Movies I've Missed (Until Now): The Outriders (1950)

I usually check to see what old Western movie the digital TV channel GRIT is running on Saturday nights. GRIT shows old Western movies all the time, of course, but for some reason when they run one on Saturday night that I haven’t seen before, I try to watch it. Most recently, it was THE OUTRIDERS, a Joel McCrea film from 1950 that not only had I never seen, I don’t remember ever even hearing of it before. So I had to check it out, of course.

The movie opens late in the Civil War. McCrea, Barry Sullivan, and James Whitmore are three Confederate soldiers who escape from a Union prison camp in Missouri. They throw in with a gang of irregulars led by Jeff Corey and are sent all the way to Santa Fe, where they’re supposed to infiltrate a wagon train taking several loads of hides back to St. Louis. Hidden under those hides, however, is a million dollars in gold headed for the Union treasury. Corey plans to steal it and take it to Richmond to prop up the Confederacy, but in order to do that, McCrea, Sullivan, and Whitmore have to lead the wagon train into an ambush.

Tensions develop among the three men, of course, and are made worse when a beautiful young woman played by Arlene Dahl joins the wagon train. There are Indian attacks, a flooded river, a tragic death, some fisticuffs, and finally an epic showdown. Western movie fans will have a pretty good idea what’s coming, all the way through.

Along the way, however, there’s some spectacular scenery (besides Arlene Dahl), excellent photography, and a lot of action. McCrea is his usual stalwart self and Corey hams it up effectively as the epitome of wide-eyed evil. There are a couple of lapses of logic in the plot that could have been explained away easily with a line or two, but mostly things hang together all right. THE OUTRIDERS is worth watching for Western fans, as long as your expectations aren’t set too high.

While watching this, I was struck by the fact that when it comes to Westerns, Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott are practically interchangeable. I think McCrea had considerably more range and could play effectively in different kinds of films. For example, I can’t imagine Scott in DEAD END or SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS. But the characters they played in Westerns were almost identical. THE OUTRIDERS would have been the same movie with Scott in McCrea’s part. So it’s kind of fitting that they’re both in RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, with Scott playing a little against type for a change. And that’s a movie that I ought to watch again, one of these days.

Movies I've Missed (Until Now): Gunpoint (1966)

Looking around for something to watch on TV the other night, I noticed that Grit was showing an Audie Murphy Western I didn’t remember ever seeing. Audie was one of my dad’s favorite movie cowboys, along with Randolph Scott and Rod Cameron, and I watched many of those movies with him. Watching an Audie Murphy Western these days feels a little like my dad is visiting me for a while.

So, naturally, I watched GUNPOINT, from 1966, one of Audie’s last few movies before his untimely death in 1969. It starts with something else that held considerable nostalgia value for me: a train robbery filmed on the Durango-to-Silverton narrow gauge line in Colorado, which we rode on during a family vacation in the early Sixties. I recognized it right away. Audie, as the local sheriff, suspects the train will be held up by a gang of outlaws led by the vicious Drago (Morgan Woodward, who else?), but his efforts to foil the robbery are thwarted by his treacherous deputy who’s actually in with the gang. The deputy is played by Denver Pyle, a rare occasion of him playing a bad guy, but he handles the role well.

Through a rather convoluted setup, the outlaws wind up kidnapping a saloon songbird as well (Joan Staley), whose fiancée is gambler/gunman Warren Stevens. Before you know it, Audie and Stevens have teamed up with some other townspeople to form a posse and go after the outlaws. It's a long chase with plenty of action as the posse gets whittled down until finally there are only a couple left to settle things with the bad guys.

I have to admit, there’s not much in this movie that I didn’t feel like I had written dozens of times in dozens of my books, which made for a definite sense of déjà vu. But I enjoyed GUNPOINT quite a bit anyway. The cast is comfortingly familiar. In addition to those already mentioned, it includes Roy Barcroft as the town doctor and Edgar Buchanan and Royal Dano as a couple of half-loco mustangers. There’s a spectacular scene with the train early on and then good stunt work all the way through. The photography and scenery are nice. There are a few lapses of logic in the script by Mary and Willard Willingham, but veteran director Earl Bellamy keeps things moving along briskly enough that they’re not too much of a distraction.

GUNPOINT isn’t as good as most of the movies Audie made earlier in his career. It’s just an average Western. But sometimes that’s all you need, and I had a good time watching it. I think my dad would have, too.

