Not all elementary, my dear Watson

THE WOMAN IN GREEN (1945)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I can't imagine a more engaging way to spend 67 minutes than watching Basil Rathbone as the pipe-smoking detective Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as the retired Dr. Watson, the latter who is always mystified at Holmes's powers of deduction. "The Woman in Green" is a pleasurable noir thriller (emphasis on noir with its deep shadows and canted angles) and I am pretty sure it will please anyone who loves anything associated with one of the greatest sleuths of all time.

Several women in London are found dead with their forefingers missing. This is one case that leaves Scotland Yard baffled, not to mention Sherlock himself who cannot fathom the identity of the culprit. The assumption by the police detectives is that it is a psychotic, Jack the Ripper-type killer but Holmes senses something more sinister - hypnotism is a central factor. When a certain wealthy widower Sir George Fenwick (Paul Cavanagh) is found to be a probable culprit by Holmes' archenemy Professor Moriarty (Henry Daniell), Holmes and Watson are called into action especially after Fenwick's daughter finds a forefinger in their yard! Evidence eventually points elsewhere after Fenwick is found murdered...of course, I will not reveal more details than that.

Based on two stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ("The Final Problem" and "The Empty House"), "The Woman in Green" is sheer escapist fun. Rathbone, one of the more distinguished actors of his time, relishes the Holmes role as if he was born to play him (initially, he was not pleased with the egotism of the character and became typecast). Every instance that Rathbone appears on screen, you can't wait to see what he says or does next. Bruce's Watson is played as a man vulnerable to being trapped into situations, such as getting a fake call where his duties are needed or falling for a hypnotist's trance. Dr. Watson is not dumb, just easily preyed upon unless Holmes can save him in the nick of time.

Between a Julius Caesar bust, an ex-soldier sniper, a shadowy phallic symbol that got past the censors, Holmes walking along the rooftops in a supposed trance, Hilary Brooke as Lydia Marlowe who knows how to trick men into her bidding with the use of "cannabis," and the references to Montevideo, Uruguay (which is where I was born), "The Woman in Green" packs in plenty of thrills and is always one step ahead of the audience. Like all great Holmes thrillers, this one will keep you on the edge of your seat wondering how it all comes together. It is not all elementary.

Flash in the pan in Manhattan

NOTHING SACRED (1937)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

There is an implicit strain of odd coolness to "Nothing Sacred," a bitter pill of a screwball romantic comedy that is neither too raucous nor too outrageous despite its subject matter. Directed with a minimum of exaggeration by William Wellman and edited with a relaxed pace, "Nothing Sacred" is often devilishly funny, extremely sardonic and critical of the mainstream newspapers of its time. It is the kind of picture that also manages to be quixotic and quite romantic, well, in ways you least expect.

Fredric March (in one of his more understated roles) plays Wally Cook, a reporter for The New York Morning Star who doesn't exactly triple check the facts of any story he writes. For instance, he has unknowingly perpetrated a hoax about a certain Sultan of Mazipan who is in fact a Harlem bootblack (The Sultan actually shines shoes for a living). Wally is demoted to obituary editor in a tight space next to a water cooler and a ladder. When Wally gets wind that a Vermont girl is dying of radium poisoning, he wants to travel there and get the scoop that could save his job. His anxious editor, Oliver Stone (Walter Connolly), would rather keep Wally editing obits for five years yet caves and gives him another chance.

When Wally arrives in Vermont, everyone speaks to him in one-word sentences. Nobody in the fictional town of Warsaw wants to deal with a hotshot reporter, that is nobody except for Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) who is the girl dying of radium poisoning. Actually her doctor informs her she is actually healthy and has no poison in her system so when Wally locates her, she lies about her condition so she can get a free trip to NYC! One shot has Wally explaining to Hazel how she will be adored, and this brief exchange is obscured by a tree branch so you can't see their faces! This shot left me a little perplexed so I can't say why it was composed in such a way.

