Bad Guy (1937)

US / 69 minutes / bw / MGM Dir: Edward Cahn (i.e., Edward L. Cahn) Pr: Tom Reed Scr: Earl Felton, Harry Ruskin Story: J. Robert Bren, Kathleen Shepard, Hal Long Cine: Lester White Cast: Bruce Cabot, Virginia Grey, Edward Norris, Jean Chatburn, Cliff Edwards, Charley Grapewin, G. Pat Collins, Warren Hymer, John Hamilton, Clay Clement, Russell Hopton, Garry Owen, Roy Gordon

A fairly standard crime programmer with more than a touch of noirish nihilism and an interesting lecture in the middle—complete with graphic demonstrations!—on the properties of high-voltage electricity. Don’t tell me that 1930s movies had anything but the highest educational aspirations.

Linemen/linesmen (the screenplay uses both forms of the term) “Lucky” Walden (Cabot) and Steve Carroll (Norris) have been partners repairing power  lines for a dozen years, but they go back ‘way further than that. Once they were best buddies in the orphanage together, and they regard each other not just as friends but as brothers.

Bruce Cabot as Lucky

One day Lucky, addicted to gambling, lashes out with a wrench in an altercation with a crooked gambler, Charlie Edwards (Hopton). Edwards

A Bad Thing (2011)

US / 24 minutes / color Dir: Nick White (i.e., Nick Paul White) Pr & Scr: Michael Blackman, Nick White Cine: Matthew A. Del Ruth Cast: Richard Riehle, Jonathan Schwartz, Alan Charof, Molly White, Ferrell Marshall, Kristen Besinque

Lawyer and heart attack waiting to happen Frank Harrison (Riehle) has been exploited in the offices of Jaffe & Associates, Attorneys at Law, for twenty years, doing all the work yet forever not quite attaining the partnership that old man Martin Jaffe (Charof) promised him so long ago. Even though Martin these days rarely comes into the office, still the partnership doesn’t materialize.

Martin’s son Roman (Schwartz), educated by his pop into the cutthroat approach to life, has recently been employed as

The Bat (1959)

US / 80 minutes / bw / Liberty Pictures, Allied Artists Dir & Scr: Crane Wilbur Pr: C.J. Tevlin Story: The Bat (1920 play) by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood Cine: Joseph Biroc Cast: Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead, Gavin Gordon, John Sutton, Lenita Lane, Elaine Edwards, Darla Hood, John Bryant, Harvey Stephens, Mike Steele, Riza Royce, Robert B. Williams

Celebrated mystery novelist Cornelia van Gorder (Moorehead) has rented an old house in the middle of nowhere, The Oaks. It’s a sufficiently creepy place that all the servants up and leave her except her maid/companion Lizzie Allen (Lane) and her chauffeur, Warner (Sutton).

Agnes Moorehead as Cornelia

She’s rented the house from Mark Fleming (Bryant), realtor nephew of local bank president John Fleming (Stephens), who’s off in the forest on an extended hunting vacation with local coroner and John’s personal physician, Dr. Malcolm Wells (Price). When Fleming Sr. tells Wells he’s robbed the bank of a million bucks in bonds and arranged that naive clerk Victor Bailey (Steele) will be the patsy for the crime, the good doctor murders him, then chucks the body into a handy forest fire; in his role as coroner, he can ignore the bullethole and register Fleming’s death as caused by the conflagration.

Vincent Price as Wells

The million bucks is somewhere in The Oaks, probably in a secret room. Can Wells get to it before local top cop Andy Anderson (Gordon)?

Oh, and did I mention there’s a serial killer called The Bat on the loose? He

Date with Disaster (1957)

UK / 60 minutes / bw / Fortress, Eros Dir: Charles Saunders  Pr: Guido Coen Scr: Brock Williams Cine: Brendan Stafford Cast: Tom Drake, William Hartnell, Shirley Eaton, Maurice Kaufmann, Michael Golden, Richard Shaw, Deirdre Mayne, Charles Brodie, Peter Fontaine, Robert Robinson, John Drake, Robert Mooney, Van Boolen, Hubert Hill

A neat little piece of UK borderline noir that must have been a very welcome second feature back in the day. Indeed, it was B-features of this kind and caliber, not to mention all the EDGAR WALLACE MYSTERIES and Edgar Lustgarten’s cheesy true-crime shorts, that first made me a dedicated cinemagoer. Sad that there’s no room for such stuff in the modern multiplex.