Critic's Choice (1963)

This will be a pretty short review. I was looking forward to CRITIC’S CHOICE since it’s a Bob Hope movie I’d never seen, and I’m a big Bob Hope fan. He plays an acerbic theater critic in New York. Lucille Ball is his wife, who decides to write a play of her own. John Dehner is a producer friend of theirs who decides to put the play on Broadway. Rip Torn is the womanizing director. Jim Backus is the psychiatrist neighbor of Hope and Ball. Richard Deacon is a rival theater critic.

Other than a few—very few—slightly amusing moments, this is a terrible movie. Why hire Bob Hope and then give him a dreary, depressing script that never lets him be Bob Hope? He and Ball are both miscast. Nobody in the movie is very likable, except for a couple of kid actors. I’d just as soon have continued to miss this one. I don’t like to write bad reviews, but this was just a big disappointment.

Dad's Army (2016)

I usually enjoy homefront stories, both British and American, set during World War II, so when I came across this movie about a group of Home Guardsmen protecting a small English town near the White Cliffs of Dover, I figured it might be worth watching. I was vaguely aware of a 1960s British comedy TV series called DAD’S ARMY and assumed this was a reboot with a different cast, which is exactly right.

I later discovered that this movie version is almost universally reviled by fans of the original series.

Never having seen the original, all I can do is take the movie for what it is: a well-made, mildly amusing comedy with a very predictable plot about a Nazi spy showing up in the village and trying to obtain some vital information that could alter the course of the war. Hijinks and sporadic slapstick ensue.

The cast, which includes Toby Jones and Bill Nighy as members of the Home Guard and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a beautiful magazine reporter, is pretty good. The scenery and production values are excellent. However, none of it ever gels into anything more than an okay way to pass a couple of hours. I’m intrigued by the idea of watching the original TV series now, though. I may have to look into that.

Overlooked Movies: Road to Hong Kong (1962)

I’m not certain, but I believe ROAD TO HONG KONG is the only one of the Road movies I hadn’t seen . . . until now. It’s the last of the series, and I remember when it played at the Eagle Drive-In in 1962, and of course it was on television many, many times when I was growing up, but somehow I’d never watched it. But I’m a big fan of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and finally got around to it.

In this one, they play a couple of con men in the Far East, and through a series of screwball circumstances, including mistaken identities and amnesia, Hope’s character winds up memorizing a rocket fuel formula stolen from the Russians by a sinister organization known as the Third Echelon. The rest of the movie is one misadventure after another as the bad guys try to get the formula from Hope. The fanatical leader of the group is played by Robert Morley, and one of their agents is Joan Collins. Hope and Crosby wind up getting sent into space not once but twice. They could have called this one ROAD TO THE MOON. Anyway, after a lot of fairly mild hijinks, everything works out and the world is saved from the bad guys, although the final fate of our not-so-intrepid duo is left in the air a little.

It’s been so long since I’ve seen the rest of the Road movies that I can’t say for sure, but I have a hunch that this is the weakest of them. The script by director Norman Panama and producer Melvin Frank produces some smiles but not many actual laughs. Still, I’ll watch and enjoy Hope and Crosby in just about anything, and it’s fun watching them work to make something out of not much. As usual, the best moments are probably when they break the fourth wall and talk to the audience. There are some amusing cameos by Peter Sellers, David Niven, Pat O’Brien, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. Dorothy L’Amour shows up for one fairly long scene and demonstrates how much the rest of the movie misses her.

Probably the most interesting angle about the whole film is how much it plays like a James Bond movie at times . . . and when it came out, there had been only one James Bond movie released, DR. NO. So oddly enough, ROAD TO HONG KONG may be the first movie to try to cash in on what became the secret agent boom of the Sixties.

If I had seen this movie at the Eagle when I was nine years old, I would have loved it. Some of the more risque dialogue would have gone over my head, but it has enough physical comedy and classic bits that I would have thought it was hilarious. I don’t want to criticize it too much now, because I actually did enjoy it quite a bit, but I think some of that was because of its nostalgia value. Still, that’s a perfectly good reason for watching a movie. I’m glad I finally got around to ROAD TO HONG KONG. I liked it enough I might even watch some of the earlier ones.

