Fillm review: Baby Face (1933)

This is the third of the "pre-code" Barbara Stanwyck films on the Criterion Channel that we've watched, and while it's probably last in "pure entertainment" value, it's probably the most culturally interesting.  In all of them Stanwyck plays a similar brassy, mouthy modern young woman, ready to take care of herself, but this film's Lily is certainly the most ruthless of her three roles, and from the worst background.  We are introduced to her in her father's speakeasy, where he tries to prostitute her out to a local politician so that he will continue to turn a blind eye to the illegal hooch-sales.  And we discover that this is far from the first time he's done this, in fact he's been doing it since she hit 14.  But this time she smashes a bottle over the politician's head (after first scalding his hand with hot coffee),

perhaps influenced by the words of advice of the Nietzsche-loving (no, really) old German cobbler, who advises her that she should get out and use her feminine power to get ahead.

Things are brought to a head that very night when the father's still blows up, taking him with it.  She and the other speakeasy employee, "Chico" (who continually sings St. Louis Blues, to the occasional annoyance of those around her) hop a freight to New York (from Erie) but are discovered and threatened with jail.  However Lily employs her seduction techniques for the first time for her own benefit (following Nietzsche's advice), while the screen discreetly fades to black.  Next we see Lily and Chico walking between skyscrapers complaining about hunger, until Lily decides that one of them, a big bank building is the right one, and goes in to apply for a job.  Many others have left disappointed, but weren't as ruthless as Lily, and her second "conquest" is the chubby male secretary who's been turning the others away.  From then on she works her way up the food chain (starting with a very young John Wayne)

often getting men fired on purpose while feigning innocence herself.  Her second-to-last stepping stone in the fiance of the boss's daughter, whom she ensures sees them smooching.  This gets the boss involved and in no time he's got her set up in a love nest, dripping in furs, with Chico as her maid (now annoying the Boss with her singing).  However, the smitten not-son-in-law tracks her down and tragedy strikes as he shoots the boss and then himself.  The remaining bank board meets both to appoint the playboy grandson of the founder as the new boss and to decide what to do with Lily, who is threatening to sell her story to the papers for 10 grand.  She thinks she's conned them into paying 15 grand for it when the unexpectedly savvy playboy pretends to buy her. sob story (about just wanting to live her life and support herself) and proposes to ship her to their Paris branch under a new name.  She shocks him by actually succeeding and running the travel bureau of the branch amazingly well.  But of course he falls for her, and even marries her, but then the bank crashes!  And he's indicted!  And he asks for all the gifts he's given her (including her suitcase of half-a-million in bonds) to bail him out.  But she can't shed her Nietzschean ethos and instead splits to sail back to Paris (they'd been called back to NY by the panicked board).  But then change of heart!  But he's shot himself, broken-hearted!  Is that the end?  Watch it and see.  So what's the message?  Life's tough for dame from the wrong side of the tracks?  Nietzsche will get you what you think you want but then you won't be happy?  Either way, Stanwyck is good as always, and despite not being conventionally attractive, can play a convincing heartbreaker:

I wouldn't be surprised if this was the flick that convinced Billy Wilder to cast her in Double Indemnity.

