THE BLACK GLOVE (AKA FACE THE MUSIC)

 

This is another early 1950s Hammer film directed by Terence Fisher. THE BLACK GLOVE was the American title of the film, and the title of the version I saw on the Tubi streaming channel. The British title, FACE THE MUSIC, is far more appropriate. 

Alex Nicol is the imported American star this time for Hammer. He plays James Bradley, a trumpeter and bandleader playing a stint in London. After a show Bradley makes the acquaintance of a nightclub singer named Maxine (Ann Hanslip). Bradley has a meal at Ann's flat, then goes back to his hotel room for some much needed rest. He wakes up in the morning to find out that Ann has been murdered, and since he left his trumpet in her flat, he's become a prime suspect. Bradley decides to try and find the killer on his own, and his investigations lead him to a few shady characters. 

THE BLACK GLOVE (released in 1954) has more music than action scenes. At least the music (in the horn-heavy big-band style of the period) is very good, with trumpeter Kenny Baker doubling for Nicol on the soundtrack. (Producer Michael Carreras was a big jazz fan and even has a cameo in the film as a band member.) 

The use of music does make this movie stand out from the many other low-budget crime stories made by Hammer in the early Fifties. What it doesn't do is make the story's murder mystery any more thrilling. Alex Nicol's Bradley is a murder suspect, but he's not desperately on the run. He's also not a broken-down musician--he's famous and successful, headlining a show at the London Palladium. Alex Nicol plays Bradley in a somewhat breezy manner, negating the suspense the movie tries to have. 

Terence Fisher tries at times to inject some seedy atmosphere in the tale, but the story isn't hard-boiled enough, despite Nicol at times narrating the film like a noir anti-hero. The climax is like the final chapter of an Agatha Christie novel, with Bradley in a room with all the various suspects. The trumpeter then shows some amazing deductive ability by revealing who the killer is and what all the suspects have to hide. After seeing this sequence one wonders why Bradley doesn't put down his trumpet and put on a deerstalker. 

Eleanor Summerfield, who was in a number of Terence Fisher-directed films around this time, plays Maxine's sister. Geoffrey Keen. best known for playing a number of haughty British characters, has a very atypical (for him) role here. Hammer fans will recognize Fred Johnson (THE BRIDES OF DRACULA) as a police inspector and Melvyn Hayes, who was the young Baron in THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo as a bellhop. 

Americans must have felt from the poster above that THE BLACK GLOVE was a hard-edged crime thriller. It's not...it's more of a few strange days in the life of a popular bandleader. 

DUNE (1984)

 

Arrow Video has released a new Blu-ray special edition of the notorious 1984 film adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel DUNE. That is the impetus for this post. 

There are plenty of people who hate DUNE. Most folks consider it to be too weird, or incomprehensible. (Ironically, hardcore fans of DUNE's director, David Lynch, consider the film too mainstream.) The paperback version of DUNE that I own runs over 800 pages. Frank Herbert's epic story is complex and not an easy read. Herbert presents a number of ideas and concepts that are near-impossible to translate into a visual form. 

DUNE, the novel, is also about as far away from the mainstream as you can get. It is not a simple "good guys vs. bad guys in outer space" story. The lead character of DUNE, Paul Atreides, is decidedly not Luke Skywalker (if anything, he's more like Anakin Skywalker). 

Nevertheless, Universal Pictures and executive producer Dino De Laurentiis felt that they had a Star Wars-type property on their hands, a property that could bring in tons of money through merchandising and sequels. A massive amount of money was poured into the project, and a promising young filmmaker named David Lynch was hired to write and direct. The movie was given a huge publicity campaign before its release during the Christmas holiday season of 1984. 

The result is well known--the film was looked upon as a major disappointment financially and critically, and it is still considered as such today. 

Like most famous flops, the '84 DUNE does have a small core of defenders. I certainly don't think it's an underrated masterpiece, but I've grown to appreciate some of its elements over the years. 