Writer Ben Hecht takes the screenplay's cues from a short story titled “Letter to the Editor” by James Street and the deeply disturbing true-life tale of the Radium Girls and manages to make "Nothing Sacred" into a spirited romantic comedy with a pulse and a purpose. The people of NYC embrace Hazel who is instantly treated like a celebrity and given the keys to the city. Though there is no surprise in Wally inevitably discovering the truth, he still falls deeply in love with Hazel and is forgiving. Hazel keeps up the act, to the point of staging a suicide to save her own skin and Wally's job. They fight each other, they squabble a little, but it is all in the name of love and saving each other from eventual embarrassment.

As I said, there is a coolness to the proceedings in its bitter, quietly savage indictment of the press and of people who buy into celebrity tabloid stories. Why should Hazel be celebrated for dying (Hazel asks this question too). But when you have the dazzling presence of Lombard, who gives Hazel soul, sympathy and perfect comic timing (watch her swing her arms at Wally), and March who keeps himself restrained, then you have got a winning combination of romantic fireworks. There is a radiant glow of warmth underneath its cynicism, especially in the final scene. "Nothing Sacred" is a keeper.  

Flapper's Freedom

IT (1927)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

A few close-ups of silent siren of the screen Clara Bow in stunning black-and-white should be enough to make any movie lover swoon. Only Clara Bow was not just a pretty actress who could make any man quake in his boots - she had a miraculous, captivating sense of beauty that held various emotions. In the film "It," a film that made her an iconic Hollywood star, she is a rhapsodic presence of resplendent beauty, a woman of some heft who can laugh, cry, be wickedly funny and be instantly amused. And yet she has virtues such as honesty and empathy, always looking to be noticed and yet noticing others. In my mind, those are the real reasons Clara Bow became a star.

The "It" Girl is shopgirl Betty Lou Spence (Clara Bow), working for Waltham's Department Store. Prior to her introduction, the rich heir to Waltham's, Cyrus Waltham, Jr. (Antonio Moreno), is having a brief discussion with playboy Monty (William Austin, a hysterical cartoon of a man with startling eyes) on the much ballyhooed article by Elinor Glyn that brings up the topic of who can have "It" - that instant attraction to someone who has charisma beyond words and doesn't know it or doesn't care (We know that now as sex appeal). Monty looks deeply at Cyrus and knows he does not have "it" though all the shopgirls beg to differ. In a hysterically funny moment, Monty looks at himself in the mirror and proclaims, "Old fruit, you've got It." However, when Monty notices Betty, the "It" factor is clear as day as he asks her on a dinner date to the Ritz. There is a slight dilemma - Betty is fixated on Cyrus who is already engaged to be married. Betty also lives with and supports a sick mother who has a baby out of wedlock (that was the rage of the times) and when suitor Monty comes knocking, he is tricked into believing it is Betty's baby. Cyrus eventually has his eyes set on Betty but can't commit to a woman living in shame. So what we have here is the "It" factor on both sides of the gender fence.

The wisp of a plot is not unlike anything seen back in the 1920's, carried over with more sophisticated storytelling by the time 1934's "It Happened One Night" came around (the latter being possibly the most winning romantic comedy ever made). It is not likely that the plot of "It" will be remembered as much as for the presence of the iridescent Clara Bow. She sparkles the screen, illuminates it and it is hers all the way. She is an all-around happy gal, one easily consumed by love and wanting to love and help others. Not a mean bone in her body. That is what informs "It" and her "It" factor and what makes this sly, funny and at times heartrending romantic comedy one of the best of its kind ever made. 

Walking on Eggshells Around Karloff

THE WALKING DEAD (1936)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Reprinted with permission by Steel Notes Magazine

An ex-con who has just been released from prison can't catch a break. He is a musician who had accidentally killed his wife, and is frustrated due to lack of cash. A stranger in the streets offers him a job to keep track of a certain judge, this judge being the very same one who put the ex-con in jail. It turns out there is more to this than the ex-con thought.