Film review: Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Want to see a heartwarming feel-good story that also features a better-than-he's-been-in-decades Eddie Murphy saying "motherfucker" practically every other word?  This film's for you!  It's a biopic about Rudy Ray Moore, a failed R'n'B singer who tried his hand at stand up comedy in the early '70s and perfected a persona of an eloquent pimp (Dolemite) who told Rabelaisian tall tales in rhyming couplets.  At every stage he faced skepticism and had to go it alone until his success became so apparent that financial backers stepped forward.  For example, he taped a "party record" (like Redd Foxx's very popular (and also obscene) lps) but no record company would release it until he (on money borrowed from his aunt - my favorite scene in the movie) financed his own pressing and started selling it out of the trunk of his car.  Then he goes on tour and recruits a plump female protege whom he sees knocking down her unfaithful husband in the back of a club he's performing in, adding to the amiable entourage he already has.  (Familiar faces in this film include Snoop Dogg, Keegan-Michael Key, Craig Robinson, Chris Rock and, playing definitely against type as a camp drunk actor/director, Wesley Snipes.)  He is called back when the record company that eventually signed him (they're run by what I took to be an Arab family, so neither in the white nor the black world) want him to record more records, as the first one is wildly successful.  Then, somewhere along the way, after a bad experience with the Matthau/Lemon version of The Front Page, he decides that there is a market for a movie starring Dolemite.  Of course, he has to do it himself, and recruits Key as an earnest local playwright with a social conscience (a fellow Arkansas refugee) to help structure it, and Snipes as a semi-celebrity (he says he's been "directed by Roman Polanski" because he was an elevator operator in Rosemary's Baby) to lend it gravitas.  Then they get some white kids who are students at UCLA film school to do the filming, and Moore moves into an old abandoned hotel (having first acquired the manager job by turfing out all the junkies as a deal with the owner) which becomes the sets.  Of course nobody wants to buy the finished film, but on a suggestion from an Indianapolis DJ (Rock) he rents a cinema for $500 if he can keep the ticket sales.  It's a huge success, so, again, a movie company (headed by Bob Odenkirk) buys it and the film ends with its LA premiere, with queues snaking round the block.  As I said, a feel-good film.  In fact, if it wasn't for the relentless vulgarity and Murphy's wonderful comic but sincere performance, it might be treacly.

Film review: Train to Busan (2016)

I've been reading about this Korean zombie movie essentially since it came out.  Old as I am, I don't like non-comedic zombie flicks as much as I used to (and have never watched The Walking Dead) just because I don't need a fictional Armageddon when we're staring down the real thing.  Also, there are several very upsetting tropes in zombie films, notably "loved one becomes zombie and either kills you or must be killed" (something Zombieland avoided, and hence I have fonder feelings for it than the superior Shaun of the Dead, that didn't) and "in response to the zombie outbreak, fascistic leaders emerge amongst the survivors" (this is notable in 28 Days Later, and, of course, Day of the Triffids, which 28 Days ripped off in other ways (the opening) too) - i.e. "the real monster is us".  Turns out Train to Busan has both, and is pretty damn upsetting, but has enough fresh ideas and relentless pacing that you forgive it.  Don't get too attached to anybody in this film (except the obvious little girl, but even that's a risk if you've seen the even-more-praised Korean horror film The Host), especially if they give a speech about how sacrifice is needed.  So, the obvious first question for students of the zombie genre (well, all of them have already seen this, but let's pretend) is are these Romero zombies or Russo zombies?  The former, of course, are the canonical shambling, usually stupid (although see "Bub" in Day of the Dead and "Big Daddy" in Land of the Dead) and all-flesh (with a particular fondness for entrails, usually ripped out of their still-living host) consuming, as also featured in Shaun.  The latter, as made clear in a classic Onion piece, are much scarier: they talk (usually just "Braiiinnsss", but occasionally "MORE braiinnsss"), they can run fast, they only eat brains, and, unlike Romero zombies that can be killed by a shot to the head, these are practically unkillable, as you can cut them into bits and all the bits will be alive.  (The apotheosis of this is the zombie intestines in Peter Jackson's Braindead/Dead Alive).  Well, it turns out they're more like Danny Boyle "zombies" a.k.a. "The infected" from 28 Days Later.  These are not obviously zombies (although the remake of Dawn of the Dead was clearly influenced by them) but more like super-rabid humans, but they have a savage hunger for flesh and run like bejesus.  Same in Train to Busan, along with the explicit idea that they are the result of biotechnology, but with the added idea that they are the dead returned to life.  What makes this easier to stomach (pun intended) than some of the Romero films is that the viscera is fairly minimal.  No yanking out of intestines by the fistful or exposed bones or brain-chomping.  There is a fair amount of blood, but not even Penkinpah levels of that, really.  And these zombies are really stupid.  If it goes dark, or they can't see you (in one instance because somebody puts a coat over their head), they forget about you (something that is mined for several set pieces, especially when one group of survivors has to fight through several train cars to rescue another that's trapped in a toilet).  The horror is in their sheer numbers and the speed at which they rush towards any perceived prey.