I didn't see DUNE during its original theatrical release. I read the novel before I saw the movie as a VHS rental. I could immediately see why it flopped. 

The '84 DUNE had a torturous production history (which I won't get into here). The version of the film that was released was not what either Universal, the De Laurentiis family, or David Lynch wanted. Some have said that DUNE is a 137-minute trailer for a bigger film, which is a very perceptive description. Trying to fit such a large canvas as DUNE into a two-hour running time does not do the story justice. The theatrical release version of the film does not have enough space to adequately inform the audience about what is going on. 

Universal promoted DUNE as a big-budget mainstream spectacular, but most of the people they were trying to sell the film to had never read the novel, and thus they were hopelessly lost when seeing it. (Even those who have read the novel, such as myself, get confused at times while watching DUNE.) 

None of the characters in the film are the types that will connect with a regular audience. Even the main hero, Paul, as played by Kyle MacLachlan, comes off as stiff and distant. (This was MacLachlan's first movie role, but it's not his fault, due to the circumstances and the type of story being told.) Almost every single line of dialogue in DUNE is expository--people don't have real conversations here. That doesn't help an audience in trying to get to know the characters. 

A number of these characters are introduced, and they are seemingly set up for an important role to play--but then they disappear for large stretches of the film, or they get killed off rather quickly. The villains of the piece, the Harkonnens and their associates, are presented in such an over the top manner that they become silly instead of a viable threat. The '84 DUNE also has no humor whatsoever (although there are plenty of unintentionally funny moments). 

A few years after its theatrical release, Universal put together a extended cut of DUNE for television. This version runs about three hours, and it was released on DVD in 2005. This is not the definitive version of the film--David Lynch refused to have anything to do with it, and this cut has plenty of problems of its own. To this day, rumors abound over a four hour-plus cut that supposedly was David Lynch's "real" version of the film (producer Raffaella De Laurentiis denies that any such edit of DUNE exists). Lynch now refuses to even discuss DUNE, and we will never truly know what the 1984 DUNE might have been. 

The more I saw of DUNE over the years, the more I started to look at it from a different angle (especially after I was able to see it in widescreen). It is a strange film, to be sure, and it is not a satisfying adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel. 

I do feel, though, that the weirdness of Lynch's DUNE is one of its stronger aspects. This is a real science-fiction film--not a cop movie, Western, or buddy story set in outer space or in the future. Science fiction isn't supposed to normal. The '84 DUNE truly has an alien and unique visual aspect to it. 

One of the reasons DUNE has such a notable look, I think, is that it was not filmed at Pinewood or Elstree in England, as many big-budget genre films were in the 1980s. It was filmed in Mexico, and the production did not use Industrial Light & Magic for any of the FX work. Most science-fiction movies made since the first Star Wars trilogy have a generic look & style to them (and that has carried on to the many comic book films made now). The '84 DUNE, for better or worse, stands out. 

The production design, special effects, and costumes for DUNE are excellent, as is the cinematography of Freddie Francis (one of David Lynch's greatest collaborators and steadfast supporters). The overall look of DUNE has always fascinated me. The visual aspects of any film are always important to me--it's why I love the original STAR WARS and Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS so much. (METROPOLIS and the '84 DUNE actually have a lot in common.) 

DUNE also has one of the best cast ensembles ever. You may not understand who the characters are, or what they are doing, but the actors hold your attention. 

The 1984 DUNE may be what many have called a fascinating failure, but I find it to be far more watchable than a number of more popular genre films made around the same time. (It does have to be said that the author of this blog is a bit weird himself.) 

In 2000 the Sci-Fi Channel presented a TV miniseries adaptation of DUNE. This version had the advantage of a far longer running time and a more expansive script--but I felt that the cast and the production design were underwhelming (as a matter of fact I barely remember anything about it). If you could somehow merge the script and the running time of the Sci-Fi Channel DUNE with the cast & technical crew of the 1984 DUNE, you might have something. 

