Monday, November 26, 2012

Movie Monday: The Stranglers of Bombay

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This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1959 Hammer thriller The Stranglers of Bombay!
 

I knew that Hammer had produced lots of non-monster-centric movies, but this was one I had never heard of until I saw a trailer for it on Trailers From Hell (one of my favorite sites). To be blunt, the thing that really drew me in was the presence of an actress named Marie Devereux, whose bust was so massive that I was shocked she even got to be in the movies at all--here mere presence seemed, to me, something that could not get past the censors of the day. So the combination of sex and violence (inherent in the title, of course) made me think The Stranglers of Bombay was going to be a lurid, squalid little movie--and you know I'm always up for that!

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The film stars Guy Rolfe as Capt. Harry Lewis, an officer of the British East India Company, which was not a government agency but was so massive and powerful it might as well have been.

Thousands of natives have been disappearing without a trace, and Lewis wants to know why. He consults his superior, Col. Henderson (Andrew Cruikshank), but is rebuffed--he is more concerned with company business, like why many of the company's caravans are disappearing. Hmm, maybe there's a connection?
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Henderson opens an investigation, partly to shut Lewis up. Lewis assumes he will be put in charge, but is passed over in lieu of Captain Connaught-Smith (Allan Cuthbertson), who is pretty much a clown. Lewis tries to present his case to Smith, but when he is ignored he resigns his commission to investigate the case on his own.

Of course, we do know that there is a creepy Thugee cult operating, since we ge to see them and their creepy practices, like when they punish some more unruly members by gouging their eyes out with hot pokers:
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The cult uses strangling as its preferred method of killing, due to the belief in a story that when their god Kali fought the demon Raktabija, every time the demon spilled a drop of blood, it turned into another demon Kali had to fight. So strangling is the way to go!

Lewis' houseboy, Ram Das, believes his brother has been drawn into the cult, and goes to search for him. Ram Das subsequently disappears, but Lewis (and his wife) learns he met a bad end when Das' severed hand is delivered to the Lewis' home:
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About halfway through the movie, I was wondering when The Good Stuff was going to start. Sure, there was the eye-gouging scene (which really doesn't go past what you see above) and the severed hand, but for the most part the movie was Lewis arguing with his superiors, and it was all talk talk talk.

Finally, though, Lewis is captured by the cult, and tied to the ground. A cobra is let loose and it approaches as a mute member of the cult (Marie Devereaux, and her boobs) watches:
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This is a pretty good scene, since you can tell that it's the actor, not a stuntman, who is getting so close to the cobra. You kind of wonder how they do it until once brief moment where a pane of glass can be seen, ala Raiders of the Lost Ark. Still, not bad.

Sadly, the absurdly pneumatic Ms. Devereux is barely in this movie--as you can see above, when God was giving out Cup Sizes, she got in line three times. Despite (or maybe because of) the low-cut top Hammer gives her, she's barely in the movie at all. Her scene watching the cobra attack Lewis is the only really good glimpse we get of her. Harumph!

Captain Smith continues his bumbling ways, even allowing the cult members (pretending to be innocent travelers) to join a new, larger, supposedly more secure caravan, which leads to more murders in the middle of the night. Lewis' pet mongoose helps his escape the cobra when it kills the snake, which the cult takes as a sign that Kali is displeased with them. So they let Lewis go.

He joins up with Lt. Silver (Paul Stassino), but little does he know that Silver is also a cult member! At one point he sees a scar that is the mark of the cult and shoots Silver. Lewis is then caught again by the cult, and set to die by fire. But he is rescued by Ram Das' brother who, under the control of the cult, killed Ram. Overcome by guilt, he frees Lewis, who finally convinces Henderson to send in the troops to wipe out the cult.

Lewis ends up fighting the cult leader George Pastell, the result of which leads to the High Priest tossed onto his own funeral pyre:
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The cult is wiped out, and the film ends with Henderson giving Lewis a promotion for his efforts. The End.