The basic plot is this: workaholic young fund-manager, who has custody of his young daughter, but is separated from his wife (who lives in the titular South Korean city of Busan), screws up by buying her a Wii for her birthday when he's already got her that present previously.  He asks how he can make up for it, and she says for her to visit her mother on her actual birthday the next day (something he's previously asked her to postpone).  As they board the train something strange is happening in the station, and an infected girl gets on the train and "changes" in the toilet.  Another stowaway is a strange homeless-looking man who just mutters about how everyone is dead, so he's obviously witnessed the carnage they're leaving behind as they pull out of the station.  Well, very quickly the girl bites a stewardess and in no time a whole train car or two is full of ravenous zombies.  Meanwhile our fund manager has pissed off a beefy working-class type who has a pregnant wife to protect by almost locking the couple in with the zombies.  However, as you might expect, beefy and fund manager become friends over the course of the movie (or at least, until the first of them... I've said too much).  What makes this movie great is that it keeps coming up with ideas for new set pieces.  That and the scarily convincing picture it paints of what would very quickly happen to South Korea in just such a situation.  There are several moments, however, when you do think that it would have been so simple to avoid catastrophe (don't put your hand near a zombie's mouth when you're wrestling with one) and there is one particularly loathsome businessman passenger who is responsible for the death of several very sympathetic characters, and he doesn't even get a particularly good comeuppance.  But if the mark of a good film is that it can be around two hours long and you hardly draw breath for most of that, then this has it.  And don't worry, it doesn't do the "pregnant woman's fe(o)tus dies and zombiefies inside her" thing that other, more nihilistic zombie films have before it.  Nor does it mimic the heartbreaking ending of Night of the Living Dead, even though it looks like it's about to.

Autumnal scenes

 

Film review: The Body Snatcher (1945)

There are certain actors who became pigeon-holed as "horror" actors, but who always elevate whatever they're in, and in a just world would be more appreciated for their screen presence.  Vincent Price is one, of course, Peter Cushing another, but towering above all must be Boris Karloff.  His performance in the first two Frankensteins is positively heart-breaking, and an off-note could so easily have dissolved them into camp (as followed pretty much immediately he gave up playing The Monster).  And yet he could also play truly sleazy evil, as he does in the (frankly bonkers) The Black Cat, and this one.  

This is another Val Lewton production, but is directed by Robert Wise, who would later go on to direct West Side Story and The Sound of Music!  It's based on a Robert Louis Stevenson story, set in the just-post-Burke and Hare Edinburgh.  In fact, Karloff's character is supposed to have gone on trial at the same time as those two, and covered up for the other main character of this film, Dr. "Toddy" MacFarlane, played suavely and compellingly by Henry Daniell, an actor I'd not heard of previously, but whose work I will now seek out (although I must have seen him play Moriarty to Basil Rathbone's Holmes when BBC2 used to run those old films on Thursday nights).  MacFarlane runs a school attended by our putative protagonist (who sounds like the lone American of the cast, even though he wears a tam o'shanter and seems to be attempting a brogue) Donald Fettes, who alternates between quitting the school in disgust because it relies on corpses provided nefariously by Karloff's slimy Gray, and helping acquire them (he's not got the stiffest of spines, ironically, seeing as spine surgery on an adorable little girl with a pretty young mother is a subplot).  This one has the usual great Lewton extreme shadows, and Karloff is wonderfully sinister and Daniells appropriately tortured by the hooks that Gray has in him, and there are a couple of outright shocking moments (including the freshly killed corpse of Bela Lugosi (yes, he's in it too, just like The Black Cat, only in a very small role and looking very old) floating up to the surface in a big vat of water) as well as Karloff killing a cute little dog with a shovel) but it's not a first-rank Lewton (no shame in that - that's a very high bar), although the ending is a bit of a corker.

