Walt at Random

Just a quick note, for various deathwatch fans who are quick to proclaim The Death Of Whatever–in this case, DVDs, ’cause everything’s going to be streaming any day now…

As noted in this Bloomberg story, Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix–who probably knows more about DVD and streaming long-form video consumption than anybody else, and who would really love to see Netflix become entirely a streaming-video operation (as people have noted, it’s not called Mailboxflix)–believes Netflix will be shipping DVDs to subscribers until 2030.

2030. That’s 20 years from now. At that point, DVDs will have been around for more than 30 years and dominant for at least a quarter-century (which has, with remarkable consistency, been the timespan for any dominant audio/video medium to remain dominant or at least very important).

Note that “DVD” includes Blu-ray and, sigh, 3D Blu-ray. Will physical media disappear at some point? Who knows? Will they disappear in the next year or two or five? Not likely.

Trinity and Sartana…
Those Dirty Sons of Bitches (orig. Trinità e Sartana figli di… or “Trinity and Sartana children…”), 1972, color. Mario Siciliano (dir.), Alberto Dell’Acqua (as “Robert Widmark”), Harry Baird, Beatrice Pella, Stelio Candelli, Dante Maggio (as “Dan May”), Ezio Marano (as “Alan Abbott”). 1:42.

This flick gets into trouble right off the bat, as you see portions of the credits—and it becomes clear that the approach to pan&scan used was, apparently, just to take the central portion of the wide-screen shot regardless. There are scenes where the person speaking is entirely cut off to the left; you can’t read any of the cast names; it’s a little bizarre.

Which is a reasonable description of the film itself, a farce that tries a little too hard. Trinity is a sailor from Trinidad who somehow finds himself an outlaw in Texas, but with a bad habit of giving away whatever money he steals—and having lots of seaside dreams involving a certain woman. Sartana is a wisecracking Texas outlaw who can shoot like nobody’s business…and who somehow keeps partnering with Trinity although he should know better. There’s a third partner at one point, an aging lunatic who rides a wagon with a player piano (and, as needed, a hand-cranked machine gun…). The film also includes some obese Fancy Ladies, a Mexican gangleader who appears wholly incompetent and lots of other hapless villains. There’s lots of fancy shooting but nobody ever actually gets shot; when there’s actually a showdown, all the fancy shooters use nothing but fists (and chairs and other objects); there’s a certain amount of self-reference and it’s all very silly. The score is, well, awful. Apparently there are Spaghetti Western series starring characters named Trinity and Sartana, respectively, in which case this is mostly a bad ripoff (with no relationship to the series).

Decent print except for the absurdly bad cropping. I found it more silly than funny, but you may have different tastes. Charitably, $0.75.

Find a Place to Die (orig. Joe… cercati un posto per morire! or Joe…searched for a place to die!), 1968, color. Giuliano Carnimeo (dir.), Jeffrey Hunter, Pascale Petit, Giovanni Pallavicino (“Gordon York”), Reza Fazeli, Nello Pazzafini (“Ted Carter”), Adolfo Lastretti (“Peter Lastrett”). 1:29.

As the film begins, a young woman and older man are shooting it out with a scattered but large gang, apparently trying to protect a run-down house. They’re actually trying to protect a gold mine in Mexico, and the woman is quite vocally unhappy about her husband’s decision to abandon his university job in New Orleans to find and reopen this mine.

The battle ends with the guy tossing bundles of dynamite out to wipe out the rest of the band—and, in the process, starting off an avalanche that winds up with him trapped by a half-ton log. Nothing to do but have his wife try to get help in a tiny little former-village a two-day ride away…

Which she does. The village is now inhabited by a loose band of mostly semi-outlaws, one woman with a great voice and guitar, and an American who’s basically a drunk but used to be an officer (before he was court-martialed for shooting somebody he thought deserved it). He’s also a gunrunner, but never mind… She needs four people to come rescue her husband; since the promised payment comes from a bag full of gold nuggets, everybody figures out that there’s a mine out there for the taking. The American, first refusing the job, notes that the area is ruled by “Chato’s gang”—particularly vicious thieves who love to torture and rape.

The rest of the movie? The band, all of whom mistrust one another (for good reason) and who’ve been joined by a particularly questionable preacher, make their way back. Along the way, there’s some nudity and almost rape (of course, a beautiful young married woman from New Orleans would think nothing of going for a nude swim in the evening when her only companions are four thugs and one semi-good-guy!) Plot spoilers ahead: They’re too late for the husband—and the gang has taken the gold. The rest of the flick has to do with attempts to retrieve the gold.

Funny thing is, it’s a pretty good movie. It’s widescreen, the score is particularly effective, there’s lots of good scenery, it’s less flamboyant and more atmospheric than most and with one exception, only bad guys get killed (of course, almost everybody in the movie’s a bad guy). I give it $1.50.

