Ten Days of Terror!: Doctor X

Film: Doctor X
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

Sometimes I go into movies knowing nothing about what I’m going to see and what I get is almost beyond description. Doctor X has so many odd things about it that feel like they can’t really be a part of a movie. For instance, this is a film from 1932, and the studio created both color and black-and-white prints; color for the big markets, black-and-white for the small towns (I watched the color version). It’s very clearly a pre-Code film since cannibalism, murder, and hints of prostitution are points of the plot. It also features the wildly under-used Fay Wray in a negligee.

Another odd bit about Doctor X is the name. There actually is a “Doctor X” in the film, and if you thought that he was going to be the bad guy, you’ve been misled. That would be a common assumption—there’s a bunch of films named after the villain and far fewer named after a character who is only kind of the main good guy and kind of the main character. There’s weird science, a weirder monster, a nosy reporter, and did I mention Fay Wray in a nightie?

No, Not the Show

Film: The Walking Dead
Format: Internet video on Fire!

Some actors give every role their all no matter what. Even if the movie is terrible, poorly thought out, filled with holes, or just not very good, these actors put their heart and soul into every role they take. It’s one of the reasons I love about Boris Karloff. To be fair, Karloff made a ton of great early creepers, but a lot of them were low rent and low budget and filled with weird science and even weirder mysticism. Regardless, Karloff treated each role like Shakespeare. All of this brings us to The Walking Dead from 1936. This is technically an old-school zombie movie (in that it involves literally the walking dead), but we’re not going to be dealing with flesh-eating ghouls.

At its heart, The Walking Dead is a sort of revenge picture combined with Karloff’s classic Frankenstein role with mob ties to boot. The difference is that rather than being made up of a bunch of stitched-together body parts, Karloff is going to play a man fully resurrected by Science! and seeking revenge on those who had him killed in the first place.

Working in a Coal Mine

Film: Black Fury
Format: Internet video on the new internet machine.

In the early days of Oscar, at least for a couple of years, voters were allowed to write in candidates for particular awards. This is why Paul Muni, who was not officially nominated for Black Fury in 1935, came in second to Victor McLaglen and ahead of all three nominated actors from Mutiny on the Bounty. This was an ability that was taken away from the voters after the next year. Anyway, it’s a film that really rises and falls on Paul Muni—something often true of Paul Muni’s films in general.

Honestly, I was kind of hoping for a gangster film along the lines of Scarface: The Shame of a Nation. Instead, I got something much closer to The Angry Silence that I watched a couple of days ago. Yes, this is a union picture involving strikes and scabs and corrupt officials. It’s called Black Fury not because of race or the “color” of someone’s nefarious deeds, but because it’s about coal miners, and one assumes that Black Lung Fury didn’t really sell in Peoria.

Ten Days of Terror!: Mystery of the Wax Museum

Film: Mystery of the Wax Museum
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Early movies from great directors can be really fun. I’d love to say that’s the case with Michael Curtiz and Mystery of the Wax Museum, but Curtiz had dozens of credits before this film. He started directing more than two decades before this film. The man was a directing machine in the early years of talkies; Mystery of the Wax Museum was the first of seven credited films from him for 1933. It’s also an early color film, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun to see an early two-strip Technicolor movie.

The truth is that there’s a good chance that you’ve seen a movie a hell of a lot like this one already. If you’ve seen the version of House of Wax starring Vincent Price, you’ve seen a good percentage of this film, or at least the main plot. While the character names are different, many of the beats in the plot are virtually identical and a lot of the details are essentially the same as well.

Real Problems are Too Scary

Films: Life with Father
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Comedies don’t always transfer well from age to age. Life with Father is a dandy example of this. I imagine that in the world of 1947, with the war over and prosperity just starting to return, a comedy about life in the late 19th century would have sold quite well. Life with Father is just that film, the sort of comedy where our titular father simply can’t fathom the life that goes on around him. While he’s a captain of industry in his office, he is constantly befuddled and confounded by everything around him at home, mainly because no one acts with any sense. It’s a tried and true formula, and because of that, it hits a lot of obvious notes.

What this means, though, is that Life with Father is just a series of events with only the characters to tie them together. There are a few running points that carry through a great deal of the film, but no real plot to speak of. In essence, the entire film is about how the father of the title, Clarence Day (William Powell) can’t make sense of his wife Vinnie (Irene Day) or the goings-on of his four sons, Clarence Jr. (Jimmy Lydon), John (Martin Milner), Whitney (Johnny Calkins), and Harlan (Derek Scott).