Overlooked Movies: St. Vincent (2014)

This comedy/drama from 2014 lands solidly in the "grumpy old man and kid are thrown together and learn life lessons from each other" school of filmmaking. While the plot is pretty predictable, Bill Murray is very good as the title character and the rest of the cast is solid, including Naomi Watts as a Russian hooker with a heart of gold and Melissa McCarthy as the kid's mom. The script has some funny lines and is heart-warming without being mawkish. And the soundtrack is excellent, including a great closing credits sequence featuring my favorite Bob Dylan song, "Shelter From the Storm". This movie won't change your life, but it's a pleasant enough way to spend a couple of hours.

Overlooked Movies: My Man Godfrey (1936)

MY MAN GODFREY is one of those movies that played on TV all the time when I was a kid, but I never watched it until now. When it started, Livia and I both commented on what an inventive main title sequence it has, especially for the time period, as the names of the actors and filmmakers appear on the sides of buildings as the scene pans across a city skyline. It works really well.

The story itself opens with a group of homeless men, including Godfrey, played by William Powell. Let’s face it, William Powell is always going to look dapper and distinguished, even unshaven and wearing raggedy old clothes. Some rich society folks show up on a scavenger hunt, including a pair of sisters: cold, arrogant Gail Patrick and sweet but goofy Carole Lombard. Lombard winds up hiring Powell as the new butler for her eccentric family. Everybody learns lessons from each other. And then “Godfrey” turns out to be not quite what he appears to be.

This is an early screwball comedy, and as such, a not quite perfected example of the genre. A few goofy things happen, and there’s a lot of fast-paced-almost-to-the-point-of-incomprehensible dialogue, but it’s not really all that funny. The more dramatic aspects of the story actually work better, as the movie has some points to make about the Depression era in which it was made. As usual, Powell’s great. I’ve liked him in everything that I’ve seen. Eugene Pallette, who has become one of my favorite character actors, is on hand as the long-suffering patriarch of the society family. I have to admit, I’m not much of a Carole Lombard fan, and she didn’t win me over in this movie. There’s nothing wrong with her, it’s just that she’s overshadowed by icy-but-beautiful Gail Patrick as the unsympathetic sister. It may be sacrilege to say this, but I almost wished Godfrey had wound up with her instead of Lombard’s character.

And where the hell was Charles Lane? Isn’t it a rule that Charles Lane has to be in every movie like this?

Anyway, I enjoyed MY MAN GODFREY and I’m glad I finally watched it. It’s well worth the time. It has a reputation as one of the best films of all time, and for me, it doesn’t reach that level, but it’s still a really nice movie from one of the various Golden Ages of Hollywood. 

Overlooked Movies: Air Strike (2018)

AIR STRIKE, a 2018 Chinese/American production starring Bruce Willis as an American pilot training and commanding the Chinese air force in the early days of World War II, has some of the worst reviews I’ve ever seen on IMDB. It’s propaganda, they say, showing how brave and noble the Chinese were in their battles against the Japanese. Yeah, maybe so . . . but the Chinese guys who wrote it must have watched every American war movie made during the Forties, because that’s exactly how it plays, complete with soap opera, comedy relief, and a lot of stirring action as the Chinese pilots fight to protect their homeland from Japanese bombers. There’s also a plotline about how one of the pilots, grounded because of injuries, becomes an intelligence agent and is tasked with delivering a vital code-breaking machine to its destination.

As with a lot of Bruce Willis movies these days, he gets top billing but is actually playing a supporting role. He’s on-screen for fifteen or twenty minutes, total. But that’s more than his daughter Rumer, who’s third-billed but has only one scene that lasts maybe thirty seconds. Adrian Brody, the only other actor in the cast you’ll recognize, plays a doctor and fares a little better, but he’s not around much, either.

AIR STRIKE suffers from some muddled storytelling, but the action scenes, although pretty heavy with CGI, are effective. I found myself interested in the characters and their storylines. It’s certainly not a great film, but I don’t think it’s as bad as the reviewers make it out to be. An enjoyable time-waster, let’s call it, and I don’t mean that to be damning with faint praise. Sometimes that’s plenty for me.

Overlooked Movies: 49th Parallel (1941)

 

I had never heard of this British war film from 1941 until recently, but it sounded intriguing, so we watched it. 49^TH PARALLEL refers to the border between the United States and Canada, and fittingly, since the movie is dedicated to the Canadian war effort, all but a few minutes of the action takes place in Canada.