Johnny Yuma, 1966, color. Romolo Guerrieri (dir.), Mark Damon, Lawrence Dobkin, Rosalba Neri, Luigi Vannucchi/Louis Vanner, Fidel Gonzales, Leslie Daniels. 1:40 [1:35]

I have to say, this one was impressive if also a little depressing at times. Widescreen, excellent print, good music—and, oddly, no credits at either the start or end of the movie. (Maybe that’s the missing five minutes?) A rancher (who also keeps the local town going) is wheelchair-bound and sending for his nephew, Johnny Yuma (although Yuma’s not his real last name) to run the ranch. His much younger wife wants her brother to take over—and arranges to have the rancher shot. She sends for a guy name of Carradine (possibly a tribute to one of the stars of The Rebel, the TV show about Johnny Yuma?) who’s an ex-lover and who she expects to kill Yuma—for a fee.

Why kill him? Well, if he’s gone, then she clearly inherits the ranch, which she’s already arranged to sell for a fortune. There’s no will (or, well, actually there is one, a small but interesting plot point). Complicating matters: Her brother and his people are vicious—and, early on, Carradine and Yuma exchange pistols and holsters after dealing with a saloon full of crooked gamblers.

Lots of fancy shooting. Too much physical abuse. An odd would-be sidekick who keeps turning up. Great scenery. Well-made—good direction, fine cinematography. Generally good acting. A reasonably natural pace with very little nonsense. Unusually satisfying ending. The plot even makes sense. The theme song…well, I guess they couldn’t license Johnny Cash’s version, so there’s a very odd new song with the same name. All things considered, I’ll give it $1.75.

Fistful of Lead (orig. C’è Sartana… vendi la pistola e comprati la bara or There’s Sartana…sell the gun and buy the coffin or I Am Sartana, Trade Your Guns for a Coffin), 1970, color. Giuliano Carnimeo (dir.), George Hilton, Charles Southwood, Erika Blanc, Piero Lulli/Peter Carter, Linda Sini, Nello Pazzafini, Carlo Gaddi, Aldo Barberito. 1:33.

The first movie on this last disc was apparently a spoof intended to capitalize on the characters in two series of Spaghetti Westerns, Trinity and Sartana. To wind up the collection, we get one of the real films with Sartana—and Sabbath, his nemesis/compatriot/white hat to his black hat. (Sabbath’s a strange dude, what with the white parasol and constant poetry reading.)

The plot has to do with a mining company that keeps losing miners’ gold shipments to bandits—but, as becomes fairly obvious fairly soon, the shipments carry sand, not gold. We get a Mexican bandit gang, an evil company owner, various other evil folks—and Sartana, who seems mostly to crave freshly-cooked eggs but can outwit and outshoot any seven men at once.

Lots of trick shooting. Lots of uneven odds. Lots of temporary doomed alliances. Thoroughly enjoyable, with a semi-coherent plot, no gratuitous gore or explicit violence (other than the usual cartoon shootings), good music, reasonably good acting. Not widescreen, but a good print that makes the most of the many close-ups in this flick. $1.75.

Fog Island, 1945, b&w. Terry O. Morse (dir.), George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Jerome Cowan, Sharon Douglas, Veda Ann Borg, John Whitney, Ian Keith, George Lloyd. 1:12 [1:09]

Businessman gets out of prison after an embezzlement sentence and returns to his mansion on a lonely, fog-shrouded island (a former pirate hideaway, which may explain the secret passages). His wife died while he was in prison; his stepdaughter’s there, as is a shifty butler. He believes that several colleagues—who framed him for the embezzlement and ran the company into the ground—murdered his wife as part of a search for the “hidden treasure” (which doesn’t exist: the losses were due to bad investments, not embezzlement). So he invites the lot of them out for a weekend. They all come, including the son of one who’s died—and, other than that upstanding son (who wooed the daughter at college, but was rejected by her because she assumed he was after her supposed money), they’re a mutually-suspicious, backbiting, nasty little group. Oh, there’s also his cellmate and former accountant…

Naturally, the launch that brought them all to the island has to go back to the mainland “for repairs.” That leaves the lot stranded. After enticing them with some specific clues and items, he leaves them to their own devices—which mostly consist of trying to find the “treasure” and stalking one another. It’s a lot more entertaining than I expected, and it all works out—sort of—in the end. (Well, not for the businessman, but you can’t have everything.) The soundtrack is clipped just often enough to be annoying, and the print’s not great. Not a masterpiece, but pretty good; with flaws, I come up with $1.25.

They Made Me a Criminal, 1939, b&w. Busby Berkeley (dir.), John Garfield, Claude Rains, Ann Sheridan, May Robson, Gloria Dickson, the Dead End Kids (Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, etc.). 1:32.

The setup: Johnnie Bradford, a southpaw boxer with a serious drinking problem, wins the championship—and, during the celebration, winds up in a brawl that leaves a reporter dead. He didn’t do it, but he passed out during the process. His manager (who beaned the reporter wih a bottle of booze, killing him) takes off with Bradford’s dame, his watch and his money—leaving him as the obvious patsie. But the cops find the victim, put out a bulletin for the champ’s car (being driven by the couple) and, in the chase, they wind up crashing and burning. The cops assume Bradford’s dead and the case is closed. Except for one detective (who blew an investigation years before), Claude Rains, who notes that the burned guy’s watch is on the wrong wrist…

Meanwhile, Bradford (John Garfield) goes to a lawyer to figure out what to do. He has $10,000 in a safe deposit box. The lawyer says he’ll get it and to lay low—then gives Bradford $250, says he’s taking the rest as his fee, and tells him to ride the rails as far as he can go. Which Bradford does, winding up at an Arizona orchard that’s also a sort of rehabilitation camp for delinquents, namely the Dead End Kids. It’s run by a feisty old lady and her beautiful daughter (Dickson—Sheridan’s the dame).