Film review: House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Jami spotted this on a list of black and white horror movies, almost all the others of which we'd already seen, so...  Is it good?  Well, sort of.  Imagine Agatha Christie crossed with Scooby-Doo and you should get the basic idea.  Vincent Price is good, as always, and it's got the squirty little guy from Maltese Falcon (Elisha Cook Jr.) as an alcoholic who believes all the stories about the house and keeps uttering doom-laden comments like "They'll come for us, they won't stop" which makes you wonder why he is among the seven who accepted an offer of $10,000 from eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Price) to stay the night in a strange-looking (in fact designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and near where we used to live in LA) house. They arrive in hearses commissioned by Loren - three men, the little lush who owned the house and knows its disturbing history (seven people murdered in nasty ways), a psychiatrist (whom Loren's voice-over tells us betrays his greed "about his mouth and eyes") and a jet pilot, and two women (the young Nora Manning, who is part of Loren's company but has never met him, and who receives the bulk of the scares, and the gossip columnist/gambler, who keeps getting blood dripped on her from above.  Loren is there to see them arrive and watches quietly from a landing to see Nora almost killed by a falling chandelier.  He then strolls off to a bedroom where his glamorous and much-younger (4th) wife is waiting.  They banter about how this is a party and that it's for her, but very quickly it emerges that not only can they not stand each other but that he thinks she's already tried to poison him.  She refuses to join the party, so he goes down to meet the guests.  The little guy shows them the house, including the room with the ceiling blood-patch (a little girl), the knife in the draw (that was used to cut up two family members, whose heads were never found) and, best of all, the giant tank of lethal acid under a hatch in the floor of the basement.  (Apparently this was used for wine-making, but as the guy demonstrates with a rat, if you throw in something with "flesh and hair," all that floats to the top is a skeleton.)  Almost immediately Nora and the Pilot have problems in the basement after the others have gone back upstairs.  He goes into a dark closet and gets knocked out, she sees (in one of the scariest scenes in the film) what she is sure is the ghost of an old woman.  Turns out both of those things were caused by the old caretaker couple (in true Scooby-Doo fashion) who are supposed to hang around until midnight before locking the party in for the night, but scarper early, thus not allowing the already-spooked Nora to forego her shot at her ten grand.  To spice things up, Loren then passes out "party favors" - little coffins that reveal pistols on opening.  Everyone takes one, even the little guy who insists they won't save the 7 humans from the 7 ghosts, except for Loren's wife, who has been "encouraged" to join the party.  Loren replaces her gun in the coffin and closes it.  This is significant.
And so the night begins in earnest.  Someone hangs themself/is hanged - or are they?  Someone is shot - or is he?  Two people end up in the vat of acid.  Ghosts appear at windows.  Hands reach round doorways and grab shoulders.  Double-crossers are double-crossed.  There's a malevolent, talking skeleton (cue Emergo!) But five people survive the night, much to the apparent disappointment of the perpetually gloomy little alcoholic.  Should this have been on a list of great black and white horror films?  Not really - it's a diverting little number, and the best film directed by famous schlockmeister William Castle, but I don't think it would scare anyone older than about 11.  But Vincent Price never disappoints.

Film review: The War of the Worlds (1953)

I see that the BBC has done a swanky new version (set in the period it was written, of course, because the BBC LOVES costume drama) so it's a good time to revisit the first Hollywood blockbuster version.  I remember my dear mother saying that this was the first "X" rated film she ever saw, which just goes to show they were a bit more strict about ratings back then, because there's not even a "damn" uttered or an inch of illicit flesh displayed, and the level of gore would be topped by most Tom Baker-era Doctor Whos.  Probably the most shocking moment is when the three men who have been assigned to guard the "meteorite" that crash lands in central California witness the hatch opening (by unscrewing, which is odd) and a robotic eye-on-a-tentacle snake out, and decide to introduce themselves (and welcome their visitors to California) and it vaporizes them, leaving little Hiroshima-like ash shadows on the ground.  We also later see a dog-collar wearing pastor walking towards the same craft, reciting Psalm 23:4, only to meet the same fate.  This would seem to reflect H.G. Wells's low opinion of organized religion, but I feel he would have been sickened by the treacly ending in a church, and voiceover stating that it was "God in His wisdom" who placed the bacteria on Earth that does for the invaders.
In general, this is not a great film.  The acting is incredibly stiff - the main character (played by someone called Gene Barry, who looks like a bargain basement Rock Hudson knockoff) acts mildly sedated for the early part of the movie and in general nobody distinguishes themselves, the dialog is clunky, the pacing slow (there's no real narrative drive, there are just incidents loosely strung together) and the thing that was amazing about it back in its day, its effects, look quaint today.  Even the ship design is a little disappointing.  Instead of the tripods of the novel and most adaptations, we have floating ships "supported" by three barely-visible "magnetic beams".  The destruction of Los Angeles and the collapse of civilization (a man trying desperately to climb on a truck evacuating the city offers another man $500 for his place and gets the response "money's not worth anything any more" (this after a few days!) and a punch in the face) are pretty well realized, but then of course we have Wells's original bathetic ending, where the Martians just die because they have no immunity to Earth germs.  Having seen (the otherwise superior in all respects) Things to Come I have to conclude that Wells's strength was ideas rather than plotting.  If you have to watch one apocalyptic 50s Hollywood sci-fi, make it Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.  And if you've seen that before, never mind, watch it again.