It begins with a German submarine cruising up into Hudson’s Bay after destroying a Canadian tanker. The captain sends a six-man party ashore to capture a small fishing village so they can raid it for supplies and gasoline. However, the six Germans have barely made it to land when a couple of Canadian coastal patrol planes come along, spot the U-boat, and sink it. That leaves the shore party on their own, and the lieutenant in charge decides they’ll try to cross Canada to Vancouver where they can sneak aboard a Japanese ship. Failing that, they’ll try to reach the United States, which at this point is still officially neutral, and claim asylum.

This is the start of a journey that’s both epic and episodic, courtesy of director Michael Powell, screenwriter Emeric Pressburger, and a fine cast. Eric Portman, as the German lieutenant, is the only character who’s around for the entire movie, but others who come and go include a young Lawrence Olivier, playing a French-Canadian trapper; Leslie Howard as a foppish anthropologist/writer who’s tougher than he looks; and Raymond Massey, who plays an apparent hobo with a few surprises up his sleeve.

This is a propaganda film, no doubt about that, designed to point out the need for the United States to get into the war, but it accomplishes that aim with a considerable amount of subtlety and works just as well as a suspense yarn, with a few touches of humor and pathos along the way. Eric Portman is a great villain, and I was also impressed by Leslie Howard, who I think of mostly as Ashley Wilkes in GONE WITH THE WIND. The location photography is great, including some late shots of Niagara Falls. (And if you’re like me, you can’t even read the name of that place without hearing Moe Howard’s voice.) I really enjoyed 49^TH PARALLEL and I’m surprised I never heard of it until recently. It’s an excellent film.

Overlooked Movies: Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951)

This is another movie that played frequently on TV when I was growing up, but I never watched it until recently. I'm not a fan of the Hornblower novels by C.S. Forester. I read one of them when I was in high school, many years ago, and remember enjoying it, but I never read the rest of the series. I like a good historical naval adventure yarn now and then, though, so this seemed like a good bet. And it was. I enjoyed CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER a great deal.

This is a movie that's just packed full of plot, and that's not surprising since it's based on not just one novel but rather three, BEAT TO QUARTERS, SHIP OF THE LINE, and FLYING COLOURS, the first three Hornblower novels published. Because of that, the story just races along, with Hornblower and the crews of the ships he commands getting mixed up in one perilous adventure after another. Raoul Walsh was just about the perfect director for a big-scale, fast-moving epic like this that's mostly action but does have a few quieter, more poignant moments mixed in.

Gregory Peck is great as Hornblower, and Virginia Mayo is very good as the English lady who Hornblower has to rescue before falling in love with her. Neither of them seem to make much attempt at a British accent, which is probably a good thing. I had no trouble accepting them as English despite that. Supporting actor James Robertson Justice almost steals the show as a big galoot of a British sailor.

The battle scenes actually do steal the show. They're some of the best, most realistic-looking naval battles I've seen in a movie. I'm not sure how Walsh and his crew accomplished this, but they did a fine job. And there are sword fights, always a plus in any movie.

CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER is old-fashioned Hollywood filmmaking and a thoroughly enjoyable movie. I had a wonderful time watching it.

Overlooked Movies: The Sapphires (2012)

I’d never heard of this movie until a friend of mine mentioned it favorably, but it has Chris O’Dowd in it and he’s great in THE IT CROWD and GET SHORTY, so I figured it might be worth watching. Turns out, it definitely is.

Set mostly in the Sixties, THE SAPPHIRES is the story of three aborginal sisters and their cousin who form a singing group in Australia, wind up with a washed-up musician (O’Dowd) as their manager, switch from country and western to soul music, and get a job entertaining American troops in Vietnam. Comedy, tragedy, and romance ensue.

The plot of this movie is fairly predictable, but fine acting and great music elevate it into a well above average film. O’Dowd is wonderful, as usual, in a sad sack but good-hearted role, and the Australian actresses playing the Sapphires are all excellent. This is a heart-warming movie, but not in a mawkish sense. I really enjoyed it and give it a high recommendation.