Love Polygon

Film: Four Daughters
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

My DVR goes through periods of boom and bust. Suddenly, out of nowhere, half a dozen movies I want to see will appear in the same week on various channels and the damn thing starts to get clogged. And, like most people, I have things I’ve recorded months (or years) ago waiting around for me to get to them. It’s a constant battle between what I have available to me through various means, what I want to record, and removing things from the DVR’s memory. When I get the chance, I like to remove something. One of the oldest recordings I had was Four Daughters, which I recorded last year. That’s long enough.

That said, Four Daughters is the kind of film I wish I had already watched or had left in the queue. It commits what is in my opinion the cardinal sin of movies: it’s boring. A boring film, at least in my opinion, is far worse than a bad one. I’ve no doubt that the people involved were earnest in attempting to make a good film, and in some respects they succeeded; this was nominated for Best Picture, after all. But it’s been a long time since I’ve found something so dreary. It’s a shame, too, because there are good people involved in this and it comes from a talented and acclaimed director.

More Like "Averse"

Film: Anthony Adverse
Format: Streaming video from TCM Watch on laptop.

I typically use Turner Classic Movies for films that I can’t find anywhere else. There’s a real temptation to record pretty much everything I haven’t seen, but I’d fill the DVR in a couple of days doing that. Anthony Adverse is a film I can find in a library, but can only get on VHS. I missed it on TCM, but caught the film today on TCM’s online service. I gotta say, I dig the online TCM since it allows me to catch films I either missed recording or forgot to record.

In this case, it’s not TCM’s fault that Anthony Adverse isn’t very good. This isn’t even a case where it’s a film that was good for its time but hasn’t aged well. I’m not convinced that Anthony Adverse was a good film for 1936. It’s overlong, for starters. The drama is drippy, the romance doesn’t work. In fact, the only thing I like in it is something that I found funny that certainly wasn’t intended to be humorous.

The Real Brave Sir Robin

Film: The Adventures of Robin Hood
Format: DVD from Bolingbrook Fountaindale Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

The Adventures of Robin Hood has a unique distinction. It’s safe to say that almost everyone knows the story, but virtually no one has actually read the book. I know that saying this will probably mean that I’ll get at least one comment from someone who will claim to have read the book. Yeah. Good for you. That’s why the word “virtually” is in the sentence above—I’ve been writing long enough that I can cover my bases.

Anyway, you hear the words “Robin Hood,” and unless you have lived under a barrel your entire life, you don’t think of Kevin Costner or Cary Elwes or Russell Crowe. The quintessential Robin Hood is Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Even if you haven’t seen it, you still know the basic story. But, just in case you do call that barrel home, here it is in a nutshell.

King Richard the Lion-Heart (Ian Hunter) has been captured in the crusades and the throne usurped by his brother John (Claude Rains). Working with Prince John are Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone) and the High Sheriff of Nottingham (Melville Cooper). Robin of Locksley, a.k.a. Robin Hood (Flynn) rebels and gathers a group of men in Sherwood Forest and fights oppression. His main go-to guys are Will Scarlett (Patric Knowles), Little John (Alan Hale) and Friar Tuck (the always magnificent Eugene Pallette). Robin fights for the true king, to free the Saxon people, and for the love of the beautiful Marian (Olivia de Havilland). We’ve also got a couple of comic relief characters, specifically Much (Herbert Mundin), who is saved at the start of the film by Robin and Will and Bess (Una O’Connor), Maid Marian’s handmaiden.

Okay, so you know the basic story, and that story is a classic. There’s another reason to watch this film, though. The Adventures of Robin Hood has the true classic Robin Hood scenes that are either referenced, spoofed, or remade in other versions of the film. We have, for instance, Robin’s entrance into the feast with a deer across his back and his daring, swashbuckling escape. We have the quarterstaff fight with Little John on the bridge. There is the meeting with Friar Tuck, the archery tournament, and his daring escape from the gallows. Oh, it’s all here because all of it started here.