So begins the fast-paced, often hair-raising "The Walking Dead," a noir steeped in elements of horror and it has got the uncanny Boris Karloff as John Ellman, the unlucky pianist who can play composer Christian Sinding's "Rustle of Spring" like nobody's business. When John is hired to make notes on the judge's home schedule, a murder occurs offscreen and the body is dumped inside John's car! It is of course the judge’s corpse and John is executed for his crimes, though evidence of passerby could have saved him had they acted sooner. Nevertheless, John is resurrected by the noble Dr. Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn, best remembered as Santa Claus in “Miracle on 34th Street”) who is anxious to use an untested mechanical heart. When John is revived, he realizes he had been framed and wishes to kill the participants in his electrocution. How John acquires keen insight on the identity of his culprits while he was unaware as an unemployed musician is a good question. In a rather fascinating turn of events in the film, John doesn't actually kill his culprits -- they meet their demise through accidents of their own.

At a running time of 66 minutes, "The Walking Dead" manages to thrill us, terrify us with Boris Karloff's unmatched visage which needs no real horror makeup, humor us and leave us with a Biblical passage that has more depth about the consequences of revitalizing life than even 1931's "Frankenstein." "The Walking Dead" is a relentless nail biter, a classic, and further proof that Karloff could give one nightmares and goosebumps that could last for weeks.

That's Incredible!

SAFETY LAST! (1923)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(One of my Top 20 Greatest Films Ever Made)

"Safety Last" is one of those rollickingly rickety, hysterically funny roller-caster rides that packs in the thrills with such delirium, you are often surprised at yourself. It is the Harold Lloyd movie-movie, the one that cemented his status as the physical comedian of the impossible. It is also one of those movies where you will literally need to hang on to something.

The Boy (Harold Lloyd) is an employee at the fabrics counter of the De Vore department store. His roots are from an unnamed small town where his hopeful future-wife-to-be (played by Lloyd's real-life wife, Mildred Davis) hopes he makes it big in the city. Well, he has a job but he is not a manager as he claims. Guess who decides to make a surprise visit in the city to see the Boy doing his managerial duties? This is the standard Lloyd comic routine where he works in his fast-paced physical comic timing, in this case proving to his fiancee that he is the manager. This includes last-minute exits and entrances into the manager's office, and the pressing of many alarm buttons for the various workers to enter the office.

When the Boy finds that his roommate, Bill (Bill Strother, his sole acting role), can scale a building like nobody's business, he comes up with a bright idea - convince the De Vore department store that hundreds of customers will show up for an event where his human fly friend will climb the De Vore building and reach the top floor. Plus, there is a 1000 dollars prize at stake!

"Safety Last" has plenty of terrific gags, most of them centered on Lloyd either making it to work on time or handling his customers in a timely fashion. There is nothing funnier than seeing Lloyd pretend he is a mannequin; control a crowd of customers (especially one indecisive customer that anyone who has ever worked in retail can relate to), or squeeze himself into a coat hanging on a rack! Still, the film is mostly iconic for the Lloyd set piece that none of his contemporaries (Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin) have ever attempted. Rumors have surfaced that Lloyd had the assistance of his human fly to scale the De Vore skyscraper. There are probably many trick shots here to emphasize scale or distortion thereof, but you almost always see the street of onlookers below so you have to believe (in a world where CGI and computers were not invented yet) that Lloyd is really putting his life on the line. No matter how he did it, he accomplished it with tactless skill. Whether it is a mouse running up his pant leg or seeing him dangling from a huge clock (the most iconic image and central to the film's theme) or a host of pigeons pecking him, the sequence is easily the most thrilling, hair-raising, goose-pimpling footage ever recorded in film history. Most of it seems real and death-defying enough  to make your skin crawl, your nerves jangle and your hands clammy (back in the day, it was rumored that some filmgoers fainted watching this sequence). Lloyd successfully recaptured the magic of this sequence in 1930's "Feet First" but it is this film that really packs on the thrills and chills. 

"Safety Last" is all about ambition for its hero to literally climb his way to the top and make his fiancee happy for him. Antiquated notions aside, the film is superior Lloyd entertainment with an emphasis on physical stunts that will astound everyone. He created a world of wonder and an iconic image of the hapless hero with trademark horn-rimmed glasses and we can be happy that it is forever captured on celluloid. 