Overlooked Movies: They Got Me Covered (1943)

 

THEY GOT ME COVERED is another early Bob Hope movie that I somehow never saw until now. It’s got a great premise: Hope is an inept newspaper correspondent, Dorothy L’amour is his girl Friday/girlfriend who shares an apartment with five other young women in war-crowded Washington D.C., and together they uncover a Nazi spy ring run by Otto Preminger, Eduardo Ciannelli, and Philip Ahn. Hope and L’Amour have the Nazis after them while they run around trying to get the proof they need to expose the spy ring. Many hijinks ensue.

This is an odd movie that relies more on funny situations and physical comedy for its laughs rather than the snappy banter that Hope was known for. There’s some of that in Harry Kurnitz’s script, of course, but overall it’s not as funny as many of Hope’s movies. It is, however, a fairly complex, well-plotted little spy thriller, and as usual, for all of his cowardly posturing, Hope’s character turns out to be quite a scrapper when he’s forced into it.

For the most part, the cast carries this movie. I always like Hope, Dorothy L’amour is beautiful and funny, all the bad guys are suitably sinister, and character actor Donald Meek does a weird scene in which he’s a crazy old man who thinks the Civil War is still going on. It’s amusing, but it almost seems like a scene from a different movie. There’s a Bing Crosby joke (always welcome). THEY GOT ME COVERED never quite rises above the level of average . . . but an average Bob Hope movie from that era is still pretty entertaining. I’m glad I finally got around to watching it.

Overlooked Movies: A Pistol for Ringo (1965)

I had a hunch that this was the first Spaghetti Western I ever saw, and when I watched it again recently, I was sure of that because I remember some of it vividly and know that I watched it the first time at my sister's house in 1969 or '70, years that I spent a lot of time there.

But that bit of nostalgia aside, A PISTOL FOR RINGO is a pretty darned good movie. It was made when the Italians were just starting to make Westerns and is a little closer to American Westerns in its look and attitude. Giuliano Gemma (billed as "Montgomery Wood") is a gunfighter named Ringo who is recruited to infiltrate a gang of bank robbers when the outlaws take over a hacienda and hold the owner and his beautiful daughter hostage. It's a fairly simple plot, but there are a few twists and turns and double-crosses in the script by director Duccio Tessari, and after a while it's a little difficult to figure out whose side Ringo is really on.

The action scenes are consistently good, the scenery is spectacular, and the music is Ennio Morricone, so you know it's top-notch. Gemma is a handsome, athletic, likable hero, and Nieves Navarro, playing a female outlaw named Dolores, is just gorgeous. All the bad guys are suitably despicable.

You might not think so, but A PISTOL FOR RINGO is actually a Christmas movie, as the characters mention frequently. Some of the Christmas decorations at the hacienda actually play a significant role in one of the action scenes. It's not IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE or MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET, by any means, but if you want some offbeat Christmas viewing, you could do worse. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I'm glad to have seen A PISTOL FOR RINGO again after 50 years.

Overlooked Movies: Sahara (1943)

I had seen this movie before, so it wasn’t completely overlooked by me, but the last time I watched it was during the summer of 1966, so I remembered almost nothing about it except that I liked it at the time. Felt like watching it again now, and I’m glad I did because it’s even better than I remembered it.

The plot of SAHARA is pretty simple: an American tank commanded by Sgt. Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart) and crewed by radioman Jimmy Doyle (Dan Duryea) and gunner Waco Hoyt (Bruce Bennett) is trying to get through the North African desert and link back up with the rest of their command before the Germans catch them. In order to do that, they’ll have to have more water, so they head for an area where some wells are supposed to be located. Along the way, they pick up a British medic, some British soldiers, a Frenchman, a Sudanese soldier with an Italian prisoner, and a German pilot who tries to shoot up the tank only to have his plane shot out from under him. It’s a motley crew, certainly. Then, when they finally find water, they have to defend the well from a horde of German soldiers, basically sacrificing their lives to slow down Rommel’s advance.

This movie has a great cast. In addition to the actors mentioned above, we have J. Carrol Naish as the Italian prisoner, Lloyd Bridges as one of the English soldiers (his British accent isn’t bad), Richard Aherne as the medic, Kurt Kreuger as the German pilot, and a fine performance from Rex Ingram as the Sudanese sergeant. The acting is strong all around.

Director Zoltan Korda co-wrote the screenplay, based on a story by Philip MacDonald (probably best remembered these days for his mystery novels). Korda keeps the action moving along very smoothly, and the movie generates a lot of suspense leading up to a very effective, almost last minute plot twist. There’s some humor and tragedy along the way, and the whole thing works as great entertainment. I never hear much about this movie, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a real gem. Highly recommended.

