Reviews

The Joe McDoakes behind the Eightball series was one of the most popular shorts from 1942 through 1956. This is the typical story of the hapless protagonist who is plagued by a variety of antagonists; animals, women, automobiles, gadgets, you name it! This series was actually a copy of the Robert Benchley shorts from the late 30's, produced by MGM and greatly enjoyed by moviegoers. In order to compete with MGM and Benchley, Warners came out with their own series in November, 1942. All 62 episodes were directed by Richard Bare who also did a number of TV shows for Warners. George O'Hanlon starred in all of these shorts as the often ill-fated poor slob, Joe McDoakes.

What I found amusing in this episode was the parody on the hit movie "The Lost Weekend" (1945) starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. Perhaps capitalizing on this film or just to employ satire, O'Hanlon is seen pulling up a racing form hanging from a window ledge; his wife totally disapproving of his gambling addiction. In "The Lost Weekend", Ray Milland has a bottle of rye whiskey hanging from a rope off the window ledge, hiding it because his brother and girlfriend both disapprove of his alcoholism. Then in this short, O'Hanlon is next seen pulling another racing form, plus several other things (a navigation tool of all things) that was hidden in a ceiling lamp. In "The Lost Weekend" Milland hides a bottle of whiskey in a ceiling lamp! To top it off, during these scenes, there is a bow saw playing in the background. In "The Lost Weekend", Miklos Rosza employs the use of a bow saw in his award winning music throughout the film.

"The Lost Weekend" was a huge hit in 1945, "So You Want to Play the Horses" was released in 1946, with "The Lost Weekend" still fresh in the minds of moviegoers.

As with all of the Joe McDoakes "So You Want..." series, this one is a lot of fun.

Daughters Courageous is actually the second of a four-movie soap series produced by Warner Brothers and all directed by Michael Curtiz. Curtiz, a Hungarian immigrant, was best known for his direction of the early Errol Flynn swashbucklers that graced the silver screen from 1935 to 1941. At any rate, Daughters Courageous employs the same cast of characters from the first and last two movies, Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, and Gale Page play the sisters. Claude Rains, in this particular movie, plays the father who left home nineteen years before. Dick Foran and Frank McHugh play supporting roles as boyfriends and then there's Jeffrey Lynne who broke into films only two years before in a Warner's short feature.

The success of Four Daughters the previous year (it had been nominated for several Oscars) prompted Warner Brothers to do a sequel. The only problem they had was that their new sensation, John Garfield, was written off the script of Four Daughters (in that film he had committed suicide from an automobile crash). So, Warners was in a quandary about how to bring Garfield back to life! The problem was solved when Daughters Courageous went into production. It was actually the same cast as Four Daughters, but they portrayed a different family that was vacationing at the beach. Faye Bainter played a single parent (a daring role in 1939 during the Production Code era) supporting her four daughters with the income she makes through her dress designing business. Garfield plays a neer-do-well who has no future. He captures the heart of the youngest sister, Priscilla Lane and the romance goes as far as an elopement attempt (Lane eloped with Garfield in the first film too).

The film is brilliantly directed and flows along steadily from beginning to end. In my opinion, it is the best of the four films made by Warners. Four Daughters is available on VHS. However, this film is not. If you have the chance to see this film on TCM, make sure to copy it on VHS or DVD.

That's right! If you're a film noir fanatic as I am, you'll appreciate this obscure film! It has all of the ingredients of a noir; sex, greed, blackmail, murder - it's all here! Plus, there are also many additional surprises; pre-DNA forensic science and one of the first movies to show a skeleton used of non-horror purposes; something unheard of for it's time. The cinematography is second to none for the crime-drama films made during this era. Plus, that's not all! this movie is filmed largely on location in Boston and Cambridge. There are some great views of the city from 1950 which cannot be missed.

And the plot is pure noir too. Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson) is a victim of circumstances when he is falsely accused of murdering Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling), a "hostess" from the seedy "Grass Skirt" cocktail lounge. This is only the top of the iceberg. As the movie progresses, Shanway, distraught over his wife's miscarriage, is drowning his sorrows at the "Grass Skirt" which is just across the street from the hospital his wife is in. Heldon is also pregnant, not by choice, from a tryst she is having with "blue blood" James Joshua Hartley (Edmon Ryan) a businessman from the lower part of Cape Cod. Heldon's attempts to see Hartley in order to confront him about her pregnancy are fruitless; Hartley is definitely giving her the brush off. Shanway is the perfect stooge for Heldon as she takes advantage of his sorrow by giving him too much to drink and then offering to drive him home in his own car.

Things don't work out that way as she takes him for an unexpected ride to the Cape in order to read Hartley the riot act. Later that night, they arrive at a hamburger stand near Hartley's home. She dumps Shanway at the hamburger stop and continues up the Cape where she encounters Hartley, who, in turn, kills her, buries her in the sand dunes and dumps Shanway's car in a bog.