That’s enough for the plot. Let’s say the happy ending requires an unexpected and unlikely soft spot, but was probably the only way to end the flick. Lots of boxing; I wonder whether Busby Berkeley choreographed the fight sequences? A lot depends on your tolerance for the Dead End Kids, aka the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys. In this case, I thought they were OK, although still basically hammy little thugs. Decent print. Call it $1.50.

Jigsaw, 1949, b&w. Fletcher Markle (dir.), Franchot Tone, Jean Wallace, Myron McCormick, Marc Lawrence, Winifred Lenihan, Doe Avedon, Hedley Rainnie, George Breen. 1:10.

A printer apparently commits suicide, but a cop—also the eventual brother-in-law of a breezy Assistant DA—checks into it and also winds up dead. The Assistant DA, who never seems to take much of anything seriously, gets deeply into a web of New York neofascists (who may be in it for the money), intrigue, attempted seduction and more murders—and along the way is appointed Special Prosecutor for the case (whatever that case may be). Lively, complex plot, but Franchot Tone as the hero really does seem a little too disengaged for the role. Still, it moves. Anybody who hasn’t figured out the mastermind halfway through the film isn’t really trying, but that’s not particularly unusual.

Quite a few uncredited cameos, mostly in a nightclub: Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, John Garfield, Burgess Meredith and more. Some decent filming. Some damage to the print (missing bits and a white streak down the screen during portions). Not great, but worth $1.25.

Algiers, 1938, b&w. John Cromwell (dir.), Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie, Hedy Lamarr, Joseph Calleia, Alan Hale, Gene Lockhart, Walter Kingsford, Paul Harvey. 1:36 [1:39].

Pepe Le Moko is a French jewel thief now holed up in the Casbah, where he’s essentially impossible to arrest. Enter a no-nonsense French officer who wants him caught—and a gorgeous Frenchwoman on vacation with her fiancée. There’s not too much doubt where this will all end, but the story—a classic—is in the getting there.

This one really is a classic, with Le Moko’s slightly odd band of compatriots, his one song (well, with Charles Boyer playing thepart…), the magnificent Hedy Lamarr, a great supporting cast, fine cinematography and all the atmosphere of the Casbah itself. The only letdown (other than a tiny number of lost frames) is the soundtrack, which has background noise and occasional distortion. That reduces the value of an eminently enjoyable classic to $1.75.

In a couple of weeks–or, realistically, roughly a month–I’ll have a decision to make.

Not an earth-shattering one, which makes talking about it more fun.

Namely: After I watch the fourth movie on Disc 9 of the 250-movie/60-disc Mystery Collection, which I’ll do tomorrow or Thursday, I’ll watch the four movies on the fifth and final disc of the Spaghetti Western 20-movie pack (which was a freebie). I normally watch two old flicks a week, so after two weeks, I’ll go back to Disc 10 of the Mystery Collection.

The question is, after that disc, what’s next? Which set do I alternate with the Mystery Collection?

Between freebies and ones I’ve purchased, I have six choices–four 50-movie Packs, two much smaller sets.

I’m nearly certain I won’t choose one of these two after Spaghetti Westerns:

• Mean Guns: The Time to Die Collection–another 20-pack (and another freebie), with a mix of Spaghetti and other westerns (and, unfortunately, another copy of the regrettable God’s Gun). Four movies B&W, 16 color; three from the 1930s, one from the ’40s, six from the ’60s, 9 from the ’70s, one from the ’80s. Three repeats.
• Gunslinger Classics 50-Movie Pack: An interesting mix of old westerns (including some of the singing cowboys) and more modern flicks. 31 Color, 19 B&W. 15 from the 1930s, 5 from the 40s, 2 from the 50s, 9 from the 60s, 17 from the 70s, one each from the 80s and 90s. Seven repeats–but several more are repeated in Mean Guns. (Yes, yet another copy of God’s Gun.)

Much as I like the old westerns and more than a few of the modern ones, those can both wait a year… Which means the choice is probably one of these four:

• Shirley Temple Smiles and Curls Collection (a freebie): Two DVDs–one with three features, one with 11 shorts. One feature is in color. All are from the 1930s.
• Legends of Horror 50-Movie Pack (another freebie): An oddly-titled set, since it includes all of the movies in the Alfred Hitchcock 20-pack, almost none of which are horror films. Of the 30 others, 11 are in color, 19 B&W; 9 are from the 30s, 5 from the 40s, 3 from the 50s, 4 from the 60s, 9 from the 70s. There’s actually some good stuff here, although I’m not particularly a horror buff.
• Comedy Kings 50-Movie Pack: Six color, 44 B&W, six that I’ve already seen. One from the 1920s, 22 from the 1930s, 18 from the 1940s, 8 from the 50s, one from the 60s.
• Box Office Gold 50-Movie Pack (on 13 DVDs): All color. One from the 1950s, two from the 1960s, 26 from the 1970s, 21 from the 1980s. One that I’ve already seen. Lots of big-name stars. If this seems implausible, well, it’s another set of TV movies. (Remember TV movies?)

