Bowery at Midnight (1942)

Bowery at Midnight
Starring: Bela Lugosi, John Archer, Wanda McKay
Director: Wallace Fox
Genre: Thriller
Year: 1942
My rating: 

This is a decent movie, provided that you try not to think about it for very long. BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT (1942) gives Bela Lugosi an opportunity of playing three roles: a mild-mannered college professor, a generous philanthropist, and a ruthless cutthroat crime-boss (he's not playing different characters; he's playing one character who lives a double life... I mean... triple life). Lugosi's a good enough actor to successfully pull this off, but the script doesn't do him any favors.

Judy and her smug, pompous boyfriend Richard don't realize it, but they both know Bela Lugosi's character. Judy knows him as Karl Wagner, a gentle soul -- a man who cheerfully donates his time running a soup kitchen in an extremely impoverished area. Richard is a bland college boy, enrolled in a psychology class taught by Lugosi's Professor Fredrick Brenner. Neither of them realizes that Bela Lugosi appears in both their lives. Nor do they suspect him of being a criminal mastermind, who somehow manages to keep his hideout (disguised in the back of the soup kitchen) fully staffed with villains even though he seems to kill off a heavy during each robbery. (How do his underlings not realize that eventually he's going to kill them? Don't they notice that every thug around them is being bumped off?)

This film is only 62 minutes long, and it makes no attempts at being anything except a fun diversion. It's a standard, straightforward thriller with a slight supernatural element. I didn't find it particularly scary or horrific, but it's absorbing enough. It's strange that I could clearly notice how clueless the characters would have to be to do some of the things they do; yet I was still interested in seeing how everything turned out. Oddly, it's Bela Lugosi's deceitful and murderous character who turns out to be the most likable. Richard and Judy are far far too boring to cheer for.

In addition to the characters' extreme density, the script contains several portions that just don't make much sense. Or at least don't give the audience enough to figure out why things are happening. I don't need everything spelled out for me, but a little explanation would have gone a long way. Using the soup kitchen as a front for criminal activities makes sense, but why does he hide the charity from his wife?

Why bother splitting the nice, kindly professor identity away from the nice, kindly soup kitchen owner identity? Which is the "real" personality? Why does Richard give differing accounts of his future term paper to the professor and to his girlfriend? Obviously he's lying to one or the other, but why bother? (It's vaguely implied that he's telling the truth to Judy and lying to the professor about what he's writing. I can't recommend that as a successful way of getting a decent grade at the end of the semester.)

I'm reviewing the Digiview edition of this DVD, and after viewing several of the discs from that company, I can only assume that they don't hire a copy editor for the text on the back cover. Despite the written summary, Judy (Wanda McKay) is not Professor Brenner's student.

The picture on this Digiview disc is a little murky in places, but its perfectly viewable. The sound quality can be muffled at times, but, again, it's definitely acceptable.

The script relies far too heavily on unbelievable coincidences. Judy and Richard just happen to know the same man. Every major criminal in the city randomly wanders into Wagner's soup kitchen. Still, I had fun while watching and that counts for a lot. The fact that it's so short helps. Extended for another hour, these flaws would be more than enough to sink the film. As it stands now, it doesn't fully add up but it's definitely an entertaining hour.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (1975)

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
Starring: Anthony Newley, Stephanie Powers, Isaac Hayes
Genre: Comedy (allegedly)
Year: 1975
My rating: 
Amazon.com page

Absolutely Godawful. To get you into the right frame of mind, IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME (1975) is a movie where, when being squirted with a mellow stream of water, nobody has the sense to simply take one step to the left or right to get out of the way. They just stand there flapping their lips, looking shocked while the good guys laugh up a storm.

Always be wary when a movie or book contains a "signal from Fred". When it exists right there in the title, you know you're in for trouble. The movie title should not be the film's primary excuse.

And yet, not only do I have that objection to the title (surely no part of this seemed like a good idea), I'm not even sure what it refers to at the story level. What plot point is supposed to have seemed like a good idea? The kidnapping idea? I'm baffled at what else it could mean, but even that doesn't fit.