I went into The Stranglers of Bombay expecting a fun, lurid, bloody little thriller, filled with heaving bosoms just like a lot of their monster films. And while we get a little bit of that here, there are so many scenes of British guys talking that, to me, it really makes the film drag. We know early on that the Thugee cult is real, so watching a bunch of characters argue about that fact is just wasting everyone's time.
Apparently the film is somewhat accurate, historically--a cult like this really did exist, and was supposedly responsible for thousands, possibly millions, of deaths. And the British East India Company systematically wiped them out. Hey, we all gots to make a buck

Check out the aforementioned trailer to The Stranglers From Bombay and I think you'll see why I was so excited to see this movie. I guess you can argue it did its job:

Fun Fact: This film is a bit of a Movie Monday Triple Play: it stars Guy Rolfe, who starred in Mr. Sardonicus, as well as Allen Cuthbertson, who co-starred in Captain Nemo and the Underwater City!


 

Monday, November 19, 2012

Movie Monday: The Big Clock

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This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1948 film noir The Big Clock!
 


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The Big Clock stars Ray Milland, Maureen O'Sullivan, George MacReady, plus real-life couple Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester. Milland plays a man named George Stroud who, as the film opens, seems to be on the run from the law. He's hiding in the darkness from a security guard, narrowly escaping being found:
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How, as Stroud narrates, did he get here? When, just 24 hours earlier, he was an upstanding member of society, a successful magazine editor for the mammoth company known as Janoth Publications:
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This is the clock in question, an absurdly grand construction that sits in the middle of the lobby of the Janoth building, dwarfing the human figures that move around it. As a tour guide explains, you can learn what time it is anywhere in the world thanks to this clock, which was built specifically from instructions by Earl Janoth himself (Charles Laughton).

Stroud has been working for Janoth for a few years, and has had a meteoric rise. So meteoric that he and his wife (O'Sullivan) haven't had a proper honeymoon, even though they already have a small child! Stroud has to put in one last day before he goes on an oft-delayed vacation:
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There's a fun sequence in the Janoth elevator, where in one unbroken shot we see people get on and get off different floors. Not only does it give us an overview of just how big Janoth Publications is (it seems to publish dozens of glossy, high-end magazines, covering all sorts of subjects), but its a fun visual trick, thanks to some nice back-screen projection. (Nerd Bonus: TV Lois Lane Noel Neill plays the elevator operator!)

Stroud runs a true crime magazine, and has been a whiz at finding bad guys even before the police. There's currently a suspect on the run, and Stroud assigns his staff to look into the case.
 
Meanwhile, there's a meeting held by all the magazine editors, and by Janoth himself:
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This is Laughton's first scene, and he comes in and destroys the place. Janoth is a rude, condescending, arrogant tool, the worst kind of boss imaginable: he shoots down people's ideas, talks over them, and belittles them in front of the others. He's a total delight to watch, and Laughton seems to be having the time of his life playing such a dick.

Janoth talks privately with Stroud, demanding that he take up the new case personally, delaying his honeymoon yet again. Janoth fires Stroud, right on the spot, even saying he'll blackball him in the industry. Stroud doesn't seem to care, accepts Janoth's decision, and leaves.

On his way out, Stroud runs into Janoth's mistress Pauline York (Rita Johnson), and they go out drinking, so much so that Stroud misses the train he was supposed to take with his family to their vacation spot. Now a little tipsy, Stroud and York take a liquid tour of Manhattan, at one point stopping in an antique store buying a painting of two hands holding a clock, right out from under another buyer, a dotty lady played Elsa Lanchester.

Stroud and York go to her apartment, and Janoth sees a man leaving later in the night, not realizing it's his former employee. Janoth confronts his mistress, who mocks him to his face, leading this titan of industry to commit cold-blooded murder.

I don't want to say any more about the plot of The Big Clock, because there are more surprises to come. There's a bunch of great character performances, like George MacReady (Paths of Glory) as Janoth's oily second-hand-man, plus Harry Morgan (again!) as Janoth's seemingly-mute (he never utters a word) masseuse and all-around goon:
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Morgan's character lurks around the edges of the movie, seemingly always in the background, glowering. He's a blast to watch, because he's a hired gun trying to blend in among all these high-end magazine types, and he sticks out like a sore thumb.

Also wonderful in the movie is Elsa Lanchester, as a starving artist who is a key to the whole case that develops around the murder. We meet her again at her small apartment, which is littered with kids, all from different fathers/husbands:
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She and her husband only have one scene together, where they are at odds; I can only imagine how much fun they had doing it.
 