Y’know what? I could be a cynical bastard and talk trash about this film, but I’m not going to. I really enjoy the hell out of this film because it’s a tremendous amount of fun. It’s Errol Flynn playing Robin Hood as a swashbuckling pirate, which has made Robin Hood a swashbuckling pirate in the minds of virtually everyone. Flynn plays the role with decided relish. He’s having a good time swinging a sword around and firing arrows and climbing ropes, and who can blame him? It’s the very thing that made him famous, and this time he gets to do it in Technicolor.

The film also benefits from a tremendous supporting cast for Flynn’s antics. We can start with Olivia de Havilland and we could just as easily end there because she’d be enough. Fortunately we don’t have to end there, though. We also have Basil Rathbone and Claude Goddam Rains as our main bad guys. I also have a soft spot for Una O’Connor, who frequently played this sort of shrill comedic harpy. And Eugene Pallette, who could do no wrong as far as I'm concerned.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is fun. It’s melodramatic and overacted, and it’s also great fun and completely entertaining. The ending is a foregone conclusion, of course. There’s no real possibility that Robin will swing from a noose or that the bad guys won’t get what’s coming to them. There’s no chance that Robin and Marian won’t end up together (and on a similar note, no chance that Bess and Much won’t end up together, either). We know this going in because it’s a film from 1938 and that’s the way films worked back then. We know we’ll get the Hollywood ending and the good guys will be triumphant because nothing really bad is going to happen to all of the characters that we like. And we watch anyway because it’s just so damnably fun and worth watching.

So yeah, I like this movie a lot. There’s a real sense of boyhood adventure in this film that is impossible for me to get past, and so I no longer try. I just enjoy it for the spectacle that it is. You should, too.

Why to watch The Adventures of Robin Hood: Errol Flynn was never better and because there’s swords and arrows and stuff.
Why not to watch: Because you already know the story.

Buckle and Swash

Film: Captain Blood
Format: DVD from Mt. Morris Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

There is always a bit of melodrama in old Hollywood films. The heroes are always as close to purely good as possible and the bad guys have nothing of the good about them. The good guys always come out triumphant in the end, the bad guys come to an appropriately bad end, and the people we’re supposed to like live happily ever after. There are plenty of people who dislike movies before a certain point, and honestly, I can understand that. It’s one of the reasons I tend to really like film noir. While, thanks to the Hays Code, the bad guys always got what was coming to them in film noir, they at least had motivations that weren’t entirely evil.

Captain Blood is not such a film. Dr. Peter Blood (Errol Flynn) is as perfect a movie hero as one could find. We learn right away that he is a) a medical doctor, b) willing to put himself at risk to save the life of a fellow man, c) has a history of sailing and adventure, and d) devilishly handsome. Called to the aid of a friend wounded in a rebellion, Blood is arrested as a traitor for giving aid to a traitor. Rather than being hanged, he is sent off to the West Indies by the auspices of the foppish and arrogant King James where he will become a slave.

It is here that Dr. Peter Blood is purchased by Arabella Bishop (Olivia de Havilland), niece of the local military commander, Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill). And I don’t almost need to say what happens next, do I? The pretty and idealistic Arabella does what she can for the benefit of the sexy, equally idealistic, proud and manly Tasmanian stud, who publically is displeased by this but secretly appreciates it. Romance blooms slowly. She helps out by allowing him to treat the gout problem of the local governor (George Hassell).

Of course, this doesn’t stop Blood from trying to escape, and escape he does when the Spanish raid the West Indies settlement. He becomes a pirate, soon developing a reputation and a huge fortune. It’s evident that the governor can’t handle the pirates and he is replaced in favor of Bishop, who does all he can to quell the pirates. In the ensuing chaos, Arabella is returned to England. Oh, but she’ll be back, of course. There’s no reason she wouldn’t be, since all adventure-y, swashbuckling films of this era need a strong element of romance. And it wouldn’t be too much of a shock to tell you precisely how it ends, since you likely have an idea already, but I won’t spoil it completely. It does, however, end precisely as you think it will. Actually, it probably ends quite a bit more positively than you might think possible.

It’s worth mentioning that the great Basil Rathbone appears here as a villain as well—he’s initially an ally of Blood but takes to piracy to easily and too thoroughly to be considered a good guy. It’s just as well, because Basil Rathbone plays a pretty good villain. Of course, this ends with a massive sword duel, one of the better ones of the early cinema.