Miles Harrington (Tom Drake) came to the UK for the love of a British girl. She dumped him cruelly but somehow he never quite went home, and now he holds a secret torch for her kid sister Sue Miller (Eaton)—as does she for him. Trouble is, Sue’s going steady with Miles’s business partner Don Redman (Kaufmann).

William Hartnell as Tracey

Shirley Eaton as Sue

Miles and Don run a used-car dealership, Highgrade Autosales, in London. While Miles himself is as straight as a die, the same can’t be said for

Beyond Suspicion (1993 TVM)

vt Appointment for a Killing
US / 92 minutes / color / Frank & Bob Films, Patricia K. Meyer, von Zerneck–Sertner, NBC Dir: William A. Graham Pr: Randy Sutter Scr: Karen Clark Story: Appointment for Murder: The Story of the Killing Dentist (1988) by Susan Crain Bakos Cine: Denis Lewiston Cast: Markie Post, Corbin Bernsen, Don Swayze, Jeanne Cooper, Laurie O’Brien, Suzanne Barnes, Danielle von Zerneck, Matthew Best, Kelsey Grammer, John Putch, Melissa Pace, Janet Graham, Geoff Hansen, Anna Maria Sistare, Harry Murphy, Marjorie Hilton, Donré Sampson, Michele Wilson

This movie is sometimes confused with “classic” horror outing The Dentist (1996) dir Brian Yuzna, probably because in both of them Corbin Bernsen plays a psychopathic dentist. Of course, if you really want to view a classic screen psycho dentist you should look no further than John Shaner’s Dr. Phoebius Farb in the Roger Corman movie The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

But back to Beyond Suspicion:

Successful family dentist Dr. Stan Benderman (Bernsen), widely admired in the community for his willingness to do pro bono work for the poor, is in fact a sex-crazed serial killer. His standard m.o. is to seduce an attractive young woman—typically one of his dental assistants—and then persuade her to marry some schmo and take out a big insurance policy on him. Then Stan murders the poor sap and the two schemers split the insurance money.

Markie Post as Joyce

Corbin Bernsen as Stan

The first such crime we witness is a more elaborate one. Stan’s seemingly long-term mistress Gloria (Barnes) has just married a sucker, Brad Shaw (Hansen), who has

On a Volé la Cuisse de Jupiter (1980)

vt Jupiter’s Thigh
France / 101 minutes / color / Ariane, Mondex, F.R.3 Dir: Philippe de Broca Pr: Alexandre Mnouchkine, Georges Dancigers, Robert Amon Scr: Michel Audiard Based on: characters created in the Commissaire Tanquerelle books by Jean-Paul Rouland and Claude Olivier Cine: Jean-Paul Schwartz Cast: Annie Girardot, Philippe Noiret, Francis Perrin, Catherine Alric, Marc Dudicourt, Paulette Dubost, Roger Carel, Anna Gaylor, Gabriel Cattand, Philippe Brizard, Nikos Tsachiridis, Nikos Dafnis, Vassilis Colovos (i.e., Vasilis Kolovos), Alexandre Mnouchkine

Tendre Poulet (1977; vt Dear Inspector; vt Dear Detective) was one of my favorite movies watched in 2019, so naturally I had very high hopes for this, its sequel. Well, the good news is that On a Volé la Cuisse de Jupiter is really very amusing; the bad news is that it’s not a patch on its predecessor, I think because it’s self-consciously a screwball comedy involving crime rather than a crime movie with a wonderful sense of humor.

Annie Girardot as Lise

The puzzling news is that there’s not the slightest reference to the thigh of Jupiter (“la cuisse de Jupiter”) in the movie. According to a commenter on the Word Reference forum,

The god [Dionysius] was said to be born out of Jove’s leg. Se croire sorti de la cuisse de Jupiter means to believe that you are someone much more important than the others, like the son of the greatest of gods. It’s a set expression in French, and very derogatory toward the one who believes this about himself.

That doesn’t seem quite to fit either: it’d mean the title translated as something like “Someone has stolen the source of the bee’s knees.” There’s a little twist right at the end of the movie that

Gun Cargo (1949 TVM)

US / ~55 minutes cut to 48 minutes / bw / Irwin–Dyer Productions, Favorite Films Dir, Pr & Scr: Jack Irwin Cine: Edward Kull Cast: Rex Lease, Smith Ballew, William Farnum, Gibson Gowland, Robert Frazer, Gilbert Holmes, Allene Ray, Harry Allen, John Ince, James Irwin

If ever a movie had a tortured genesis, Gun Cargo was it. Production started on what was initially called Contraband in the early 1930s, probably in 1934, although sources are divided as to exactly which year. Money ran out soonish, and the project was abandoned until 1939, when initial footage was added in the form of the Board of Inquiry hearing that forms the frame story, the main story being told in the form of flashbacks from here. Seemingly at the same time, in 1939, a barroom sequence was imported from the (very much more interesting) 1930 Lupe Velez movie Hell Harbor to pad out the running time a bit and in a desperate attempt to provide the main plot with some resolution and a link to the framing device of the hearing.