Eventually, the noose tightens around the people involved, leading to a violent conclusion (which the poster partly gives away, thanks Paramount marketing department) and a reminder that you should always watch your step around elevator shafts.


Anyway, I heartily recommend The Big Clock to any film noir fan. It's a load of fun, filled with great performances, nice twists and turns, and great sets--in these days of magazines and newspapers withering away to extinction, the movie made me nostalgic for a time I personally never experienced, when working for a magazine meant you got to go to work in mile-high, gleaming skyscrapers that looked like they came right out of Metropolis. It all looks so fabulous and glamorous, even with all the murders!

The Big Clock was suggested for Movie Monday by my Ace Kilroy partner Dan O'Connor. Thanks Dan!

 

Monday, November 12, 2012

Movie Monday: The Lineup

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This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1958 film noir The Lineup!
 

Like last week's Foreign Intrigue, The Lineup is a movie that sprung from a TV series, which ran from 1954-1960. A sort of Law & Order of its day, The Lineup focused on the procedural aspect of cops n'robbers, though as we'll see, the producers decided to ramp things up a notch when going to the silver screen.
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The film opens with a slam-bang pre-credits sequence: a porter unloading passenger cargo from a ship tosses a suitcase into a waiting cab, which speeds off. The driver panics and slams into a police officer trying to stop him, and then crashes into a steel post. Its over the crumbled car that the credits roll.

Two police detectives, Lt. Ben Guthrie (Warner Anderson, who appeared on the show) and Insp. Al Quine (Emile Meyer) investigate, and learn that a ring of heroin smugglers are now using innocent travelers as "mules"--stashing the drugs in their luggage and then retrieving them once they've arrived in San Francisco. The case they are investigating concerns some Oriental art brought back to America by a collector:
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They have the man sit in front of a, yes, lineup, made up of porters, but the man cannot identify any of them as the one who stole his suitcase. Soon, the porter in question turns up dead.

The syndicate, worried about other shipments being intercepted, send experts to make sure the drugs are picked up successfully, two men named Dancer (Eli Wallach) and Julian (Robert Keith):
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It's here, with the introduction of these two characters, that The Lineup really comes alive. Wallach's Dancer is a twitchy psychopath, insecure but with a hair trigger. Keith's Julian seems to be there just to keep Dancer from going completely off the rails, and their dynamic suggests just the slightest hint of a homosexual relationship. But of course that's left to the audience's imagination...

Dancer goes to pick up the shipments, and ends up killing anyone who gets in his way:
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The third package came in with a single mother and her daughter, and Dancer has to try and pick the woman up so they can go back to her hotel together. Dancer has just enough charm, playing on the woman's insecurity about being alone, that she goes along with him and Julian.

Its at their hotel that they discover that the young daughter stumbled upon the drugs and, not knowing what they were, used them as make-up powder for her doll. Dancer flies into a rage, seemingly ready to kill both women, but Julian realizes that their bosses will never believe such a story, so they go against orders and meet with "The Man" (Vaughn Taylor) and explain what happened.

But of course it all goes wrong: "The Man" doesn't believe Dancer, and slaps him in the face. Dancer goes Coo-Coo for Cocoa-Puffs and pushes the wheelchair-bound man off a platform onto a skating rink below, in full view of dozens of bystanders:
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Dancer, Julian, and their boozed-up driver McLain (Richard Jaeckel) take the women on a chase from the police, along the as-yet-completed highway system, which almost ends up with them dropping off a sheer cliff. With the cops on their tail, Dancer shoots Julian and grabs the little girl, using her as a human shield. But when he tries to jump from one overpass to the next, a policeman's bullet finds him, and he plummets to the ground, his body smashing into several concrete slabs on the way down.


The Lineup is extraordinary fun--tense and well-shot (it was directed by Don Siegel), its filled with great performances and some wonderful sequences set amid various San Francisco landmarks (the scene with The Man takes place at Sutro Baths, an indoor amusement park and pool, which burned down in 1966). If you're a fan of the City by the Bay, as I am, seeing what it looked like circa the mid-1950s really adds to the enjoyment of the film.