Heck, I could leave it up to “my two readers” (yes, I know better, as I suspect do most other libloggers who use that particular bit of false modesty): Whichever set gets the most votes in comments is the one I’ll watch first. OK, I’ll do that…but voting is only from among the four sets in the second group of bullets. And, as usual, spam is not accepted.

It Can Be Done…Amigo, 1972, color (orig. Si può fare… amigo and actual screen title Can Be Done, Amigo). Maurizio Lucidi (dir.), Bud Spencer, Jack Palance. 1:40 [1:38].

I first saw and reviewed this in 2008, as part of the Classic Westerns set. At the time, I was watching it over four days, while exercising, on a 15″ screen. Here’s what I had to say at the time:

I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. Before the title, we get Bud Spencer’s and Jack Palance’s names, arranged in a circle, rotating. Spencer’s character, Coburn, is a huge beefy type who seems gentle enough and somehow keeps getting into trouble—well, he is a sometimes horse thief. He typically deals with trouble by staring, slowly putting on a pair of glasses, and then pounding his opponents into the ground—almost literally. They punch him a few times with no effect, then he either hits two opponents’ heads together or hits them over the head and they go down. He’s involved with a kid whose uncle is taking him to a western town—but the uncle gets bushwhacked and, when Coburn finds him dying, gives Coburn an envelope to pass along to the kid. The envelope turns out to contain $50 (a lot of money) and the deed to a run-down house just outside town. Meanwhile, there’s Palance’s character, Sonny Bronston, a fast-shooting eccentric who runs a group of female entertainers (in, apparently, more than one tradition of that word) and who’s after Coburn. Why? Seems Coburn sullied the virtue of Bronston’s sister (a case of mistaken identity)—and now Coburn needs to marry her so she can be an honorable widow (since he’ll get shot as soon as he gets married.

The town’s priest is also the sheriff and judge and generally doesn’t want Coburn around—and has designs on the kid’s house and land, for unclear reasons. There’s a strange guy who eats dirt—and who starts paying people $2 a bucket (one bucket per person) for dirt that he tastes. Which pastime leads him to the kid’s place. There’s lots more plot, and it mostly winds up with a remarkable six-minute free-for-all: No bullets fired (lots of guns fired, but all blanks), lots of fists, and mostly Coburn putting people out of action.

It felt as though I was joining a conversation partway through. The odd title refers to one of Coburn’s sayings. The plot line between Coburn and Bronston seems to go back quite a ways. It’s a spaghetti western, to be sure—but it’s also a comedy and pretty decent. It’s also a decent print (missing just a minute or two), a fair amount of fun, and with a lot fewer killings and shootings than some—only one, as I remember. I’ll give it $1.25.

I’m pretty sure this is the same print, but I found myself watching the whole thing—this time, in one day on a great 32″ TV. And found myself enjoying it even more—as a spaghetti western farce. One thing I noticed: In some early scenes and in most of the last 20 minutes or so, the color’s odd, as though this was a partly-colorized black-and-white movie, with some natural colors and lots of bright blue-green, a sort of teal. That may be a print problem; it might be intentional, but it adds to the surreal quality of the film (when Coburn stops a bank robbery—only because they wanted to take his money as well—the bank proprietor complains that his head-bashing and consequent furniture damage has turned a nice simple bank robbery into a disaster). This really only works as farce, but works very well in that regard. (In fact, there are no killings—the one death is a heart attack with a Monty Pythonesque quality to it, as the dead man—the uncle—keeps waking up to provide further instructions to Coburn.) The title song is, well, very strange. It’s decidedly an odd one, and an easy $1.75.

God’s Gun (orig. Diamante Lobo), 1976, color. Gianfranco Parolini (dir.), Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance, Richard Boone, Sybil Danning, Leif Garrett, Robert Lipton. 1:34 [1:37].

The good stuff: An impressive cast—not only Lee Van Cleef, but also Jack Palance, Richard Boone, Sybil Danning and Leif Garrett. (Oh, and Peggy Lipton’s brother.) Also, there’s clearly a plot, hinted at right at the start of the flick and carried through to its conclusion.

That’s the good stuff. The other list is considerably longer—including the print itself, which is soft and almost seems to have been digitized from 8mm.. But that’s the print. In this case, I have zero interest in seeing a better one because—well, if this had been the first true spaghetti western in the package, I might have thrown the entire package away on the spot.

What’s wrong? First, there’s almost no humor, usually a staple of spaghetti westerns. Second, the villains—the Clancy gang, headed by Palance—are apparently on drugs or just crazed, notably including Palance. It’s not just that they’re gratuitously violent and sadistic; they’re nuts. Third, unlike spaghetti westerns where the body count may be high but it’s largely cartoon violence (you hear a shot, someone cries out, spins around, falls down), this one seems to linger lovingly on the violence, with a fair amount of blood and close-ups. Ditto sexual assault—a lot of time spent on this as well. Fourth, the acting (Van Cleef, in a dual role of twin brothers, one a priest, one a reformed gambler/gunslinger, aside) is somewhere between horrendous and nonexistent. I’ve never seen Palance this bad, Richard Boone is a shocking waste, Leif Garrett made me wish for stronger child labor laws. The hostesses in the saloon seem to think that standing around sort of swaying back and forth to music is hot stuff.