Another addition that seems to have been made in 1939 was an appallingly dubbed barroom rendition of “I Dream of Jeanie” by cowboy crooner Smith Ballew, who appears nowhere else in the movie yet gets second billing. Go figure. Presumably Ballew’s agent insisted on the prominent billing and then the pair of them watched their “win” backfire.

Rex Lease as Jim

The movie seems to have been finished (if finished it can be called) in 1941, at which time, according to the AFI, it was approved for theatrical release—at least in the state of New York; at that point

Fear and Desire (1953)

US / 61 minutes / bw / Kubrick Family, Joseph Burstyn Dir & Pr & Cine: Stanley Kubrick Scr: Howard Sackler Cast: Frank Silvera, Kenneth Harp, Paul Mazursky, Steve Coit, Virginia Leith, David Allen

The first feature movie of Stanley Kubrick, the one that so embarrassed him in later life that he tried to erase it from history. For a long time it was thought the only two copies left in existence were the one held by the Kubrick family and a dreadful video copy. But then in 2010 an original copy was discovered languishing in a film laboratory in Puerto Rico, and this has since been restored by the folks at George Eastman House.

Kubrick dismissed the movie as a “bumbling amateur film exercise” and in a way one can see his point. It was an indie production, produced on the cheap with amateur actors and funded by family members, and that’s in many ways what it plays like. Yet it has points of interest, too, and for those—not just its curio value as Kubrick’s maiden voyage—it’s well worth watching.

Plurality (2012)

US / 14 minutes / color / Traffik Dir: Dennis Liu Pr: Jonathan Hsu, Dennis Liu Scr: Ryan Condal Cine: Jon Chen Cast: Jeff Nissani, Samantha Strelitz, John Di Domenico, Wesli Spencer, Janice Marie, Scott Wallace Jr., Leah Goldman

A striking piece of science fiction neonoir, set in near-future New York City. For a couple of years now the Bentham Grid has been in place:

“The Grid takes all those things unique to you—your Social Security number, your passport, your debit and credit accounts—and links them to one thing: your DNA.”

It’s an absolute boon to the public, because no longer do you need to carry credit cards or car keys: a gentle touch will enable the Grid to take a tiny sample of your DNA, thereby identifying you with almost complete accuracy.

Samantha Strelitz as Alana Winston

Jeff Nissani as Jacob Foucault

And the Grid is a boon to law enforcement, too. There’s less crime in NYC today, Mayor Reid (Marie) boasts in an interview with journalist Alana Winston (Strelitz), than there is in

Grand Central Murder (1942)

US / 74 minutes / bw / MGM Dir: S. Sylvan Simon Pr: B.F. Zeidman Scr: Peter Ruric Story: Grand Central Murder (1939) by Sue MacVeigh Cine: George Folsey Cast: Van Heflin, Patricia Dane, Cecilia Parker, Virginia Grey, Samuel S. Hinds, Sam Levene, Connie Gilchrist, Mark Daniels, Horace McNally (i.e., Stephen McNally), Tom Conway, Betty Wells, George Lynn, Roman Bohnen, Millard Mitchell, Tom Dugan

Mida King (Dane), showgirl star of a string of Broadway hits, is a relentless gold digger: she lures men, milks them dry, then dumps them. One of the luckless men, Turk (McNally), refused to be dumped, and so Mida framed him for murder and watched him get sent up the river.

Patricia Dane as Mida King

But now, en route to New York for a reopening of his trial, Turk escapes the train on which he was being transported and, from the gloomy depths of Grand Central Station, phones Mida’s dressing room at the Harmony Theater on Broadway and informs her sweetly that he’s on his way to kill her.

Virginia Grey as Sue Custer and Van Heflin as Rocky Custer

Not unnaturally sent into a panic, Mida runs out on the second act of her current show and heads for Grand Central and the private railcar owned by her current fiancé, rich smoothie David V. Henderson (Daniels). Not so very long later, David and the longtime fiancée he dumped in Mida’s favor, Constance Furness (Parker), discover Mida’s corpse naked in the bathroom of the railcar.

But the railcar was locked from within.

And even the medical examiner can’t initially establish how Mida was killed.

 

Inspector Gunther (Levene) is soon on the job, and