Film review: Dracula's Daughter (1936)

This one's in the box set of Universal Monster Movies we got a while back, and it's an oddity.  It begins basically the moment Dracula ends, with (buffoonish, comic-relief) British bobbies showing up to discover Renfield dead outside and Van Helsing over Dracula's staked corpse within.  They take both bodies away for safe-keeping and arrest Van Helsing.  Van Helsing is shipped off to headquarters, leaving the two bobbies to guard the coffins.  Then one of them goes to meet the representative of Scotland Yard who's coming on the train, and the remaining one is surprised by a strange woman whose face is hidden except for her eyes, who demands to see Dracula's body.  The bobby (who looks and acts like a cockney Nigel Bruce) tries to stop her but is hypnotized by her giant jeweled ring and the other cop and the Scotland Yard officer find him in a trance with the coffin missing.  Cut to out on the moors (or somewhere) and the strange woman is burning Dracula's body and throwing salt on it, in the belief that this will rid her of the curse she's under.  She returns home (to her house in London) and is happy, although her manservant, Sandor, seems determined to poor cold water on it.  She starts playing happy music on the piano to show that she is rid of the curse, but it very soon changes into ominous music, as Sandor is pleased to point out.  (This sequence is, frankly, silly.) And indeed it turns out that she is not free of the curse and is compelled to go out and hypnotize some poor man who is later found drained of blood and who dies on the operating table.  Meanwhile, however, Van Helsing has asked that his friend (and mentee) psychiatrist Jeffrey Garth be brought in as a witness to testify that he (Van Helsing) is not mad, which the chief of police frankly doubts, given all Van Helsing's vampire talk.  We are thus introduced to Garth and his independently-wealthy secretary Janet, who have a playfully antagonistic banter, as she comes to drag him back to London from a grouse hunt in Scotland.  When he returns, he is introduced to the mysterious Countess Zeleska, supposedly Hungarian nobility visiting London.  She, of course, is our vampire, but on hearing of Garth's profession, she wants to see if he can cure her.  She wants him to do it that night, but he can't, and she (of course) can't visit him during the day, so it's postponed... tragically for Zeleska's next victim, Lilli.  She is contemplating suicide on a foggy London bridge the next night when Sandor persuades her to come and "pose" for his artist mistress.  Cue very racy scenes of Lilli stripping to her undergarments and pushing her slip straps off her shoulders (the picture is a "study" of head and shoulders) as Zeleska moves in with a lascivious glint in her eye.  The sapphic undertones are just barely under (which is surprising given that 1936 is too late for pre-code).  Anyway, things come to a head: Garth starts to put two and two together (particularly after shocking poor Lilli awake and then hypnotizing her to get info about how she lost blood), Zeleska gives up on being cured (when she finds out that Garth's method involves hypnosis with mirrors) and hatches a new plan to lure Garth back to her castle in Transylvania and be converted into her eternal lover.  To effect this she kidnaps Janet and slips the country.  Garth follows and we have a showdown in the castle, with Sandor feeling betrayed because he thought he was going to be the eternal partner.  Wooden-shafted arrow replaces stake, and a rather moody adult Universal outing draws to a close.  Very little horror, rather downbeat (our "villain" is a tragic figure), and focused on imagining how we would really deal with vampires in our contemporary world.  Everyone's good in it and it zips along, but as I said, not very monster-y.  The bobbies were good comic relief, though.