Overlooked Movies: Barbary Coast (1935)

 

I was looking around for old movies to watch and came across a mention of BARBARY COAST, released in 1935. A movie directed by Howard Hawks, with an original script by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and I’d never seen it? That really surprised me, so we watched this one a few nights ago and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

It’s the story of a young woman (Miriam Hopkins) from New York who travels to San Francisco during the Gold Rush to marry a miner who’s struck it rich. But when she gets there, she discovers that her intended husband is dead, having lost his mine to crooked saloon owner Edward G. Robinson and then been killed in a shootout. With nowhere else to go, Hopkins, who is greedy and ambitious and was only marrying the miner for his money, stays in San Francisco and winds up as Robinson’s mistress while also running the roulette wheel in his casino. But then things get complicated when she meets stalwart young prospector Joel McCrea, and the vigilantes rise up to start dealing out justice to the crooks who think they run the town.

BARBARY COAST is a pretty hardboiled crime yarn in some respects (one reviewer called it LITTLE CAESAR OUT WEST) and also delivers some romance and adventure and a little comedy here and there, mostly from Walter Brennan, still relatively young but already enthusiastically chewing the scenery as an eccentric, cackling old coot, this time an eyepatch-wearing character known as Old Atrocity. With Hecht and MacArthur handling the writing, you know there’s going to be a lot of witty banter and a little sentimentality, and the script comes through with just about everything you’d expect except a satisfying ending.

The cast is really strong in this movie, too. I’m not a big fan of Robinson or Hopkins, but they’re okay and I always like Joel McCrea no matter what movie he’s in. Brian Donlevy is Robinson’s gunslinging henchman Knuckles Jacoby. Harry Carey is a stern and determined vigilante. Donald Meek plays a prospector instead of a traveling salesman or bank clerk for a change. Bob Kortman is a henchman. (Was Bob Kortman ever not a henchman?) David Niven, in his first movie, is a drunken sailor. Supposedly he’s hard to spot, but I saw him right away. Famous athlete Jim Thorpe plays an Indian (typecasting), but I never spotted him even though I looked for him.

Legend has it that Hopkins was such a huge bitch during the filming that when Robinson was supposed to slap her during one scene and accidentally (?) knocked her down, the set erupted in cheers and applause. Don’t know if that’s true or not, but she’s certainly not playing a very likable character for most of the movie.

The personal themes that crop up again and again in Hawks’ work—competence, self-reliance, a desire for independence tempered by the relationships within a group, a beautiful, wise-cracking gal who’s as tough as the boys (mostly)—aren’t really present in BARBARY COAST. It comes across more as a job of work for Hawks, but it’s a professional, well-made, entertaining job of work. Not a great movie, but a very good one most of the time and well worth watching.

Overlooked Movies: Them! (1954)

 

After watching BIG ASS SPIDER! a while back, I was in the mood for another giant bug movie, so when Svengoolie showed one of the granddaddies of the genre, THEM!, I recorded it and we got around to watching it this week. I’d seen this before, but the last time was more than 50 years ago, so I think it counts as overlooked.

All the staples of Fifties sci-fi horror are there: the guy who first encounters the menace and gets drawn into the effort to defeat it (a New Mexico highway patrolman played by James Whitmore); the stalwart forces of the government (FBI agent James Arness) and military (officers Onslow Stevens and Sean McClory); a brilliant but eccentric scientist (Edmund Gwenn) and his beautiful daughter (Joan Weldon), who is also a brilliant scientist. After a truly creepy opening featuring Whitmore and his partner finding a little girl wandering through the desert in a catatonic state, more grim discoveries are made as it becomes apparent that something is killing the inhabitants of this sparsely populated area. The giant ants (mutated by nuclear tests at White Sands, natch) soon show up and go on a rampage, and our heroes gather to do battle against them, a war that ultimately winds up in the sewers underneath Los Angeles.

But all of you know that because you’ve seen this movie, too. But maybe a few of you haven’t. When we watched it, Livia commented that she didn’t remember ever seeing it before. I remembered the basics of the plot, but that’s all.