This movie rises and falls on the talents of its two main leads, Flynn and de Havilland. Fortunately for the film, they are both excellent in their roles even if their roles aren’t at all believable. Really, no one is as pure-hearted as Peter Blood (and certainly not the real-life Errol Flynn), but that’s okay. It’s all a part of the mystique of the film and of the era it comes from. It would not be at all a stretch to suggest that this film is a big part of the pirate mystique, too. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that in many ways, Captain Blood is a big part of the reason that pirate films are what they are, and why pirates—traditionally about as evil as one could get in the real world—have a romantic image in the public consciousness. Yeah, Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t hurt either, but Captain Blood came first by 70 years and influenced everything that came after it.

It’s hard not to like this film on some level. It’s not believable, and the characters are certainly idealized versions that are nothing like real people, but there is a real charm here. Olivia de Havilland was an absolute charmer, and Flynn, well, he was a movie star in every sense of the word, at least in this early part of his career. For the early years of adventure films, they don’t get a lot better than this one.

Why to watch Captain Blood: It’s a hell of a swashbuckling adventure.
Why not to watch: If you don’t like old Hollywood, you won’t like this one.

The Century Mark

Films: Murder, My Sweet (Farewell, My Lovely), Mildred Pierce
Format: DVDs from Rockford Public Library projected on big screen.

Certain film genres, over time, develop a particular reputation in that there are things you expect from them as a member of the audience. Sometimes it’s a particular running theme, a specific type of plot twist or ending, a general type of character, even a specific actor or actors. Every genre has its conventions, perhaps none quite as detailed as film noir. Sitting down for some noir action tends to mean a hard-bitten detective, a complicated plot, a femme fatale or two, wise guys, danger, and snappy dialogue, particularly with a voiceover done by the detective. No one is more associated with film noir than Humphrey Bogart. But Bogie didn’t make them all.


Murder, My Sweet, which started life as Farewell, My Lovely until too many people mistook it for a musical of a similar name, starred Dick Powell, whose early career was in musicals. Powell plays the great mystery writer Raymond Chandler’s greatest creation, Philip Marlowe. Things start out easily enough, as in any good noir. Marlowe is contracted by a former convict named Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to find a woman named Velma Valento.

Moose, who is none too bright and far too crude, claims to have once been engaged to Velma before he was sent to prison. All he wants is Velma back. Marlowe tries to track her down, but is sidetracked when a man named Lindsay Marriott (Douglas Walton) contracts him for another job. Marriott pays Marlowe $100 to go with him on what appears to be either a drug buy or at least an exchange of cash for stolen goods. Sadly, the job goes badly; Marlowe is clubbed over the head and Marriott is beaten to death.

Now things get really fun. Marlowe is questioned by the police, who let slip something about a jade necklace and a man named Jules Amthor (Otto Kruger). When Marlowe gets back to his office, he meets a young female reporter who turns out to actually be a young socialite named Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley). It turns out that Ann’s step-mother Helen (Claire Trevor) had a jade necklace stolen from her, perhaps by Lindsay Marriott. And now we have more plot threads than it seems like we can handle. Then the bodies start to pile up, and life gets more and more interesting for Marlowe, interesting in the way of that traditional Chinese curse.

Any noir depends on its plot, of course, but a good plot isn’t enough to keep people in the seat. You also need at least one great (and yes, I’m using this word intentionally here) dame, and a couple is better. This one has two in the Grayles. While Helen is presented in slinky clothes and the forward personality, it’s Ann—all giant shoulder pads and crooked nose—who is the woman to watch.

The big sell here, though, is Marlowe’s patter and voice over. No one really truly speaks like Marlowe does, but it’s a joy to listen to. The man is quick with a metaphor, and what metaphors he uses! There is such pleasure in simply listening to the man describe something. Even a silly, straightforward plot would be made entertaining by Powell’s internal monologue and pieces of dialogue. There’s not an actor in the world who wouldn’t kill to say these phrases. “She had a face like a Sunday school picnic,” and “She was a gal who’d take a drink if she had to knock you down to get the bottle.” You can’t put a price on dialogue that entertaining.


Any good noir involves a dead body or two, and in Mildred Pierce, we don’t have to wait long to get one. The film opens with a series of gunshots and a man flopping dead on a floor. He gasps out the single word, “Mildred,” before breathing his last. We then meet Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford), our title character, who looks to be about to throw herself into the ocean to kill herself before she is stopped by a cop. She runs into an old friend/pseudo-flame Wally Fay (Jack Carson) and takes him back to her house. She runs off, Wally finds the body, and now the cops are involved.