Later on in the late fall, an ornithologist (played by a young "elfish" Walter Burke) discovers a skeleton in the sand and the investigation begins. Ricardo Montalbon and Bruce Bennett both play great roles in their attempts to find the murderer. The skeleton is brought to Harvard Medical School and the forensics begin. All this time, Elsa Lanchester, the victim's landlady gets into the act and attempts to black mail Hartley after finding his phone number scrawled by the hall phone in her home. She adds one plus one, and visits Hartley with the attempt to extort money from him. In one scene, in his office, she musters up the courage to look through his desk and finds a gun which she gingerly puts in her handbag. This plot is finely woven, moves quickly and gives the viewer an exciting experience throughout the film.

My advice: see this film! It is a fine example of the noir that was so popular during this special era of film making. What puzzles me is that there is so much "junk" available on the market; low budget horror pics, dumb "girlie" movies, idiotic "bathroom humor" flicks - all available on DVD or VHS. However, a superb movie like Mystery Street remains unavailable. Why?

This is a little known classic from the film noir era of the '40's and early '50's. I had the privilege of seeing this movie listed in the TV guide only once and that was in the summer of 1984 on one of the local cable stations. Luckily, we had just purchased our first VCR and recorded it for posterity. I can watch this one over and over again without getting tired of it.

It's a simple plot with the usual sex-crime-greed ingredients that were common in these film noirs. And the cast is super! Howard Duff, Ida Lupino, Stephen McNally, John Litel, Peggy Dow and Taylor Holmes round off the principals featured in this movie. Also, look closely for Jerry Paris (of Dick Van Dyke fame)standing by the magazine counter!

Steve McNally plays Selden Clark, manager of a local mill owned by John Litel. McNally has a tryst with Peggy Dow and conspires to get control of the mill by pushing Litel off a catwalk inside the mill, then marrying the owner's daughter (Lupino), bumping her off and living happily ever after with Dow. Being the case with film noir, this doesn't pan out exactly as Selden Clark anticipates! Sure, he marrys the daughter, but she finds out (too late) that this guy is a psychotic bum. She manages to get away from him by stealing away in her 1946 Ford convertible (nice car!), but her brakes don't work due to some mechanical failure caused by her neer-do-well new husband. She manages to leap from the car before it crashes into the river. Everyone thinks that she's dead, but the body can't be found.

Selden is convinced that she's still alive somewhere and puts up a $5,000 reward for anyone who can produce her. Enter Howard Duff. Duff plays the catalyst in this film; at first thinking that she is a victim of amnesia, cheerfully (and alas) returning her to Selden. He then comes to his senses and manages to rescue her from Selden's clutches. It has a happy ending with Duff and Lupino getting married, as they actually did in real life.

It is amazing that this movie continues to be ignored. Many think that Ida Lupino was great in the early '40's in such films as They Drive By Night and High Sierra, but she was actually better by the late '40's and early 50's (The Man I Love, Road House, On Dangerous Ground, Private Hell 36) and was about to earn the distinction of being Hollywood's first female director (The Hitchhiker, The Bigamist, Not Wanted, Outrage). She was an incredible lady.

This chestnut is practically impossible to find even in bootleg form. Like many of the film noirs of this time period, Woman in Hiding continues to be neglected. This film certainly deserves to be recognized and marketed to the unsuspecting public. It seems that I have the only copy in captivity and it's not going to leave my collection any soon! Seriously folks, if you notice this one listed in the TV Guide, make a copy for your own personal collection. You won't be disappointed.

I had the chance to see this film thirty years ago when in school. For some reason that escapes memory, I didn't see it. However, some of my friends saw it and the one thing I remember about what they said was their comments about the dog doo scene. Being the case that 20 year old minds are still impressionable and "porous", these comments lasted throughout the decades and I finally got the chance to view this "disaster".

Big mistake...

Even though this movie is 32 years old, it still has a lot of "shock clout" and should be viewed with caution. Nothing really shocks me much except for the graphic slaughtering of animals or an occasional authentic murder, but this movie was totally disgusting. I wasn't prepared for it.

I'm a big fan of John Waters' movies; Hairspray was probably one of his best, primarily because of the good quality of acting and the plot. Polyester was good too, but inferior to Hairspray in the principals used. These two films far outshine Pink Flamingos. The acting is OK, but the plot is totally gross. Danny Mills who portrays the son "Crackers", a character who is a reject from the incest factory, even though it's not intimated in the movie but should be. Edith Massey the "egg lady" is a totally disgusting person throughout the film, even though she spends most of her time in a crib. Believe me, you'll never want to eat any eggs for a long time after you watch her character on film. And Divine steals the show in his disgusting acts of putting a steak between his legs, performing "soft core" fellatio on Mills, and, worst of all, eating dog doo.

I would imagine that so much has been written (and said) about this film in the past 32 years, so there's no use in beating a dead horse. This film should be watched with a warning: please watch this film with caution!