What I didn’t recall is what a really well-made movie THEM! is. Director Gordon Douglas, who made some pretty good Westerns, too, keeps things moving along very nicely, the photography is excellent, and the special effects are pretty good for the era. But the cast really carries this movie. James Whitmore isn’t who you think of when you talk about action heroes, but he does a fine job as an average joe caught up in something big and terrible. Edmund Gwenn is good in anything (although, yes, it is hard not to think about MIRACLE ON 34^TH STREET when he’s talking). James Arness wasn’t a great actor at this point of his career, but he already has a really commanding screen presence. And there are a few moments, when his character loses his temper, that pure Matt Dillon comes through. Fess Parker, Davy and Dan’l his own self, is great in a short scene as a Texas rancher who encounters the giant ants and is locked away in the loony bin when he tells his story. (Yes, I know “loony bin” is politically incorrect, but it wasn’t in 1954.) Elsewhere in the cast are Leonard Nimoy (don’t blink, or you will miss him), Western stalwart Dub “Cannonball” Taylor, and former major league infielder John Beradino, a fine character actor who appeared in countless Western and detective TV series in the Fifties before settling down to a long run as Dr. Steve Hardy on the soap opera GENERAL HOSPITAL. He was actually the leading man/protagonist of GH in its early years.

We also get the usual Fifties sci-fi lectures and veiled warnings about the unknown dangers of nuclear weapons, all of them delivered by Gwenn in distinguished but ominous tones. So THEM! checks the right boxes and pushes the right buttons for its genre, but it does that so well that I found it a pure pleasure to watch. I really enjoyed it, and if you haven’t seen it lately, or at all, I think it’s well worth the time.

Besides, in what other movie will you ever see Matt Dillon shake hands with Santa Claus?

Movies I've Missed (Until Now): The Ghost Breakers (1940)

Somehow I never saw this movie on TV when I was growing up, and neither did Livia. So THE GHOST BREAKERS, the second pairing of Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard after THE CAT AND THE CANARY (which I also liked) was new to us and thoroughly enjoyable.

This movie packs a lot of plot into 82 minutes. Goddard inherits an island off the coast of Cuba, complete with an old castle haunted by ghosts and zombies. Hope is a radio gossip columnist who runs afoul of some gangsters over a story he broadcasts. Circumstances bring them together, Hope thinks he accidentally shot and killed a guy, and so to escape from the law and the mob, he hides in Goddard’s steamer trunk and winds up sailing to Cuba with her, where together they solve the mystery of what’s really going on in the spooky old castle.

THE GHOST BREAKERS is a really entertaining movie. It’s not fall-on-the-floor hilarious, but it’s consistently funny, the creepy stuff is effectively creepy, and it has a great cast, including Paul Lukas, Anthony Quinn, Paul Fix, Noble Johnson as a truly scary zombie, and in very small roles, Robert Ryan and Douglas Kennedy (literally, those last two, blink and you’ll miss ‘em). Hope is great as always, cowardly most of the time but hardboiled when he needs to be. Goddard is cute and sexy and smart and spends a surprising amount of screen time in her underwear.

But as I said to Livia while we were watching it, “I didn’t think it was possible to steal a movie from Bob Hope, but Willie Best is certainly trying.” Best plays Alex, Hope’s servant/sidekick/best friend, and is a magnificent character. A lot of the reviews on IMDB complain about “offensive racial stereotyping”, but as far as I’m concerned, they watched a different movie than I did. Despite his frequent complaints about being scared, Best’s Alex is just about the smartest, bravest character in the movie and saves the day time and again. Admittedly, some of those instances are accidents, but not all of them. And it’s clear that his character and Hope’s truly care about each other. I thought the two of them worked together beautifully, like Cosby and Culp on I SPY, and wish they had made more movies about these characters. As it is, I’m very glad I finally watched THE GHOST BREAKERS. I had a great time and highly recommend it if you’ve missed it somehow, too.

Overlooked Movies: Bottom of the 9th (2019)

I don’t think BOTTOM OF THE 9th is based on a true story, but other than that, it fits neatly into the inspirational sports movie category. Twenty years ago, hotshot baseball phenom Sonny Stano makes a tragic mistake, gets sent to Sing Sing Prison, and has to forget his dream of becoming a New York Yankee. When he finally gets out, he returns to his old neighborhood, struggles to get a job and fit in, deals with old enemies, tries to rekindle a relationship with his former girlfriend, and then gets what seems like a lucky break when he runs into his old minor league coach and winds up with an assistant coaching job on the local farm team. But Sonny can still hit, and the dream of making it to the bigs isn’t completely dead . . .