We get Mildred’s side of the story in flashback, and from this point forward, it sure doesn’t feel like a noir anymore, but a domestic drama. Mildred is married to a schlub named Bert (Bruce Bennett) who is dallying with the woman down the street. Bert also objects to the way Mildred is raising their daughters, Veda (Ann Blyth) and Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe). Mildred dotes on Veda, who is spoiled and expects only the very best things in life for herself. Kay is something of a tomboy. She kicks Bert out, and now has to fend for herself, and fend off the advances of Wally.

Eventually, Mildred gets a job at a restaurant, which she keeps a secret from Veda, knowing that Veda will torment her relentlessly not only with working, but working at such an “embarrassing” job. Mildred continues to work herself raw, until she decides to open her own place, which she does by working out a deal with a faded heir named Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott). Sharp-eyed viewers will remember that this Beragon character is the same guy who died in the beginning. Those of a more Japanese monster slant will soon realize that he is not the spike-nosed monster that once fought Gamera the flying turtle.

In the film’s tearjerker moment, Kay dies from a sudden (and evidently severe) bout of pneumonia, leaving Mildred and Veda to themselves. Mildred dotes on her daughter even more, as does the destitute but high-living Monte, and it soon becomes evident that Veda is a horrible person. While certainly beautiful, she is twisted, conniving, and evil, thinks only of herself, and wants only money and nice things. She is, in short, a rotten kid. But Mildred is devoted to her and will do anything for her, something that Veda has understood for years. The fact that Veda is attracted to Monte makes for an uncomfortable and weird romantic triangle.

The biggest issue going on here for me is the cognitive dissonance between the character Joan Crawford is portraying on the screen and the reality of her relationship with her children. Mildred is a woman who will do anything to win the love of her daughter, a miserable and nasty person, while from many reports (most notably from Crawford’s daughter Christina), the exact opposite was the case. Personal life shouldn’t necessarily intrude on art, and I try to keep the two separate, but in this case, it’s really difficult.

My complaint is that it does get a little schmaltzy toward the end. Mildred is perhaps too perfect, too self-sacrificing, too giving of herself to everyone around her, particularly Veda, to be believed. I don’t doubt that mothers like this exist—I just find Mildred’s success in the restaurant business both as a paean to her love for Veda and Veda’s rejection of same to be overwhelmingly difficult to swallow. Good movie, but I’m not sure how well it translates to today.

On a completely unrelated note, these are films 99 and 100 from the original list, 100 and 101 overall. It's not quite 10% of the complete list, but I have finally hit triple digits, and I'm back to averaging a film per day.

Why to watch Murder, My Sweet: Snappy patter and a plot that can just be followed.
Why not to watch: You need it to be Bogart instead of anyone else in the role of Marlowe.

Why to watch Mildred Pierce: It’s noir-lite.
Why not to watch: An intense desire slap the hell out of Veda and the cognitive dissonance of Joan Crawford as a mother who cares about her children.

A Musical Life

Films: All That Jazz, Yankee Doodle Dandy
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on laptop (All That Jazz), DVD from Shorewood-Troy Library through interlibrary loan on little bitty bedroom television (Yankee Doodle Dandy).






















I mentioned yesterday that I’m not a big fan of musicals, and it’s true. I also said that I’ve been somewhat remiss in trying to get through the number of musicals on this list, and that’s also true. What I didn’t say was that this can cause some friction at home. Both of my daughters like being on stage. The older of my two girls is specifically a dancer, and is currently preparing for a show in a couple of weeks. It’s time for me to start plowing through some of these. I have to eventually, right? And if I don’t start now, then I’ll end up with six dozen musicals at the end.

So we’ll start with the vaguely autobiographical All That Jazz, a film by Bob Fosse about the life of Bob Fosse. It’s completely unflinching, which is what makes it worth watching. Fosse presents the life of stage director and choreographer Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider), warts and all. Gideon is a drinker, a womanizer, a workaholic, and a speed freak, surviving on Dexedrine, Visine, and nicotine.

The film is not the story of Gideon’s life, but rather his death. We watch him exhaust himself, overextend himself, and push himself to the point where he can simply go on no longer. Gideon is, in the world of the film (and mirroring Fosse in many respects) wildly successful in the world of Broadway. Because of this, he has something approaching carte blanche to do what he wishes at any time he wishes. Cheat on his girlfriend who he cheated with on his wife? Sure, why not? He’s Joe Goddam Gideon, after all!