Film review: The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

The Criterion Channel has a series of films directed by Ida Lupino, of which this is one.  And a right little corker it is, too.  It begins with a shadowy figure (you just see his legs) being picked up by a young couple, followed by him shooting them dead shortly thereafter.  He then does the same thing to a single traveling salesman.  Then we meet our protagonists, a pair of men escaping to Mexico (one from his wife, the other from wife and kids) for a fishing trip.  As one might've predicted, they soon pick up the hitch-hiker, but he has decided he needs them to make his escape, partly because he has to cross the border and knows if he's driving he'll get caught, and partly because he doesn't speak Spanish (or "Mexican," as he insists on calling it).  And then the rest of the movie is the drive down to Santa Rosalia, a small town on the Eastern side of Baja California.  As everything is resting on three actors, it's lucky that they're so good, particularly Edmond O'Brien (of D.O.A. and White Heat fame), who is good at stoic good guys, and even more so, William Talman, as the egregious Emmet Myers, a Kansas desperado based on the real-life low-life Billy Cook.  He truly is effectively loathsome, with a droopy eyelid that effectively means that they can't tell when he's really asleep, and can't escape during the nights.  One of the first things we see him do is force one of the two friends to shoot a can out of the hand of the other.  Even though the film is only 71 minutes long, it's still surprising what effective suspense is made out of such slender plot.  It's very tense, and there are excellent set-pieces (like when they stop for supplies in a tiny Mexican town, or the two try to escape because they think Emmet is about to run out of use for them, but it turns out he really wasn't asleep.  Meanwhile, the American police are cooperating with the Mexican police and they agree to broadcast misleading things on the radio so Emmet won't know they're closing in on him and be motivated to ditch his hostages. One oddity for a Hollywood film of this vintage is how sympathetically every Mexican character is treated: not just respectfully (the Mexican police turn out to be the real heroes) but also they speak Spanish (rather than English for the viewers in Speedy Gonzalez accents) and no effort is made to translate it for us.  This is what B-Movies are supposed to be like (although the extensive location work in what genuinely looks like deserty parts of the Southwest might make this more expensive than the ones that just use recycled sets from other movies) - taut, suspenseful, and over before you can pause for breath.

Film review: The Seventh Victim (1943)

How is this film not a cult classic?  We watched it as part of the Criterion Channel's Val Lewton collection, having already seen the two most famous films in that set, the fantastic Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie.  Both of those are justly famous as absolutely gorgeous and dream-like horror films, directed by Jacques Tourneur (Val Lewton was the producer) who also directed perhaps the quintessential film noir, Out of the Past (with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas, but more importantly, Jane Greer).  Anyway, as this one was not directed by Tourneur, I wasn't expecting that much.  How wrong I was - it is just as beautifully shot (Lewton is famous for the high contrast and inky shadows in his films) and if anything, even more of a fever dream than I Walked with a Zombie (which is a retelling of Jane Eyre in the Caribbean).  It should be required viewing in any existentialism class - to quote the Criterion Channel's blurb: "Asked to summarize the film’s shockingly bleak message, producer Val Lewton offered, “Death is good.”"
It begins in a girl's boarding school, amid the sound of the conjugation of Latin verbs.  One of the girls, who is supposed to be somewhere from 16 to 18, I think, is our heroine, Mary Gibson, played by Kim Hunter (David Niven's love interest in A Matter of Life and Death), who is informed that her sister Jacqueline, her sole surviving relative and the person who has been paying her school bills, has not done so and is unreachable.  The apparently kindly headmistress offers to take Mary on as a teacher's assistant, but she wants to go and find her sister. Again the headmistress offers to pay for her trip and says she can come back at any time.  Seems very congenial, but the headmistress's assistant follows Mary out of the room and urgently instructs her never to return, because she herself had the chance to get away but didn't and regrets it.  At this we hear the headmistress calling sternly for her.  Thus a mood of unease and dread is set which is maintained throughout this film's short but intense duration.  In fact, it is positively (David) Lynchian in how that mood is exacerbated by strange characters and odd unexplained moments, particularly in the early going before too much is explained.  Some examples: Mary discovers that Jacqueline has rented a room above an Italian restaurant, but doesn't use it, and when they jimmy it open they find that all it contains is a noose hanging above a chair.  Mary gets help from a very small private eye, who tells her that one room is kept locked in the cosmetics business that Jacqueline used to run, but that is now run by the stern Mrs Redi (who claims that she bought it from Jacqueline, but the private eye has discovered Jacqueline deeded it to her for free), and when they break into the building to look in there, both are creeped out by the dark corridor it is at the end of, and Mary sends the PI down alone.  Of course when he staggers back he has been stabbed and dies in a pool of blood at her feet.  She runs away in horror and has been circling a line on the subway for hours when three men get into her carriage.  Two of them are holding up the third, who appears to be drunk, but then his hat falls off... and it's the dead PI! Throw in actual devil-worshippers, a creepy psychiatrist (played by George Sanders' brother, who sounds very similar and is a staple of most Val Lewton films), a poet, a dying tubercular neighbor (who wants to live, unlike the healthy Jacqueline), a one-armed woman, a midget news vendor and the husband Mary didn't know Jacqueline had, and you've got a heady brew.  As I've said, it loses some of its surreal impact when they try to tie the ends together, and there's a scene where the devil-worshippers are shamed by quoting from the Lord's Prayer that's pretty corny, but the ending is a real kicker (pun intended).  Well worth anybody's time, especially an afficianado of ornate 40s hairstyles.  Jacqueline (when we finally meet her) has one of the more unfortunate ones, but I swear one of the devil-worshippers has the exact 'do that Rachael (Sean Young) has in Blade Runner.
(Side note: the film has no relation to the excellent Robert Scheckley short story Seventh Victim, which, coincidentally, I read recently.  Other side note: I first saw Cat People as an impressionable teenager, in a house being rented by my future step-family because their actual one had burnt down.  It was part of a double bill with the egregious Zoltan: Hound of Dracula, (also known much more prosaically as Dracula's Dog.  The BBC was having a series where they ran a B&W horror movie before a color one, and you can see the theme in this one, but it was a sacrilegious pairing.  There are two classic scenes in Cat People that influenced all horror films to come.)