Most of these movies are pretty predictable, and BOTTOM OF THE 9th is no exception. I knew pretty much everything that was going to happen in it, and chances are, you will, too, if you watch it. The appeal is in the cast, the writing, and how well the whole thing is executed. In those respects, I thought this was an entertaining movie. Joe Manganiello, who I’ve always found to be a likable actor, turns in a good, believable performance as Sonny. Sofia Vergara, who’s married to him in real life, is okay as the former girlfriend, but the script really doesn’t give her a lot to do. The supporting cast is solid, there are a few funny lines here and there to break up the slow-burn drama, and basically, I’m a sucker for baseball movies and have been ever since I saw THE BABE RUTH STORY when I was a kid. This doesn’t go in the top rank of baseball movies, but I liked it and thought it was a decent way to spend a couple of hours.

Overlooked Movies: Beyond the Mask (2015)

I’d never heard of this movie until someone mentioned it in an email group I belong to that’s devoted to Zorro and the work of pulpster Johnston McCulley, but it sounded promising so I decided to check it out. BEYOND THE MASK is set in England and America in 1775-76. The protagonist is a former mercenary/assassin for the East India Company who wants to leave the violence and darkness of his life behind and start over as a peaceful man. His former bosses don’t want that, however—he knows too much, and he’ll make a good fall guy for them—so they try to have him killed. Some twists of fate wind up with him taking on the identity of a vicar and falling in love with a beautiful young woman. But more plot twists ruin what might have been an idyllic existence for him, and before you know it, he’s off to the rebellious colonies in America, where he becomes a masked vigilante known as the Highwayman, battling plots by his old enemies who are trying to put a stop to the American Revolution before it barely gets underway. From that point, things get pretty wild and over-the-top.

BEYOND THE MASK is part Dr. Syn, part Zorro, and a lot The Wild, Wild West, a steampunkish version of the early days of the Revolutionary War. You won’t have heard of any of the actors in it except John Rhys-Davies, who has a good time chewing the scenery as the head bad guy. But the cast does pretty good for the most part, there’s a lot of well-staged swashbuckling action, and the production values are top-notch most of the time. The movie looks good. Despite some notes at the end trying to justify the goofy plot, there’s not much semblance of historical accuracy, but if you go into it knowing that and take the movie for what it is, I think it’s entertaining.

This was produced for the inspirational market, but the religious elements are pretty rare and not heavy-handed. There’s no sex or cussing or excessive gore, but you don’t find those things in movies from the Thirties and Forties or TV from the Sixties, and that’s what BEYOND THE MASK reminds me of. Judging by the reviews on IMDB, this is a love it or hate it movie, but I didn’t react either of those ways. It’s not a great film, but I had a good time watching it.

Overlooked Movies: Big Ass Spider! (2013)

 

When I first saw the title of this movie, I though, “Nah, this has to got to be a joke. There’s not really a movie called BIG ASS SPIDER!” Well, as it turns out, there is, and also to my surprise, it turned out to be a pretty entertaining little film. What better movie to feature for an Overlooked Movies post the week of Halloween than a good old-fashioned Creature Feature?

BIG ASS SPIDER! is a throwback of sorts to movies like THEM!, right down to the exclamation point in the title and scenes involving the sewers along the Los Angeles River, as well as involvement by the military and a scientist who thinks he knows how to destroy the giant spider of the title. It’s actually an exterminator and his security guard sidekick who hold the key to defeating the creature, though.

This is an odd movie. For the most part, it takes a rather tongue-in-cheek approach, has some funny lines, and clearly the filmmakers have a lot of affection for the sort of movie they’re making fun of. But it’s also a little too violent and gory to work completely as a comedy. It might have been more successful if they had gone one way or the other. As it is, though, the hybrid approach works pretty well. Greg Grunberg, a top-notch character actor who has been in a ton of movies and TV shows, gets to play the lead for a change and does a fine job as the gutsy, determined exterminator. Lombardo Boyar is pretty funny as his sidekick. Ray Wise, not playing a smarmy bad guy for a change, is the officer in charge of the military effort to kill the rampaging giant spider. The acting is pretty good all around, and so are the special effects. I’m not sure why I never even heard of this movie until now, but I enjoyed watching it.