But the life takes its toll. Gideon walks around the movie with a half-burned cigarette perpetually clutched in his lips. His morning routine involves classical music, Alka-Seltzer, Visine in both eyes, a shower, prescription dexies, and a final look in the mirror with jazz hands and the phrase, “It’s showtime, folks!” We see him never stopping, moving from one project to the next, demanding that he be better, be bigger, be more. He takes what he wants with one hand regardless of who is affected by it, and beats himself silly with the other. Late in the movie, an actor tells him that he understands Joe Gideon—he’s worried that he’s not special, that underneath it all, he’s really just ordinary like everyone else. That sentence or two encapsulates the entire film.

Gideon is in constant contact with his ex-wife Audrey (Leland Palmer), his current girlfriend Kate (Ann Reinking, who is essentially playing herself from Fosse’s actual life), and his daughter Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi, in her only film role). Since he is who he is, he is badly hurt when it becomes evident that Kate isn’t faithful to him, but has no remorse for his own lack of fidelity to her. In short, Gideon is not so much a complicated dude as he is just a talented, selfish bastard.

Much of the film takes place somewhere between life and death, as Gideon talks with Angelique (Jessica Lange), who is, for lack of a better term, the angel of death. As Gideon’s health deteriorates, he spends time discussing his life with Angelique, having a few full-blown Fosse number hallucinations while lying in his hospital bed.

I don’t like musicals. I really have a problem with them in general, but All That Jazz is a wow from start to finish. The numbers are good, surreal and bizarre and beautiful (and I love Ben Vereen as the emcee of Gideon’s death trip). Even more astonishing to me is the brutal honesty with which Fosse looked at his own life. Fosse based this film off his own heart attack in 1975, he made this movie and lived another six years after baring his soul and faults to the world. That’s why it’s great. To paraphrase the narrator in Fight Club, that sort of honesty makes me go a big rubbery one.


On the other end of the biopic spectrum we have Yankee Doodle Dandy, the film autobiography of George M. Cohan. It’s the sort of film that, if you didn’t know going in that it had been significantly sweetened for an audience, you’d figure it out pretty quickly. George M. here might as well be starting his name with “Saint” for the life that’s depicted on the screen, or have had the screenplay penned for him by Horatio Alger.

We follow this rose-colored view of Cohan’s life from start to the middle of World War II, mostly in flashback. At the start, Cohan has begun a new stage play about the current occupant of the White House, and after the opening performance, he is summoned to Pennsylvania Avenue for a heart to heart with FDR. From here, Cohan (played as an adult by James Cagney) spins the tale of his life for the president, going through his family’s routine on Vaudeville, his failure to get his plays produced initially, and his eventual booming success on Broadway and just about everywhere else.

There aren’t a lot of failures to moon over, but the ones that do exist are treated like the sort of minor stumbling blocks that befell Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in a couple of dozen mid-1940s movies, with the “Hey, gang! Let’s put on a show!” mentality as a bounce back from tragedy. Can’t get someone to produce his play? Well, by golly, he’ll show them! All it takes is pluck and determination! Cohan writes a stinker? By golly, he’ll admit it in a self-effacing telegram sent to all of the newspapers!

It’s a bit overbearing, really. Cohan is a firecracker short of being a full-on fireworks display according to this film, and that’s all well and good, but at some point, I’d like to see something that approaches realism in any stretch of the imagination. Nobody is that all-fired plucky all the damn time.

This may simply be my distrust of the typical musical talking here, but I found the film to be the weakest when it excerpted scenes from some of Cohan’s plays. His ability as a dancer and actor, etc. is great, but I don’t need to see half of “Yankee Doodle Boy” to understand the play was a hit. The film is far better in the non-staged scenes, because then at least it doesn’t feel like I’m getting Americana dumped on me. This is especially true at the very end—the last five or ten minutes are a full dousing. It’s a patriotism bukkake (if this is a term you don't know...please don't Google it. If you do, don't blame me).

The saving grace of the film is James Cagney in the title role. The man goes for it, and while he’s best known for gangster films, the man could cut a rug. He’s no Astaire, and he’s no Gene Kelly, but he dances with his own distinctive stiff-legged style, and there’s not an ounce of guile in the man. He, at the very least, is a joy to watch.