Fifth, the logic—even by spaghetti western standards, this one’s loony. The kid (Garrett) is apparently the owner of the saloon/gambling hall that seems to be the only business in a town specifically founded by the priest, in which everybody—everybody—attends daily Mass. At one key plot point, the bad guys tear down the rear wall of the jail one evening…and the next morning, everybody goes off to Mass as though nothing at all has happened. The priest seems to think the right way to arrest one of the gang members is to sneak up on the gang while they’re sleeping—and successfully remove every rifle and pistol, including holsters, without disturbing them. Oh, and then confront them…without a weapon. He’s also apparently convinced that a clearly vicious gang of 20 or so thugs won’t make any attempt to rescue one of their leaders from a local jail with one guard and an incompetent sheriff.

Oh, there’s more. The kid flees on horseback, then, after defeating a bad guy who’s after him, goes the rest of the way on foot. (He finds the priest’s twin brother, who’s “somewhere in Mexico,” in less than two days of walking. Right.) There are some plot twists that could be interesting in a better flick; I won’t spoil them for any sap determined to watch this. I’ll stop there, leaving out the lack of good scenery and the absurd sound effects and production values.

Apparently this turkey was filmed in Israel. I’m not sure that explains anything. This is a nasty little film, one that gives trash a bad name.

What a waste. Checking other sets (some free, some purchased), I’m appalled to find that I now own three copies of this turkey. For my own taste, not worth a cent—but I’ll reluctantly, and only for Van Cleef fans, give it $0.75.

The Fighting Fists of Shanghai Joe (orig. Il mio nome è Shangai Joe or My name is Shanghai Joe), 1972, color. Mario Caiano (dir.), Chen Lee, Klaus Kinski, Gordon Mitchell, Claudio Undari, Katsutoshi Mikuriya, Carla Romanelli. 1:38 [1:34].

Unlike most earlier Mill Creek collections, with main menus consisting of a still from each of the flicks and your choice of play or scenes, this set has a clip from a film—wide-screen, scenic, with a first-rate Spaghetti Western theme song—that runs for a few seconds and then has the particular disc’s menu superimposed. I’d wondered which movie that great theme came from.

Now I know—but it’s a peculiar situation. The theme is from this flick, but the clip used for the main menu is widescreen, where the movie is pan-and-scan (full-frame). That seems odd, particularly since some of the movies in this set are presented widescreen. (The movie was filmed in full Cinemascope ratio—that is, very widescreen.)

Ah, but what of this movie? Well, first, the title as presented is actually The Fighting Fist of Shangai Joe—note singular “fist” and odd spelling of the city. Second, it is indeed a Eurowestern with a mild-mannered Asian protagonist played by Chen Lee, who never uses a gun (at least not as a weapon) but has somewhat superhuman abilities in the martial arts and several other areas. He shows up in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1880s, having come from China and dressing in Chinese garb. He buys a stagecoach ticket to “Texas” and has to ride up top (for predictably racist reasons, and that seems all too likely in terms of historical accuracy). He gets in various kinds of trouble in Texas, all of which leads up to the finale, a long showdown with a would-be assassin who happens to be the only other Chinese in the U.S. from this mysterious organization of superheroes. (OK, that could be a spoiler, but it’s both obvious and doesn’t detract from the movie.)

All in all, very good. Chen Lee (I don’t think we ever learn the character’s name) does a first-rate job. With one exception (a massacre of Mexican peasants handled cartoon-violence style, but still), the only victims of violence are Bad Guys (although I could have done with less explicit gore). The action and dialogue are over the top in some interesting ways. It’s fun and it has probably the only ending it could have without being a total downer. Pretty good print, very good sound. I’ll give it $1.75.

Between God, The Devil and a Winchester (orig. Anche nel west c’era una volta Dio or Even in the West once upon a time God or God Was in the West, Too, at One Time), 1968, color. Marino Girolami (dir.), Gilbert Roland, Richard Harrison, Ennio Girolami, Folco Lulli, Raf Baldassare, Dominique Boschero, Robert Camardiel, Humberto Zempere, Luis Barboo. 1:38.

Another widescreen presentation, with a pretty decent print (although the sound’s sometimes a bit distorted on music)—and an unusual plot, with a lot more travel than usual. It really seems to be two different films, although the progression makes sense in terms of plot. The first quarter involves a fat outlaw, combinations of not enough trust and too much trust, a treasure map and an outlaw gang: Fast-moving, violent…and winding up with one nameless hero, a mild-mannered type who saves a kid from fire and also saves another victim.

The rest of the movie involves that hero, the kid, the treasure map and a whole collection of bad guys—some of them people the hero’s hired to lead a wagon train (to find the treasure, which they’re not supposed to know about), some of them an outlaw gang. The ending is, well…the ending. The plot partly involves the Civil War, partly involves religion, and is partly inspired by Treasure Island.