But then again, you might not. Can any movie or TV production come anywhere near to properly adapting Frank Herbert's elephantine novel?? A lot of hopes are being pinned on Denis Villeneuve's version of DUNE, which is supposed to be released soon. Villeneuve is planning on a multi-film approach to the story, which may be best. 

If you are someone who believes that MEN IN BLACK is a classic science-fiction film, you are not going to like the 1984 DUNE. If however, you are someone that is willing to get off the mainstream train every once in a while, and is willing to experience serious science-fiction, you might find that DUNE isn't the horrible bomb that so many have labeled it to be. 

CHARLEY CHASE AT HAL ROACH: THE TALKIES VOLUME THREE 1934-36

 

Kit Parker Films and The Sprocket Vault continue their DVD series of comedy short subjects from the Hal Roach Studios with CHARLEY CHASE AT HAL ROACH: THE TALKIES VOLUME THREE 1934-36. The three-disc set contains the final 21 two-reelers Charley Chase starred in for Roach before he and the company parted ways. 

The first disc in this set deals with the 1934 period, where Charley's leading lady was almost always the diminutive Betty Mack. Betty usually plays the daughter of whatever boss Charley happens to be working for, and most of the '34 shorts still have a weird Pre-Code vibe. In discs two and three, which cover 1935 and 1936, the shorts are more domesticated, with Charley typically playing a henpecked husband alongside a number of actresses. Chase was the director (or at least credited co-director) on all these films, and he still found a way to include a song or a dance routine in just about all of them. 

The standout shorts on this set are NURSE TO YOU!, in which Charley mistakenly believes he has only months to live, and PUBLIC GHOST #1, in which Chase gets a job haunting houses from crackpot Edwin Maxwell. NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE is notable in particular in that it was originally supposed to be a full-length feature, but it was edited down to two reels before release. Unfortunately the full version of NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSE does not survive. It's a funny satire on the promotional giveaways movie theaters would do at the time, in order to attract business. 

The usual familiar Hal Roach supporting players appear throughout this set, including James Finlayson, Charlie Hall, and Billy Gilbert. A number of OUR GANG members pop up in these films as well. In a few of the shorts Hattie McDaniel even plays Charley's maid. The last entry in this set, ON THE WRONG TREK, contains a cameo by two famous gentlemen. 

The shorts in this Volume Three collection appear to be in much better condition than those in the first two Charley Chase sets (the sound quality is better as well). The Spanish version of GIRL SHOCK is included on disc three as an extra. (The original English-language GIRL SHOCK is on the first Charley Chase collection.) A poster and stills gallery is included.

As in the other sets, classic film comedy expert Richard M. Roberts does audio commentaries for all the shorts. Roberts continues to provide an endless amount of personal and professional info on the on and off-camera talents who worked on these shorts. He also delves into the many travails the Hal Roach studios were dealing with during 1934-36. Over the course of the set Roberts also gives out a mini-biography of Charley Chase, and the personal and physical problems he went through. Despite his affable onscreen  personality, Chase lived a too short life that had too much drama. 

Kit Parker Films and The Sprocket Vault have done film geeks a valuable service with their DVD collections of rare short films made at the Hal Roach studios. The shorts on this third Charley Chase set may not be spectacular, but they are all entertaining, mostly due to Chase's likable onscreen persona. Charley Chase had far more influence on movie comedy than most people realize, and his sound movie shorts for Hal Roach only scratch the surface of what he did as a performer and director. Hopefully Kit Parker Films will provide more obscure treats from the Hal Roach vaults in the future on home video. 

CLOUDBURST

 

Last night Turner Classic Movies showed the 1951 British film CLOUDBURST as part of the network's "Noir Alley" series. CLOUDBURST was made by Hammer Films, and it has an important part in that company's history. The movie was the first production by Hammer to be mainly shot at the manor house called Down Place, which would soon be transformed into Bray Studios. CLOUDBURST was also the first in a series of crime films that Hammer made using American financing and a American star in the lead role. 