Jami's car week

This Monday, driving down to Detroit, Jami had to screech to a halt behind a car that had stalled in the middle of two lanes, just where the freeway had narrowed to two lanes because of construction.  "Phew", she thought, then turned her attention to her rear view mirror.  "Phew again" - the car behind had slammed on its brakes in time.  But, alas, the GIANT TRUCK AND TRAILER behind that car ploughed on and smushed all before it to either side.  Thus endeth Jami's beloved little red 2010 Toyota Yaris, the only car she'd ever owned from brand new.

There followed all kinds of bother that she would relate if she were not too busy, which involved her driving a white Hyundai SUV rental most of the week, while waiting for the insurance adjuster to confirm that it's a write-off.  Then, on Friday she gave up waiting, went back to the tow yard to get her last remaining things, and we dropped off the rental at Enterprise.  Then on Saturday, we went to the same Toyota dealership the Yaris (and my 2008 Prius) came from and Jami bought this beauty, a 2010 Prius (from a salesman who recognized me from a class he took in 2010):

Suddenly my Saab doesn't look so fancy any more.

Film review: Young and Innocent (1937)

One of the lesser British Hitchcocks, perhaps because it's rather derivative both of The Lady Vanishes and (in particular) The 39 Steps.  As in both of those, you have a central couple who are thrown together in unfortunate circumstances, and as in 39 Steps, the man is an unjustly-accused fugitive who requires them both to go on the lam.  In this case he ("Robert Tisdall" played by an actor who deserved to become a star, both in looks and talent, Derrick De Marney) is a penniless writer, and she ("Erica Burgoyne" played by the wonderfully-named Nova Pilbeam, who was the daughter in Hitchcock's original (superior) The Man Who Knew Too Much, and who also should've gone on to great things, but dropped out of acting shortly thereafter) is the daughter of the widowed Police superintendent.  The film begins with extreme closeups of a couple having a raging argument in a storm-lashed house atop a cliff.  They are both English, but she is a Hollywood star, visiting the motherland, and he is the rotten husband she thought she'd disposed of but who refuses to acknowledge the validity of her American divorce (and who has an extreme facial tic that shall be his undoing).  She slaps him and tries to throw him out.  He looks over the cliff to the beach far below and clearly gets an idea... cut to the surf crashing on that beach in the daytime, only there's a dead woman (in bathing suit) being carried in and out in it.  Our hero is strolling along the cliff and spots her, and clambers down to try to see what's up.  On discovering the woman limp and cold he runs off to get help. Meanwhile two other female bathers are strolling down the beach and spot him running away.  A crowd gathers and the police come and somebody claims that she has been strangled, and they find a raincoat belt nearby.  The women accuse our hero of being the murderer and he can't account for his missing coat and he is dragged in for questioning.  This goes on all night and at one point he passed out with exhaustion and is revived by our heroine, who happens to be visiting the police station.  Robert is clearly taken with Erica (who is a very spunky self-sufficient type - she knows all the idiosyncrasies of her little roadster and hand-cranks it herself) and after a humorous interlude where he is introduced to his useless lawyer, who does nothing but take most of his money as an advance, he steals the lawyers glasses as a disguise and somehow stows away in said roadster as she ferries two cops out to the station as part of a search party.  The car runs out of petrol and they transfer to a pig cart (leading us to speculate if cops were always referred to as pigs), whereupon our hero makes himself known (where exactly he was hiding remains a mystery) and helps Erica push her car, charming her in the process.  