I'm getting ahead of myself. The story concerns Anthony Newley as an unappealing slacker and his generic ex-wife, played by Stephanie Powers. The Digiview version of this DVD release erroneously states that Newley tries "to have Powers get involved with a local politician". This is false. Clearly whoever wrote it wasn't paying much attention to the film (I can't blame them). Newley's motivation is, in fact, to get her as far away as possible from the politician (and also away from her current husband).

Indeed, the early comedic set pieces involve Newley's sabotage of the budding romance. This includes some "hilarious" hijinks involving Newley bringing a bunch of far-out party-animals to a stuffy formal event (after first slipping laxatives into the food, naturally), and later setting a skunk loose in a cabin. Yes, we aren't talking about the most original gags here. The sad part is they aren't even executed well. It's tired comedy pulled off rather poorly. It has the added indignity of not making any logical sense either. How the hell do you pull someone's suit pants completely off without his noticing? And what pharmaceutical company sells their laxative products in a container that freaking huge? If you need to buy your laxatives by the gallon, there's something seriously wrong with your diet.

The incidental music has been fiercely criticized for sounding absolutely over the top and distracting. It's bad enough to have unfunny jokes thrown at you, but do you really want to hear loud, obnoxious musical cues blasting out of your speakers to remind you that you're supposed to be laughing? I'm glad I'm too much of a luddite to own a high-performance surround-sound system; I'd have been deafened. Between the goofy trombone effects to the electronic farting noises, I could only dream of dignified silence

To distract me from the mind-numbing tedium, I started playing a little game. A plot point involves an upper class twit running for mayor, so I tried to figure out what city it was. We're never told directly; I looked for clues. First of all, Newley has a distinct London cockney accent. On the other hand, Powers speaks with a generic California/Hollywood accent. Her husband attempts a Noo Yawk accent. Several of the characters near the start of the film employ Northeastern US accents (think Connecticut or Massachusetts).

So, where is this movie set? With this mixture of accents, I was stumped. But then a major clue emerged. The politician's license plate is visible in one shot. And the plate reads... Ontario.

Er, well, I'm sure that clears things up.

So, is this guy planning to run for mayor of Toronto? Or were the visible Ontario tags merely a mistake that should never have appeared on film?

Am I putting more thought into the specifics of the movie's fictional setting than the filmmakers did? Probably.

The script has a lot of flaws and unexplained moments. Why, for example, does Newley hate that dog? Why is Power's husband so intent on knocking down his mother-in-law's house? (We aren't even given a greedy reason why he might wish to do so. There's no oil on the land. No big strip mall that needs building on her lot. He's apparently just doing it because he's evil.)

Multiple companies have released this film on DVD, and all of them capitalize on the fact that beloved comedian John Candy has a part in this film. Despite the impression you may get from the packaging, do not buy this movie on the understanding that Candy has a large role. He does not. This film is 91 minutes; Candy's character doesn't even show up until minute 55. He has very few lines.

There are few rays of hope. Isaac Hayes -- in the "best friend" role -- seems to have enjoyed himself. Unfortunately, while this does make the film a little more entertaining, watching someone else enjoying himself isn't quite as much fun as actually enjoying yourself. I could appreciate that Hayes was having fun. I just wish I'd been able to do the same.

Oh, and Stephanie Powers' mother is fun. It took me a little while to figure out who she is. But once I did, I had to laugh (one of the few laughs the picture provides). It's Yvonne de Carlo -- TV's Lily Munster. She's not just amusing for kitsch value; she's actually quite funny.

Yeah, this movie would be vastly improved by cutting out everything except Isaac Hayes' sculpturing scenes and the sequences of Lily Munster taking potshots at a lawyer with a shotgun. This really is a film that only its mother could love and reinforces the rule that there's nothing worse than a comedy that isn't funny. Oh, and the Digiview version clips off a few seconds of the opening animation, but I'm not going to complain about having less of this movie to see.