Why to watch All That Jazz: The reality of what life on the stage is really like, at least from one perspective, and for those worried, it’s surprisingly non-fabulous.
Why not to watch: It’s frequently unpleasant.

Why to watch Yankee Doodle Dandy: Cagney.
Why not to watch: If you’re close to diabetic, this film will push you over that cliff.

Everyone Watches Rick's

Film: Casablanca
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on big ol’ television.


Years ago, I worked with a guy who had a Casablanca poster on the wall of his office. I commented on it one day, and he replied with something about how the director (Michael Curtiz) made one of the greatest films in history and never did anything else noteworthy. I never asked if he was joking, so to this day I don’t know if the guy was seriously that unaware of the career of Curtiz or if he thought he was yanking my chain.

Curtiz, of course, is one of the great film stylists of the 30s and 40s, and still one of the greatest film directors to ever stand next to or behind a camera. While plenty of his films are worth watching over and over, Casablanca is the masterpiece. No other film has such a wealth of incredible memorable lines—it feels like half of the great lines in American cinema are from this film. Even toss aways like “Round up the usual suspects,” if they didn’t come from here, were made famous and immortal here. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest, for instance, that “Here’s looking at you, kid” was around long before this film, but it’s a rare person who doesn’t associate that line with this movie.

An American named Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) runs a bar in Casablanca, in what is still Free French territory, at the end of 1941. The Nazis have taken over most of Europe, and the only route to America is through Lisbon. The only safe route to Lisbon is through Casablanca. So, in addition to the usual residents, the Vichy French, and some Germans, Casablanca has become a city of refugees looking for a way out.

Also in Casablanca is Captain Renault (Claude Rains) of the police. He is an amiable but thoroughly corrupt official, willing to let people leave the city for enough money or, in the case of attractive women, other favors. He allows Rick to keep his club open because Rick lets him win at roulette and because, to his knowledge, Rick has never helped anyone secure the papers necessary to leave the city.

Ugarte (Peter Lorre) does arrange such trips, and he has recently killed two German couriers who carried papers that are usable by anyone and cannot be questioned—a prize worth a huge fortune in the city. He gives these to Rick to safeguard, and is immediately captured by Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) of the SS. As Ugarte exits, a refugee couple arrives: Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). Lund is an agitator wanted by the Germans. Renault is told to never let him leave Casablanca alive, but Rick has a way to get him out of the city. Unfortunately for Laszlo, Ilsa had a torrid affair with Rick in Paris when she thought her husband was dead. Now, Rick has to decide if he wants to let Laszlo go, to flee with Ilsa himself, or keep Ilsa with him in the doomed city.

It is a nearly perfect love triangle. Ilsa truly does love both of the men completely, and is torn between them. Laszlo, in many ways, is the true ideal. He fights for what he believes in, is daring and courageous, strong and true. He has survived concentration camps and weeks on the run to stay with her, and as they ran from Europe, he never left her at his own peril. Rick, on the other hand, is gruff on the exterior, but frequently shows throughout the film that he is completely sentimental and frequently acts in ways that go against his best interests. Ingrid Bergman was never more beautiful than in this film, making the decisions that the two men make both heartwrenching and believable. Any man would make tough choices for her.

A running (and famous) theme through the movie is the song “As Time Goes By,” mimicked on the piano by Rick’s pet musician, Sam (Dooley Wilson). In reality, Wilson was a percussionist and watched someone off-screen to copy the movements. The song was evidently Rick’s and Ilsa’s in Paris, and when Sam plays it, it immediately returns the pair of them to their affair in Paris and the invasion of the city by the German Army.

The story is a great one, and there are memorable scenes throughout the film. Peter Lorre is great in his role as always, and incredibly memorable despite the fact that he’s only in the movie for a few minutes. The most moving scene in the film involves the singing of the French National Anthem in Rick’s club as the expatriates drown out the singing of a group of German soldiers. It is this scene that causes the third act of the film, and ultimately one of the most unforgettable climaxes filmed.

If you are the type of person who refuses to watch a black and white film because it is black and white, shame on you. Casablanca would not be improved by being in color in any way. Casablanca will still be worth watching and still be studied 100 years from now, 200 years from now, and 300 years from now.

Why to watch Casablanca: There has never been a greater romance filmed, and the rest of the film is pretty damn good, too.
Why not to watch: Because you are a stupid, stupid person.