The police are fairly dull, nondescript characters, and even though they are in the very final scene of the movie they don't even get any dialog! Its clear the moviemakers knew that once Dancer buys it, the movie was over. Speaking of, Wallach and Keith make a great pair; the latter ever-so-slightly condescends to his high-strung partner; at first you wonder why he's even on this trip since Dancer does all the heavy lifting. Then it becomes clear that without someone to rein him in, Dancer is the kind of guy who would probably walk into police headquarters and start shooting after getting a ticket for jaywalking. For my money, I would have loved to have seen a prequel or something to The Lineup, featuring these two having more adventures. Nasty, nasty adventures.



Fun Fact: Keith has a scene with Jaeckel where he says this line of dialogue: "When you live outside the law, you must eliminate dishonesty", which was appropriated by no less than Bob Dylan for his 1966 song "Absolutely Sweet Marie", where he sings "To live outside the law, you must be honest." I get a chuckle thinking about then-17-year-old Bobby Zimmerman, sitting in a Hibbing, Minnesota movie theater watching The Lineup, and that line burrowing its way into his fertile brain. I wonder if Bob ever sent screenwriter Stirling Silliphant a copy of Blonde on Blonde?

Monday, November 5, 2012

Movie Monday: Foreign Intrigue

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This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1956 thriller Foreign Intrigue!
 

Foreign Intrigue is another one of those movies that I had never heard of until I saw it on Netflix WI. But it starred Robert Mitchum, was in full color (unusual for the time), and the poster is aces. How could I go wrong?
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The film opens with millionaire Victor Danemore (Jean Galland) leisurely strolling his estate when he has a massive heart attack, dropping him to the floor. Moments later, Danemore's publicist, Dave Bishop (Mitchum) visits and finds him, and is the last to see him alive.
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Everything seems fairly normal, until we learn that Bishop knows almost nothing about his employer. It turns out that Danemore was a mysterious figure, and hired Bishop to basically create a public persona for him, out of nothing. Bishop decides to investigate, but no one seems to know anything about the man--including his wife Dominique (Genevieve Page), who seems to have barely any reaction upon hearing her husband has died:
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Bishop is repeatedly approached by various shady figures, all of whom want to know the same thing: what did Danemore say, if anything, before he died? The more Bishop is asked this question, the more he investigates as to why so many strangers seem to care.

One of the more persistent is Jonathan Spring (Frederic O'Brady), who seems to keep falling just short of threatening Bishop:
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There is a lot of talking in Foreign Intrigue. A lot. In fact, except for one brief punch thrown by Mitchum (at O'Brady), there are no action scenes in the movies at all. Bishop meets another woman named Mrs. Lindquist (Ingrid Thulin) who he seems attracted to. They're all involved with Danemore, and Bishop learns that his former boss was blackmailing different people who were once Nazis, all of whom were of course desperate to keep that little part of their lives under wraps.
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There's a fairly neat scene of a bunch of guys meeting with Bishop in a sort of subterranean vault, where the truth about Danemore's dealings come out. Unfortunately, by this point the plothas gotten so complicated, with so many characters double-dealing, that I was pretty confused as to what the hell was going on.

The film ends on an odd note, with Bishop and Spring meeting up again and heading off together, talking of further adventures they're going to have but of course we'll never see:
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...not The End?


Foreign Intrigue is a supremely strange film. It feels like its setting up to be a fairly standard Europe-hopping film noir, but the pace is so relaxed that there's never much of a feeling of menace or danger to Bishop. The main bad guy, if he can be called that, is O'Brady as Jonathan Spring, but even after their brief action scene, they're back to joking around with one another. The guys threatening Bishop are okay enough, but this is Robert Mitchum we're talking about--it takes a lot to make it seem like he's in danger. And these slightly nerdy Euro guys just can't pull it off.

Another odd element is the music--there's very little in the film, except for this bossanova-type thing, which is used over and over, and it cuts whatever little tension is to be found in the movie. There are scenes of Mitchum draped in deep shadows, which look great, but then there's a moment of silence and the music kicks in, bringing the scene to a dead stop.

The film was directed, written, and produced by Sheldon Reynolds, who was simultaneously producing a syndicated TV series of the same name. It ran from 1951-1955, and apparently part of its appeal was its real European settings, which of course were still fairly novel in the era just before mass air travel. Foreign Intrigue the movie provides a lot of beautiful scenery as well, and I'm sure Mitchum had a blast making this movie. But I feel like a documentary following Bob around while shooting might have produced something a little more compelling.

 
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