! When the trustees do their regular inspection of the orphanage, a certain Mr. Edward Morgan (a dapper as always John Boles) turns out to be one of the trustees - he has recently inherited some wealth. Thanks to the newspaper article making this claim, Lakeside's rigid superintendent, Mrs. Higgins (Rafaela Ottiano), hopes he will double his donations. Morgan is struck by Elizabeth and her mimicry of one of the other trustees. He finds her to be such a winsome young girl that he decides to adopt her (though he lies and says that there is another benefactor). Bright Elizabeth makes it clear that if she is adopted, her older sister must come along as well.

"Curly Top" is not exactly a stirring cinematic venture (based on a 1912 novel named "Daddy-Long-Legs" that is uncredited, though I see more of a similarity with "Annie") and it's clear that the love between Mary and Edward will come to fruition despite a young Navy sailor getting in the mix. No, this movie is all Shirley Temple (in one scene, Boles imagines her as the figure of every one of his historical paintings) and she sings various songs including "Animal Crackers in My Soup" and "When I Grow Up" that seem to occupy more than a third of the film's 74 minute running time. This is not a complaint, just a fact because Temple is memorable in every scene and the songs are spirited and memorable as well.

A curious thing happens in "Curly Top." In one scene, Temple recites her own poems to Boles and we get the impression she is not just speaking to him but to us as well - her eyeline shifts and she looks straight at the audience for a lengthy time (not to mention breaking the fourth wall in the last scene). No wonder Miss Temple was America's darling - she loved us too.