I’m not sure what to say about the plot or the acting. The film works reasonably well, has mostly cartoon SpaghettiWestern violence (not lots of closeup blood), has a fair amount of humor along with lots of scenery—lots of scenery—and, after the first quarter, has only one innocent victim. This may be too generous, but I’m inclined to give it $1.50.

The Man on the Eiffel Tower, 1949, color. Burgess Meredith (dir.), Charles Laughton, Franchot Tone, Burgess Meredith, Robert Hutton, Jean Wallace, Patricia Roc. 1:37 [1:27].

Charles Laughton as Inspector Maigret, with a young Burgess Meredith as a would-be robber…in a movie directed by the young Burgess Meredith (taking over for producer Irving Allen). His character’s a near-blind (without his glasses) knife-sharpener who needs some real money. Enter a married playboy, dependent on his wealthy aunt, who wants to leave his wife for his American girlfriend—but his wife, who knows all about it, will only go with a substantial settlement. He’d give a million francs if someone would off the aunt (he’s the heir)—and a nearby psychopath (Tone) hears about this.

Next thing we know, the aunt (and her maid) are murdered, Meredith’s character’s busily being frames, Maigret’s in trouble for letting him escape from prison while awaiting trial, and the psycopath’s actively taunting Maigret. He’s fond of lunch on the restaurant on the Eiffel’s observation platform, and notes that diving from the tower would be a great way to end things.

Lots of plot, lots of psychological strangeness, one more death…and, all in all, an interesting flick. It’s sort-of in color (as with many other early color flicks, there’s fading, whole scenes where some colors are missing or everything’s red-shifted), there are missing frames (and apparently more than just frames), it’s a little damaged. It’s also not as well directed as it might be. All that combines to $1.50.

Topper Returns, 1941, b&w. Roy Del Ruth (dir.), Joan Blondell, Roland Young, Carole Landis, Billie Burke, Dennis O’Keefe, Patsy Kelly, H.B. Warner, Eddie ‘Rochester” Anderson. 1:28.

An absolute charmer, with Cosmo Topper (Young), the slightly-henpecked banker, once again involved with ghosts—this time quite unwillingly, and it is a mystery. Two women in a taxi; a hooded figure aims with a rifle, shoots out a tire, and almost causes the taxi to go off the road and into the ocean—but not quite. As the cabbie (O’Keefe) goes for help, the women flag down Topper (and his chauffeur, the inimitable Eddie “Rochester” Anderson of Jack Benny fame) to take them to Carrington Hall. On the way, one woman (Blondell) is sitting on Topper’s lap—and since the Toppers are the Carrington’s next-door neighbor (but it’s a long drive to that next door), Topper’s wife (Burke, a fine comedienne) sees them on the way.

That’s just the start. The other woman (Ann Carrington, played by Carole Landis) has arrived to finally meet her father; she’s heir to the entire Carrington estate and he seems to be in bad health. The servants are, well, strange—as is the family doctor. The two women switch bedrooms for the night—which results in the wrong woman being killed. Her ghost emerges—a remarkably corporeal ghost, capable of leaving footprints, opening doors, and getting drunk, but visible only when she chooses to be—and the chase is on.

It’s a combination mystery and slapstick comedy. There’s little more to be said about the plot, but the movie just keeps moving along—with hidden passages and lots more. The print’s very good and this movie is certainly worth rewatching. Slight but first-rate. $2.00.

The Green Glove, 1952, b&w. Rudolph Maté (dir.), Glenn Ford, Geraldine Brooks, Cedrick Hardwicke, George Macready, Jany Holt, Roger Treville. 1:29.

The film begins at the end—when a jewel-encrusted saint’s gauntlet, one that brought miracle-seekers to the little town honoring the saint until it disappeared—turns up once again, signaled by the church bells ringing (which they would never do while the gauntlet was missing).

Then we go back to World War II, an airman bailing out behind German lines, and the actual plot begins. Yank airman (Ford) discovers “journalist”/double agent, carrying a bag with some drawings and the gauntlet; for various reasons, he winds up with the bag but leaves it for safekeeping in a chateau as he makes his way back to the front lines.

Years later, the airman’s doing badly—and comes back to France, presumably to find the gauntlet (the green glove) and make a small fortune selling it. The rest of the film—most of it—deals with this adventure, as the double agent (an antique dealer in peacetime) is watching him, murders get the police involved, there’s a beautiful woman who gets caught up in it all…

Nicely done all around, with a tense final 15 minutes or so—and the movie moves along nicely throughout. Good performances, good directing. The print’s a little soft and not great b&w, the main thing bringing this down to a still-respectable $1.50.

The Second Woman, 1950, b&w. James V. Kern (dir.), Robert Young, Betsy Drake, John Sutton, Florence Bates, Morris Carnovsky, Henry O’Neill, Jason Robards Sr. 1:31.

Robert Young is an architect who, a year previously, lost his fiancée in an auto accident the night before the wedding—in a crash he’s supposedly responsible for. He lives in a striking modern home, which he designed, on the coast—right next to a more traditional home, where a young woman visiting her aunt runs into him and strikes up an acquaintance, almost immediately falling in love with him.