In CLOUDBURST the American star is Robert Preston, who plays Canadian John Graham. In 1946 Graham, an expert cryptographer who worked for British Intelligence during the war, is in charge of a code-breaking unit for the Foreign Office. John's wife Carol (Elizabeth Sellars) is expecting a child, and the couple are deeply in love and looking toward the future. Shockingly, Carol is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and the devastated John uses his special skills to eliminate those who have destroyed his life. 

For me Robert Preston will always be Harold Hill from THE MUSIC MAN, but he does very well here.  Many of the past-their-prime American stars who worked for Hammer looked tired or uncomfortable in the company's films, but Preston is very effective in showing that Graham is a capable intellectual. After Graham's wife is murdered, Preston doesn't go off the rails, seething with vengeance. The actor instead presents Graham as morose, but still cunning and determined enough to carry out his revenge scheme. The story takes its time in the beginning to develop the relationship between Graham and his wife, and this gives the viewer a connection to the man, and a emotional attachment to what he intends to do. 

After Graham starts his revenge plot, it doesn't take too long for Scotland Yard to become suspicious of him. This sets up a situation where the audience wonders not just "Will he do it", but also "Will he get away with it?". The script is still careful not to be blatantly rooting for Graham to stick it to his enemies--it takes pains to point out that Graham's life is essentially over already, and his actions won't make things better for him. 

CLOUDBURST is one of the better black & white Hammer crime films from the early 1950s, due mainly to the script, which was based on a play by Leo Marks, and co-written by Marks and director Francis Searle. Searle uses a few unusual touches to move the story along, including having the screen literally black out when an act of revenge is perpetrated. The stark look of postwar Britain is perfect for this type of story--due to the low budget we don't get to see a lot of English locations, but what we do see feels dark and brooding, befitting the subject matter. 

CLOUDBURST is a fine example of early Hammer noir. It does have to be said that it's not the most uplifting movie in the world. 

SARATOGA TRUNK

 

A couple of days ago, Ingrid Bergman was given her own day as part of "Summer Under The Stars" month on Turner Classic Movies. This gave me the opportunity to watch a movie starring Bergman I had never seen before--SARATOGA TRUNK, a Warner Bros. film made in 1943, but not released until 1945. 

SARATOGA TRUNK, based on a novel by Edna Ferber, is set in the late 19th Century and deals with one Clio Dulaine (Ingrid Bergman) a feisty and attractive woman with Creole blood. Clio returns to her ancestral home in New Orleans and sets about getting revenge on her relations from her father's side, who she blames for ruining her mother. Clio also attracts the attention of Clint Maroon (Gary Cooper), a dashing Texas gambler. Clio's relatives are so embarrassed by her they pay her to get out of town, and she winds up in Saratoga, New York, trying to get a rich husband. She also still has her heart set on Clint, who gets involved in a New York railroad. 

This movie was meant to be a high-class product--the producer was Hal Wallis, the director was Sam Wood, the cinematographer was Ernest Haller, and the music was by Max Steiner. Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman were two of the biggest stars of the silver screen at the time as well. But all these talents together couldn't save SARATOGA TRUNK from being, at least from my perspective, a dreary experience. 

The film's running time is over two hours, and most of the scenes consist of Bergman and Cooper alternately flirting and annoying one another. The characters that the duo play are not very inviting. Bergman's Clio comes off as a minor league Scarlett O'Hara, with overly coquettish ways and plenty of mood swings. Ingrid is one of my favorite all-time actresses, but even I'll admit she seemed off-key here, trying too hard to show Clio's up-and-down emotional state (if anything, the woman comes off as mentally unstable). Bergman isn't helped by darkened eyebrows and a black wig that takes away from her natural beauty. 

Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman in SARATOGA TRUNK

As for Cooper, he doesn't have much to do for most of the story, except lounge around and spout folksy dialogue to Bergman. At the end of the film, Cooper helps some businessmen take over a railroad by hiring a bunch of thugs and having them fight another bunch of thugs who are not letting the line run. This action subplot feels like it comes from another movie altogether (the fight scenes were handled by a young Don Siegel). There's also a head-on collision between two locomotive engines (maybe to wake up the audience?)  These scenes apparently were examples of how rough and tough Gary Cooper's character was supposed to be, but I don't think it made the guy all that more heroic. 

Throughout the film, the character of Clio is accompanied by two servants: a housemaid (played by Flora Robson in blackface!) and a dwarf (Jerry Austin). Both of the servants get way too much screen time, with Robson and Bergman having a Mammy-Scarlett relationship here. The problem is that Robson's facial makeup is so exaggerated she looks like a female Fu Manchu, and it's hard to take her seriously. (Ironically Robson was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her performance.) 

SARATOGA TRUNK has all the elements for a Hollywood classic--impressive and expensive production design, first-class costumes, plenty of period detail, and several legendary names involved in front of and behind the camera. It just didn't work for me. The story drags on and on, and the main characters are not very compelling. It felt like a mediocre soap opera. My internet research on this film revealed it made a lot of money when it was originally released, so obviously a lot of other people liked it. 

MAN BEAST

 

Another Tubi discovery--a very, very low budget 1956 film dealing with the Yeti. The producer-director of MAN BEAST was Jerry Warren, best known for churning out mediocre versions of various Mexican genre movies. 

This is another "the poster is far more exciting than anything that happens in the story" flick. Somewhere in the Himalayas, an American named Connie (Asa Maynor, billed as Virginia Maynor) is searching for her brother, who is part of an expedition. Connie and her friends discuss rumors concerning the Yeti, and they have to rely on a native guide named Varga (George Skaff). Varga knows plenty about what happened to Connie's brother, and the Yeti in particular. 

MAN BEAST is only about a little over an hour long, but it feels much longer, due to the fact that most of movie consists of mountain climbing stock footage. (I was not able to discover where this footage came from on the internet, but to my untrained eye, it may have been made up of scenes from one of those German mountain films from the early 1930s.) The characters (and the dialogue) are uninteresting, and it takes forever for a Yeti to actually show up. 

The Yeti costume is actually effective (Wikipedia claims it was an old gorilla suit used in a poverty row film called WHITE PONGO). The Yeti here has a bit of a resemblance to the Wampa in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Unfortunately, Jerry Warren didn't have enough sense to use the Yeti properly--the fellow pops up every so often, but it barely interacts with the cast. The Yeti isn't even around at the climax...and no, it does not carry off the leading lady as is shown on the poster above. The no-name actors are not helped by generic lines and paper-thin characters. 

The one thing that does make the movie memorable is the character of Varga. It is revealed at the climax that Varga is descended from the Yeti, and is sort of a conduit between the creatures and modern civilization. George Skaff as Varga does give off a weird alien vibe, but his backstory, like everything else in this picture, isn't developed enough, and winds up being wasted. 

One thing that has to be mentioned about MAN BEAST. The credits list a lead actor named Rock Madison. The thing is....Rock Madison does not exist! There's a number of stories stating why Jerry Warren came up with the Madison name, but, whatever one you believe, the point is that the lead billing in this film is given to a fake name instead of a human being. 

It's too bad that Jerry Warren didn't use the creativity he put into the billing for MAN BEAST on all the other aspects of the film's production. It's not a "so bad it's good" movie, and you can't make the excuse that the budget was too low. Nothing much happens in MAN BEAST, and even a guy like me could figure out about a dozen ways to improve this story without having to increase the budget. Having little money, no stars, and black & white stock footage does not mean the movie has to be boring--Roger Corman could have taken those elements and made something that would at least hold the viewer's attention.  