He then pays for her petrol with his little remaining money.  His goal is to go back to the boarding house he was staying at and try to locate his stolen coat.  She drops him off at an abandoned mill and doesn't give him away, which is particularly hard as she returns for a meal at the family home (where she is clearly surrogate mother to her 4 snotty younger brothers, one of whom proudly produces (at the dinner table) a rat he's shot) and has to face her father, who discusses the manhunt.  Still, she returns to the mill later with food (partly motivated by the most egg-headed younger brother's insistence that what brings about the downfall of fugitives is running out of money for food) but alas, Robert throws the paper it was wrapped in out of the window and it is spotted by the two policemen.  Thus begins their shared life on the lam.  They go to the boarding house (which doubles as a tea shop for truckers) and she goes in to ask questions.  She finds out that there was a tramp with a new coat called Old Will from one of them who is told to shut up by others.  A fight breaks out and she (again, very capably) gets herself out of there, but in the meantime Robert has gone in to try to rescue her and he ends up getting his head clonked.  This is all played for laughs, including her attempt to wash the blood off in a fountain that keeps sputtering intermittently.  Their next target is Old Will, who is said to be at another boarding house miles away, but to throw her father off the scent, she decides to drop in on her aunt and uncle's house nearby.  Well, it turns out their daughter is having a birthday party and the couple get roped in.  The aunt becomes suspicious, but fortunately the uncle (Basil Radford again) helps them escape in a game of blind man's buff.  The aunt is livid, though, and calls up Erica's father.  There follows all kinds of excitement: they find Will, but alas, the belt is missing from the coat so cannot be used to prove Robert's innocence (and is in fact almost certainly the murder weapon)! the car is lost in a collapsing mine!  Erica is caught and confined to her room, as her father writes his resignation letter!  Robert springs her and finds out that a matchbook for the Grand Hotel (which he has never visited) was in the coat pocket! Will says the man who gave him the coat had a facial twitch!  all three go to the Grand Hotel to catch the villain!  gratuitous crane-shottery!  gratuitous blackface minstrelsy! gratuitous happy ending!
Check it out: I like it a lot.  If it weren't for the other two British Hitchcocks, it would be easily in my top five of his: non-stop excitement, genuinely funny moments, great acting, great drollery. 

Film review: The Challenge (1938)

Produced by London Films, same as The Ghost Goes West, this is a strictly serious action film recounting the events of the first conquest of the Matterhorn (with a few liberties to make it more exciting).  Briefly, the English climber Edward Whymper meets and befriends Italian climber Jean Antoine Carel and the latter saves the former, and has his fierce nurse mother (one of the oddities about the film is that the young Italian character is played by someone who looks middle-aged, and older than his own mother, and sounds German [this might be because he's Tyrolean]) fixes his broken leg.  They arrange to meet up in a year to climb the Matterhorn in earnest, so Carel goes back to his life of itinerant work and being the village pariah.  This changes, though, when an official Italian party is formed that wants Carel to lead it.  He resists because of his promise to Whymper, but then is tricked into thinking that Whymper has rejected him and sided with some English climbers.  Because of this, the two now head competing parties - one departing from the Italian side, the other (Whymper's) from the Swiss side.  Triumph, tragedy, and another life-saving act (this time from a lynch mob) follow.  Check it out - it's a fast-paced little number with some great mountain scenes.