Incident on a Dark Street
Starring: Robert Pine, David Canary, James Olson... and WILLIAM SHATNER!
Genre: Legal Thriller
Year: 1973
My rating: 

I bought this DVD for one reason and one reason only. The picture on the cover features William Shatner with big hair and a fantastic 1970s porn mustache. I was expecting nothing more than silly, campy fun. Some crime-fighting, perhaps. Maybe some overdone and unbelievable fight sequences.

I didn't really get that. In fact, I didn't get anything like that at all. This was far more serious and competent than I was expecting. So, as it turns out, I did enjoy this DVD -- just not in the way I had anticipated.

The story is typical legal/mafia/thriller stuff. The mob is making a nuisance of itself again (killing off informers, blowing up potential informers, etc), so it's down to one fresh-out-of-law-school prosecutor to untangle the ubiquitous puzzle and pin charges onto the local, big, stereotypically Italian-American mafia boss. The local, big, stereotypically Italian-American mafia boss is not content to simply kill off important characters. He has also bribed two corrupt city government officials (William Shatner and some other, weedier guy) to provide fat contracts to companies he controls. Shatner plays a character by the name of "Deaver Wallace", a designation I have tried and failed to turn into a dirty pun.

The plot is not replete with originality; however, it does spring one or two good surprises. The dialog borders on silliness on a few occasions. And the attempts to give the characters some depth are occasionally successful, but more often than not they just fail to deliver.

On the other hand, I was impressed by the acting of the cast as a whole. The two leads (Robert Pine and David Canary) are certainly believable in their roles. And I have to give special props to Richard S. Castellano, and not just for his convincing performance. He plays a small-time crook without the brains to play with the big boys. But his brother has been murdered, so he's torn between wanting to turn the killers over to the police and his "honor among thieves" desire to not be a snitch (I think his mouth hangs open in abject confusion during every moment the camera is on him). But where he won me over was the sequence where the mob tries to get rid of him by flattening him with what appears to be a very fast moving steamroller. Credit to Castellano -- who was not a small man -- for being game enough to apparently do his own stunts. It certainly (to my untrained eye) looked like they really make this fat man leap from the path of a heavy construction equipment multiple times.

Additionally, mention must be made of William Shatner's performance, since I'm guessing his presence in this movie is what will motivate the majority of sales (including, as I mentioned, mine). Shatner always knows when to hold himself back, and when to start getting his saliva on the scenery. Had this been a cheesier script, I'm sure he would have let himself go. But given the semi-gritty flavor that the producers seemed to be going for, he has a suitably restrained performance. If you're looking for a repeat of him screaming, "KHAAAAAN!" or the '70s legal thriller equivalent of him standing waist deep in tribbles (Lord knows what that would be), you'll be disappointed. But his acting here is perfectly in keeping with the film's style (and I absolutely adored his response to a simple "I love you").

Oh, and I should mention Shatner's mistress since I found her first scene (which is also her pen-ultimate scene) utterly and completely bizarre. The girlfriend and her expensive tastes are one of the reasons Shatner is so desperately in need of constant money. In the scene -- which is now indelibly carved into my fragile mind -- this blonde bounds into the room wearing a distressingly paedophilic baby-doll nightie, starts playing with a stuffed giant panda, and enunciates every syllable like a slow preschooler watching Sesame Street's Two Headed Monster teach her how to say the word 'cat'. (Kuh! At! Kuh! At! Kuh-at! Cat!) I have no idea what the filmmakers were attempting with this scene, and if anyone out there does know, please don't hesitate to keep it to yourself.

I couldn't find any confirmation of this in my exhaustive research (about three seconds worth of tooling around Google and the Internet Movie Database), but my theory is that this movie was actually a TV series pilot that went nowhere. It certainly has all the touchstones of a first episode. There's the scene where the main character joins the law firm. The scene where he's introduced to all his co-workers, including a token woman and a token black man (they're on the picture on the back of the DVD box, in case you missed them on account of blinking during their scene). There's the sequence where he learns that his boss isn't totally heartless at all. The title music has a definite 1970s TV show theme feel to it. The boss (James Olsen) even gets a catch phrase to repeat ("Don't call me 'sir'.").