KILL ME TOMORROW

 

KILL ME TOMORROW (1957) is the last film Terence Fisher directed before THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. It is a low-budget British black & white crime story, much in the same vein as the B pictures Fisher made for Hammer Films in the early 1950s. KILL ME TOMORROW attempts to be a gritty noir thriller, but it doesn't quite succeed due to the contrived script. 

Hollywood character actor Pat O'Brien plays Bart Crosbie, an American reporter working for a London newspaper. Things aren't going too well for Crosbie--his wife was killed in an auto accident in which he was the driver, and his irresponsible ways are affecting his job. Crosbie gets fired, then finds out that his son needs an expensive operation to save his life. Crosbie goes to the home of his boss at the newspaper for help, but finds he has just been murdered by a diamond smuggler's (George Coulouris) goon. To make matters worse, the boss' niece (Lois Maxwell) happens to walk in, and sees Crosbie standing over the body while holding the gun used in the killing. Bart runs out, and hits upon an idea. He will blackmail the smuggler into giving him the money for his child's operation, by agreeing to take the rap for the murder. Needless to say, this plan doesn't work the way Crosbie thought it would. 

KILL ME TOMORROW was made by Delta Films, a short-lived company run by producer Francis Searle and Terence Fisher. It would be easy, though, to mistake it as an early 1950s Hammer, since it shares many of the same attributes of those films--a past-his-prime American actor as the leading man, a story that involves crime, and a running time of about 80 minutes. KILL ME TOMORROW does have a fair amount of location shooting that gives it some vitality. 

What this movie really needed was a younger and more energetic leading man. Pat O'Brien (who was in his late fifties when he made this film) is pudgy and tired-looking, and there doesn't seem to be any reason why the attractive and classy Lois Maxwell would go out of her way to help him. Ironically, KILL ME TOMORROW would have been more suited for O'Brien if it had been made when the actor was working for Warner Bors. in the mid-1930s (Joan Blondell could have played Lois Maxwell's role). At one point O'Brien beats up three bad guys in a fistfight, and not only it is hard to believe, the sequence is clumsily handled. The sub-plot concerning O'Brien's son doesn't help--the kid is portrayed in such an overly-cute manner, he becomes annoying. 

Lois Maxwell and Pat O'Brien in KILL ME TOMORROW

Maxwell (best known as Miss Moneypenny in the classic Bond films) does the best she can with a under-written role. George Coulouris (CITIZEN KANE) is a slimy, though not very smart, villain, with future spaghetti western veteran Al Mulock as one of his henchmen. Robert Brown, who would much later play M alongside Maxwell in a few Bond movies, is one of Crosbie's newspaper co-workers, and Richard Pasco, in his very first big-screen role, plays the doctor taking care of O'Brien's son. Both Brown and Pasco would later appear in a number of Hammer films. 

KILL ME TOMORROW has a special "guest star"--rock and roll singer Tommy Steele, who was very popular in England at the time. Steele shows up twice, at a coffee bar run by George Coulouris' character, singing the same song. He doesn't have much screen time, and he doesn't even get any dialogue--I'm pretty sure that any fans of the singer who went and saw this film when it came out were rather disappointed. 

According to Tony Dalton in his biography of Terence Fisher, the director got along very well with Pat O'Brien (one can imagine that the two spent plenty of time together at various pubs). Fisher probably got more enjoyment being with O'Brien than he did making this film. KILL ME TOMORROW isn't bad, but the cast and the director are the most interesting things about it. 

What makes KILL ME TOMORROW notable is that it is the film Terence Fisher directed before THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. After CURSE, there would be no more black & white contemporary crime stories for Fisher. If the average person watches KILL ME TOMORROW and THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN back-to-back, that individual wouldn't believe both films were directed by the same man. I think that's a point in Terence Fisher's favor.