But he seems cursed: Over the course of a few days, a prized sculpture breaks, a prized painting fades away, his horse suffers a destroyed ankle and has to be destroyed, his rose bush dies, his dog is poisoned, he loses a prize commission because the package of drawings omits all the interiors…and his house burns down.

He thinks it’s bad luck. The woman (an actuary at home) thinks that’s impossible, and sets out to investigate (against his wishes). The family doctor thinks he’s paranoiac (the way they said it then) and actually doing all these things to himself. There are two other characters: The wealthy head of the firm Young works for (and father of the dead fiancée), and a cad who’s also part of the firm and pretty clearly evil in almost every way.

Right up to the last ten minutes or so, it’s not clear at all whether he’s doing it to himself or whether someone else is responsible—and, for that matter, who the “someone else” might be. It all comes together in a great climax.

Well played and compelling. My only real problem is a grotesque logic gap having to do with timing, but to mention what that gap is would be a spoiler. Even so, the print’s good, it’s well directed, it truly is a mystery and it’s worth $1.75.

The Man from Nowhere (aka Arizona Colt, orig. Il pistolero de Arizona), 1966, color. Michele Lupo (dir.), Giuliano Gemma, Fernando Sancho, Roberto Camardiel. 1:58 [1:53].

We open on an adobe prison (or “prision”), with a handful of guards and a drunken old coot riding up with a wooden whiskey flask around his neck. The guards engage him in idle chatter while he lights a fuse on the flask, tosses it at them and—well, boom. Then this huge band of gun-crazy outlaws rides up, shoots all the guards (and loses a few of their own) and busts all the prisoners out (except that one cool dude, Arizona Colt breaks out on his own).

The catch: The prisoners have been broken out to build the ranks of the bandit gang—and your choice is to join them (with a brand on your arm) or get shot down immediately. (We learn this via a grumpy guy who was in jail for drunkenness and due to be released the next day. Bye, grumpy old guy.) Colt says he needs time to think about it—and he’s as good a shot as the maniacal, sadistic, superhuman-shooting gang leader, so he manages to ride away.

That’s just the start. There’s bank robbery in Blackston Hill (yes, spelled that way), killing a young woman because she recognizes the brand, lots of killing for the fun of it, not just to get a job done, the drunk seeking redemption…and a long, slow scene near the end between Colt and the maniac that should be more exciting than it is.

I dunno. On one hand, this is not only widescreen, it’s in stereo (or at least the awful theme song at the start and finish is in stereo), although the picture’s also soft, presumably from overcompression. And it’s a long’un, almost two hours (but missing five minutes). On the other, the maniac and his gang are so evil that they go beyond stereotypical to repulsive in an annoying way. We never do learn why Colt (who’s a bounty hunter) was in jail; neither did I much care. In the end, while it’s not incoherent, I found it pointless and dispiriting. Maybe $0.75.

Minnesota Clay (orig. L’homme du Minnesota, or “The Man of Minnesota”), 1965, color. Sergio Corbucci (dir.), Cameron Mitchell, Georges Riviere, Ethel Rojo, Diana Martin, Antonio Roso, Fernando Sancho. 1:30 [1:25].

The setup: A prison labor camp in the old West. Thanks to a brawl of sorts, Minnesota Clay (Mitchell) escapes (using a doctor—who’s already informed him that his eyes are bad and one good blow would blind him—as a hostage). Goes back home, where one gang (run by the bad guy whose testimony should have acquitted Clay) has taken over the town from another Mexican gang, now holed up nearby (the new gang was invited into town, and the bad guy’s the sheriff).

Clay is the Best Shot in the World. He also has family secrets nearby. And, by the time we get to the long, slow-moving climax, he’s essentially blind. But still the Best Shot in the World with superhuman reflexes.

I’m not sure what to make of this. The print’s unusually good, widescreen and high quality with great scenery, but with just enough missing frames to mess up the soundtrack (never the visuals) at times. As these things go, the innocent body count is on the low side. The last 20 minutes are slow and somewhat suspenseful, but the ending’s—well, it’s not happy. Balancing good and bad, I come up with $1.25.

White Comanche, 1968, color (original title Comanche blanco). José Briz Méndez (dir.), Joseph Cotton, William Shatner (dual role), Rosanna Yanni. 1:33.

Twin brothers, half-Comanche, half-white, shunned by both—but one of them has convinced a bunch of Comanche he’s their savior, takes too much peyote, and goes around slaughtering white devils. His twin (Johnny Moon), trying to live as a white, keeps getting in trouble (e.g., nearly hanged) because you can only distinguish him from White Comanche (Notah) by the color of their eyes. Not that Johnny’s not pretty good at killing people also (he’s a crack shot, and this isn’t one of those westerns where everything’s settled with fistfights) but he always seems to have a reason.

Johnny tells Notah this must be settled and to come to Rio Honda within four days. During that period, there’s a range war in Rio Honda between two factions, with Johnny helping the sheriff maintain some semblance of order. Eventually, of course, the showdown happens. In the meantime, there’s much thoughtful standing around and an odd love subplot (involving a woman who first thinks Johnny is the evil half-Comanche who raped her, but eventually sees the eye-color difference and falls for him).