I'm reviewing the Digiview Productions release of this DVD. The sound quality is a little soft. The picture is slightly fuzzy. The colors are very washed out. So washed out, in fact, that the screen actually reverts to a black and white picture for a few seconds at least once.

Despite not getting out of this film the camp enjoyment I thought was my due, I appreciated what was there. It's not the best legal thriller out there, but it's entertaining enough.

My Favorite Brunette (1947)

My Favorite Brunette
Starring: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney Jr.
Genre: Comedy
Year: 1947
My rating: 

MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE (1947) is a funny send-up of the film noir genre that was so popular at the time. Bob Hope's character works next door to the classic, hard-drinking, tough-talking detective that Raymond Chandler placed into all of his thrillers. Of course, while the neighbor displays all the strong qualities needed by a man of action, Bob Hope himself is playing his usual bumbler -- tempted only by the life of excitement and convinced he has what it takes to be no-nonsense private eye because he can drink bourbon and owns his own gun.

Ironically, the film's success comes by placing Bob Hope in settings and situations which were already clichés by the time the film was made: mistaken identity, misplaced photograph negatives, damsels in distress, a lost map and an innocent man fighting to clear his name. In fact, you could imagine this film with only slight changes being made as a slightly unimaginative straight drama. The comedy comes from playing it very close to the sources and then launching into the mocking at just the right moment. The dialog is quite good, too, with Bob Hope getting lots of tough talk to say, but never quite getting it out right.

You'll notice Peter Lorre in the cast list, and he plays a knife-throwing, sleazy villain -- the type of role he usually portrayed in conventional noir films. He plays it completely straight, which is why he never fails at provoking laughter. He's one of the anchors for this film, providing the weight that allows the jokes to work.

That said, this still isn't nearly the funniest parody I've ever seen. Some sections of the movie drag. More than a few jokes drop with a clang and many of them are far too predictable. Lon Cheney Jr.'s character is a bit too stereotypical and stupid to be truly amusing.

I own the Digiview release of this DVD, and the picture and sound are more than adequate. I'm sure there are better versions of this movie available for purchase, but given how cheap you can find this edition, I'd be hard pressed to pass it up.

You can find this DVD available for virtually no money at all, and I think the single dollar I splurged on it was a buck well spent. I'm not the biggest fan of Bob Hope (in fact, I think this is the only film I've seen him in that I actually liked), but he's entertaining for these short eighty-eight minutes. If you like film noir and don't mind a few digs at the genre, take a chance on this. It's not as if you'll be risking a huge amount of money.

Hook, Line and Sinker (1930)

Movie title: Hook, Line and Sinker
Starring: Wheeler & Woolsey and Dorothy Lee
My rating: 
Year: 1930

Although the DVD cover proclaims Wheeler and Woolsey as "one of America's most beloved comedy duos", they are not one of the best remembered. As a reminder (or an introduction), Bert Wheeler is the younger, wavy-haired member of the team and Robert Woolsey is the one who looks like the offspring of George Burns and Groucho Marx, with the cigar, glasses and the part in the center of his hair that looks like it was done using an X-Acto knife. They made quite a large number of films together in the 1930s, but the team hasn't really stood the test of time the way that Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, other comedy teams of that time have. The few films of theirs that I have seen are mostly inoffensive -- nothing spectacular, but an entertaining diversion for a couple of hours.

HOOK, LINE AND SINKER fulfills that description in everything but the time-factor (this movie is only sixty-two minutes long). The plot can be summarized quite quickly. Two insurance salesmen quit their gig and get into the hotel business after meeting a young heiress. Naturally, a bunch of scam artists, thieves and crooks show up for the hotel's grand re-opening, intent on stealing all the goods they can get their hands on. The DVD box blurb refers to the villains as "oddball characters", but I found them mostly bland and uninteresting. The one thing I kept thinking about was that the "Duchess" character really ought to have been played by Thelma Todd.