You Dirty (Yellow) Rat!

Film: Angels with Dirty Faces
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.


James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson were the two classic gangsters in film back in the day. Robinson could act, but for my money, Cagney was the man. Robinson had a slick evil about him, an oiliness that makes me want to loathe his gangster characters even while I can appreciate the man’s skill. Cagney, on the other hand, makes me want to root for him.

This is definitely the case in Angels with Dirty Faces, which, along with The Public Enemy is one of the roles that made Cagney famous for being a tough, nasty bastard of a gangster. Here, as William “Rocky” Sullivan, Cagney is precisely as you probably imagine him in impressions. Constantly hitching his shoulders and spewing back alley criminal cant, Sullivan is the epitome of a guy who wants to live big and doesn’t really care if he lives or dies. All he really wants is a little respect and a lot of notoriety before he goes down thumbing his nose at the authorities.

The story starts with our twin heroes, Rocky and his best friend Jerry Connolly (played as an adult by Cagney’s real-life good friend and frequent co-star Pat O’Brien) getting in to trouble down at the train yard. They break into a boxcar and try to make off with fountain pens. Spotted by the yard bull, they run for it. Jerry is faster and gets away, while Rocky is nabbed and sent off to reform school. In a montage we see that Rocky isn’t so much reformed as hardened, and he ends this part of his criminal career with a three-year stint in the pen. Before going down, he arranges with his lawyer, James Frazier (Humphrey Bogart) to keep the $100,000 he’s stolen, money Rocky wants back eventually.

At the end of his time in prison, Rocky gets out and drops in on his old pal Jerry, who is now the parish priest of the old neighborhood. He also runs in to Laury Ferguson (Ann Sheridan), once a girl he teased and now a dishy blonde with something of a checkered past. He also looks up his old pal Frazier and discovers a few things. Frazier doesn’t have the money anymore, and the crime in the area is now controlled by Max Keefer (George Bancroft).

As Rocky schemes for a way to get his money, he encounters a sextet of young local toughs played by the Dead End Kids. This kids all look up to gangsters like Rocky and Rocky doesn’t do much to discourage their hero worship, taking an interest in them, particularly their leader, Soapy (Billy Halop). But the criminal element isn’t sitting around—they’ve organized a hit on Rocky. When that fails, Rocky collects his money, but decides to stick around, if only to rub it into the faces of the men who’ve double-crossed him. The trouble really starts when Father Connolly decides to fight the corruption in the area, taking on all comers, including Rocky himself.

This is a fascinating movie for several reasons. Predominantly, it addresses the idea of bad guys, toughs, convicts, and killers being heroes in the mind of the public, particularly the youth. There’s more than a small element of truth to the notion that bad guys are frequently held in high regard, particularly by youngsters, and more particularly by those who are dead broke.

It’s also a product of its times. Father Connolly wants nothing more than to destroy Rocky’s influence with the kids, and he’s painted in the film as a pure soul, one who does only good. Rocky, interestingly, isn’t shown to be a bad guy. He’s a killer, certainly, but he kills only when and because his friend Jerry is put in danger. This doesn’t stop Connolly from essentially leading Rocky to his doom, though, because Jerry has a higher calling.

And it doesn’t end there. The end of this movie is still shocking despite the age of this film. At the time, I’m sure the shock came from Cagney’s actions in his role. Today, the shock comes from the appalling behavior of Father Connolly, who asks the world from his doomed friend. In short, Father Connolly acts like a complete dick. I wanted Rocky to punch him straight in the mug. Even more, I wanted to punch him straight in the mug.

What’s interesting to me is the movie conventions of the time. When Rocky fires his gun at anyone, he doesn’t aim and fire, but flicks the weapon like he has to launch the bullets from the barrel. A few times it looks ridiculous to the point of comedy even though it wasn’t intended to be funny.

Is it a great movie? Hard to say. The morality is strange for this day and age, and the ending is bizarre in the extreme. However, Cagney is brilliant in this role. Absolutely mesmerizing, and worth watching. If for no other reason, he is the reason to hunt this film down.

Why to watch Angels with Dirty Faces: Classic Cagney, Bogart as a bad guy, and arguably the source for all of the Cagney impersonations from Rich Little to Bugs Bunny.
Why not to watch: Father Connolly is a gigantic tool.