Blood, Payroll and Bullets

NIGHT PASSAGE (1957)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Sometimes an old-fashioned western shot in Technirama (one of the first films to use this process) with James Stewart as capable of playing the accordion as he is firing a weapon is all one needs on a relaxing Saturday afternoon. You could do worse but there is something rather wonderful about James Neilson's "Night Passage" even though the movie is hardly one of the hallmarks of the Western genre. It is not just the richness of the Colorado vistas and sharpness of the widescreen format that make it often visually stunning. It is the performances, the gestures, the body language - James Stewart and Audie Murphy round out the cast and give the film an added measure of depth that is otherwise missing in the script.

As westerns go, there is only a wisp of a plot. Stewart is Grant McLaine, a skilled accordion player who is hired by his ex-railroad boss to hand deliver the railroad payroll to the workers. The trick is to deliver it without it getting in the hands of a few choice villainous thieves, one of them being the black-clad Utica Kid (Audie Murphy) who appears to be the kindest of the lot (plot twists allow him to be kinder). Nobody will suspect Grant has the payroll, nobody except for the Utica Kid. Of course, easier said than done as there are a couple of gunfights, a few brawls inside saloons and trains before lassoing the bad guys who try to harm the kid from "Shane" (Brandon deWilde), a thrilling shootout at an abandoned mine, you get the idea.

"Night Passage" is all about the exquisitely pretty pictures and this one (original director Anthony Mann dropped out and had a tiff with Stewart) is about as picaresque as you can imagine. But it is also about attitude and behavior - Stewart has a quick-as-a-trigger moment where he exchanges smiles with his ex-boss (Jay C. Flippen) after an awkward meeting. Also look at Stewart's scene with Charlotte (Dianne Foster) where they drink coffee together - there is an intimacy that is verbally unspoken. And we know Audie Murphy's Utica Kid intends to let Stewart get out of this ordeal alive. Look out for a sprightly turn by Olive Carey as Miss Vittles who suggests to Stewart that during the cold months, he will either need a woman or a good coat! For older film fans, let us not forget the amazing Jack Elam (when was he not amazing?) in a role he apparently hated playing. I wonder what he thought of his role in "The Creature From Black Lake" but I digress.

"Night Passage" is not a sumptuous John Ford type western, nor it is as complex as anything Anthony Mann might have made. Still, it is spirited fun and has a few minor surprises that elevate the material a little. 

The Duke abides in quickie, traditional western

THE LUCKY TEXAN (1934)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

At a brisk 53 minutes, "The Lucky Texan" is a rudimentary western that tells a tale of greed in the days of gold prospecting with humor and panache. It is hardly great filmmaking but it is exuberant in many ways, evoking a forgotten era where you could have fistfights, shootouts and plenty of humor to make up for loss of character depth. Besides, you got the larger-than-life the Duke, Mr. John Wayne himself, in some early 1 hour efforts before he made his bigger splash with "Stagecoach" five years later.

Wayne gives his character Jerry Mason the stalwart, braver-than-thou qualities that would later characterize Wayne as the mythic legend of the cinematic Old West. The fairly slim story has Jerry returning from college to work as a blacksmith with his father's old, gregarious friend Jake 'Grandy' Benson (George 'Gabby' Hayes, in a boisterous performance). They notice a horse's hoof may have come in contact with gold and seek the lake with the lucky strike. Once Jerry and Jake bring gold to be appraised at the assay office, the officers decide they want to strike it rich themselves, framing Jerry for murder and having Jake unknowingly sign his ranch away to them, post-Great Depression era.

"The Lucky Texan" has all the familiar trappings of any B-movie western and would more likely be forgotten had it not been for John Wayne's heroics (including sliding down a water chute to catch up with the bad guys) and George Hayes who even dresses in drag! This is one of the Duke's sixteen Lone Star B-movies before switching to Republic Pictures and eventually John Ford. Worth seeing for historical value and some quick fast-food entertainment, not to mention legendary Yakima Canutt in a small role and serving as stuntman.