However, the story is mostly irrelevant. The movie is basically an excuse to have Wheeler and Woolsey stand next to each other (occasionally with a third person) and fire off one-liners at each other. This is a typical exchange:

Policeman: "You broke a traffic law!"
Woolsey: "Can't you make another one?"

The comedy is very vaudevillian in nature and is a corny mixture of puns, word play and simple misunderstandings. The production is very stagey, with the plot used mainly to move the characters from one set to another to mix up the background on which the jokes are told. If you're in the mood for this, it can be quite enjoyable. If you have a low tolerance for cheap wisecracks and dumb humor, then you may want to stay away. Personally, I enjoyed the film. But that said, I only picked it up because I discovered it selling for an entire dollar. I can't imagine myself watching it many more times.

The DVD edition I'm reviewing is the Digiview Productions release. The picture quality is quite bad, but it's hard to say whether the fault lies in laziness/cheapness at the DVD company or the age of the material. Certainly, there exist other movies from this era in much better condition, but one can't tell whether this print simply had a harder time than others over the last seventy-five years. The picture is blurry and out of focus in spots. The framing seems a bit off too, so there are a few scenes where the actors' heads are cut off. The sound quality is also not stellar, being tinny, muffled and scratchy.

That said, this is not a CITIZEN KANE where the viewer's inner film student will be scanning the background looking for hitherto unseen details. This is just a cheaply made, quick comedy where the poorness of the DVD doesn't really detract much from the overall experience. On the other hand, there were a few gags rendered nonsensical by the medium. For example, at one point a woman con artist is walking up a flight of steps when out of nowhere there is a smallish explosion behind her. I presume we were supposed to see a grenade or the like falling out of her handbag, but with the picture quality being so poor, it looks like she just stepped on a landmine.

Another difficult-to-see gag occurs when Wheeler and the heiress love-interest (played by Dorothy Lee, a frequent collaborator with W/W) haggle over how many children they should have in married life. They keep punching up numbers on an old cash register, but the poor DVD picture quality leaves the audience bewildered as to what figures they are discussing.

The more I watch the films of Wheeler and Woolsey, the more I like them. I can't see them ever seriously rivaling my affection for other comedy stars of that era, but they have a kind of innocent charm to them. HOOK, LINE AND SINKER is a pleasant way of spending an hour.

Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (1952)

Movie title: Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla
Starring: Bela Lugosi (Bet you didn't see that one coming.)
My rating:

I'll admit to a fondness for bad movies. Call it my inner Tom Servo, but I enjoy watching really hopeless films and pointing out all the places where the filmmakers blundered. And if there's one thing I've learned in watching bad movies it's that there is nothing worse than a film that's simply boring. And if there is one thing that's worse than that, it's a comedy film that isn't funny.

BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA manages to capture both of those dubious honors without breaking a sweat. This is a wretched movie with absolutely nothing to recommend about it. Its film prints exists purely to use up atoms that could be of better use as food for starving children, as gold to bring developing nations up out of poverty, or -- to set our sites somewhat lower -- as prints of better movies where the human actors aren't actually out-acted by a trained monkey. (To be fair, the trained monkey in this film is rather adorable.)

First of all, let's begin with a look at the main cast. The "comedy" duo which stars this film are Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, who are a blatant rip-off of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. And when I say "blatant rip-off" I mean that (according to legend) Sammy Petrillo was ordered to refrain from future performances as this character under threat of legal action from Jerry Lewis.

And you can understand where Lewis was coming from. I mean, Jerry Lewis' standard character was more annoying than an eight-year-old on crack, but this guy is Jerry Lewis turned up to 11. He's so mind-alteringly aggravating that I can only imagine that he had to hold off a lynching from his fellow cast-members with a well loaded machine-gun.

He's whiny. He's annoying. He hops and skips and warbles his way through the film. He's awful, really. He makes me want to revise my opinions on capital punishment.

He, incredibly, is actually the most entertaining thing about the movie. And he's horrific.

See, the problem is this. If you're making a comedy movie (and if you're giving your film the title of "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla", you damn well better be making a comedy), then you really need to put some jokes in it. I'm not asking for much. Good jokes, bad jokes, corny jokes, silly jokes. Anything will do. But, really, virtually all of the jokes fall under the jurisdiction of the Sammy Petrillo character. Everyone else is in a sort of holding pattern waiting for the jokes to fall from the typewriter of the writer.

But the jokes never came.

And we all grew weary and sad.

But now we must turn our attention onto the eponymous Bela Lugosi. Oh, the poor man. I have no idea what he was doing in this film, and judging from his performance, neither does he. He deserved better than this.

I haven't mentioned the plot yet, because the film barely has one. Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo fall out of a plane (yeah) and land on an island somewhere in a Pacific Ocean populated by a bunch of white looking "natives". The production of the jungle doesn't look half bad, but the extras are clad in very cheap fake animal skins and in at least one scene I believe these primitive people are actually wearing Hawaiian shirts in an attempt to look native.

Anyway, the plot, as I was saying, involves these two dopes on a primitive island. Also on the island are the obligatory love interest (a native girl), the obligatory love interest's father (the chief of the village), and a mad scientist who is supposed the "only white man on the island" (a statement true only if you discount everyone else living on the island). Oh, and the comic relief comes in the form of the love interest's enormous sister who for some reason falls in lust with Sammy Petrillo. (Two problems with this. First of all, if you're making a comedy film and your script requires an obvious comic relief, then the story isn't as funny as it needs to be. Second, no, the large sister isn't the most attractive woman on the island, but, hey, Sammy Petrillo is the most annoying man on the planet. Where does he get off turning away anyone's advances?)

You see, the story revolves around Duke Mitchell being in love with the Chief's daughter. The mad scientist (you didn't need me to tell you this is the Bela Lugosi role), apart from being mad, is also in love with the same girl. And since he runs experiments on evolution (you're hearing Darwin on spin-dry) you just know we're in for some "hilarious" hijinks involving monkeys. Or people in unconvincing gorilla suits.

The actual trained monkey is arguably the best thing about this movie. And my understanding is that he actually is the same chimp who appeared in much better movies of the era, so if you're a big fan of the monkey you can see him in something else better.

Don't be fooled into thinking this might be a wonderfully fun, camp bad movie. This is a horribly annoying awful film and no one should waste their time watching this in hope of finding even some unintentional laughs. Avoid at all costs.

This is something I started doing some number of years ago: reviewing whatever random movies that Wal*Mart was selling on DVD for a dollar.  I started reviewing them quite some time ago but trailed off.  I have quite a backlog to get through and I've thought about starting it up again.  Here's something I wrote about this when I started back in 2005 on a much different blogging site:

You know those bins at Wal*Mart that have the cheaply packaged DVDs selling for a buck? You've probably passed them by dozens of times, perhaps once just picking up a random title and then putting it back down in horror, wondering who on Earth would bother wasting their time with the dregs of the film industry.

Well, I am that fool! If you've ever seen some wierdo standing in that bin, wading up to his hips in utterly bizarre movies, then chances are you've seen me in my element. Yes, I'm the only person on the planet who not only can be caught browsing through those select titles, but actually makes it a point to buy half a dozen or so each time he's in Wal*Mart.

So I'll be posting my reviews of these things here from now on. (I've got quite a backlog, because I've already been posting them on Amazon.com. But don't worry; I'll stagger them so I don't flood your friends list.) Surprisingly, not all of the films have been awful. In fact I've seen some decent movies and even some solidly good movies who's only sin was falling out of copyright (usually due to the film company going bust or the laws governing foreign films being odd).

Anyway, I watch cheap DVDs so you don't have to.

One correction I should make is that not all of the movies were bad.  On the contrary, some of them were quite decent, but had the misfortune of falling out of copyright due to either age or bankruptcy of the copyright holder.

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