Good color, acceptable production values, a good job by Joseph Cotton as the sheriff—but the real selling point here is William Shatner as an arrogant sexist tinhorn ruler who doesn’t happen to be on a starship (and is always half-dressed, and has the body for it). And, for good measure, his twin brother. It’s a curiosity, but a watchable curiosity thanks to Shatner. (Note: This review is from October 2008, when I saw the same movie—and, apparently, the same print—in the 50 Movie Western Classics set.) $1.25.

China 9, Liberty 37, color. Monte Hellman and Tony Brandt (dirs.), Warren Oates, Fabio Testi, Jenny Agutter, Sam Peckinpah. Original title Amore, piombo e furore. 1:38 [1:32].

Again, this movie was also in the 50 Movie Western Classics set—and, although the picture and timing are identical, there’s one difference. The original had good monophonic sound. This version has stereo sound—but it’s muffled and hard to understand. The review’s slightly modified from October 2008.

Good production values, good background music, a fair amount of moral ambiguity, some odd accents from some of the actors, and in this case an unhurried plot marked by two or three big gun battles. A condemned gunfighter Clayton Drumm (Testi), about to be hanged in China (a tiny little Western town, 46 miles from Liberty), is reprieved so that he can shoot down Matthew Sebanek (Oates), a rancher, on behalf of the railroad that wants Matthew’s land. Only Clayton doesn’t do it, meets Matthew’s whole clan (three brothers)—and when he leaves, Matthew’s wife Catherine (Agutter) (who knifes Matthew in self-defense and mistakenly thinks she killed him) catches up with him. This is all slow moving: lots of talk and essentially no action.

Matthew and brothers try to gun down Clayton (and fail), and Matthew takes back his wife—but later, the railroad stooges are trying to get rid of both Clayton and Matthew, resulting in a 2.5-way gun battle that’s interesting and a little above the usual gunplay. Not to provide spoilers, but Clayton and Matthew (and Matthew’s wife) all wind up alive, with a fair number of corpses around. In the middle, there are nice little side-plots, including Sam Peckinpah as a dime novelist trying to buy Clayton Drumm’s story—or, rather, lies—to sell to the folks back east, and a non-animal circus (acrobats, little people) whose head wants to hire Drumm as a sharpshooter/showman.

If you can get past Clayton’s accent (explained by dialogue about him coming over from Europe as a child) and the curious acting of the bride, it’s a decent flick if you like a slow, sometimes languid, fairly naturalistic style—which I do. A good flick, damaged by the muffled soundtrack, but still $1.25.

Impact, 1949, b&w. Arthur Lubin (dir.), Brian Donlevy, Ella Raines, Charles Coburn, Helen Walker, Anna May Wong, Robert Warwick, Tony Barrett. 1:51.

Walter Williams (Donlevy) is a high-powered San Francisco industrialist, who worked his way up through the ranks—and who’s married to (and deeply in love with) a faithless wife. She’s out to do him in, conspiring with her lover to kill him in the course of a road trip (where the lover pretends to be her cousin, hitchhiking back east).

But things go a little awry. The car’s destroyed in a flaming wreck (colliding head-on with a gas tanker on the highway to Reno, apparently)—and Williams, left just off the road as dead, isn’t (although the unrecognizable corpse in the wreck is assumed to be Williams). He chooses not to return to SF right away, instead making his way to Larkspur, Idaho, where he forges a new life under a new name…until he decides he needs to make things right.

That’s only part of the plot, and in some ways the most interesting part is the last half-hour or so, where the faithless wife attempts to pin the lover’s murder on him. It’s quite a story, involving detection and (of course) a new love interest, well played and plotted by all involved. The print’s excellent and I found the whole thing surprisingly satisfying. It’s one I’ll watch again. $2.00

He Walked By Night, 1948, b&w. Alfred L. Werker (dir.), Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell, James Cardwell, Jack Webb. 1:19.

A true-crime (rather, true-criminal) story and police procedural, with lots of narration and a feel that’s reminiscent of (apparently the template and inspiration for) Dragnet. It has a young Jack Webb—a couple of years before the original Dragnet, in his second adult role, as a forensics technician, not a detective as such. It’s set in LA and heavily features the LA sewer system.

Richard Basehart plays Roy Walker, who seemingly could make an excellent living as an electronics whiz but prefers to be a burglar (and, later, robber) with electronics innovation as a sideline. We never learn his motive for seemingly-needless crimes; as one reviewer noted, all we learn is what the police learn. Among other things, this may be one of the first flicks to involve a criminal listening in on police-band radio.

It’s an odd one, and of course I don’t know what LA was like in 1946. Apparently, the storm drain openings are big enough so a full-grown man can just roll into them. The idea of getting crime victims to help build a good drawing of the perp’s face was new (in this case, they use slides as a sort of identikit, working with a couple dozen robbery victims). And, to be sure, LA had an endless supply of police to send to a crime scene. The sleeve description’s off (as it is for Impact), but that’s irrelevant.

Not bad, not great—a little heavy on the narration, a little light on the logic, specifically the motivation for the criminal. Still, it gets points as, apparently, the first of its kind: A fact-based police yarn set in LA, with the names changed to protect whoever and showing police as hard-working people who sometimes have trouble with investigations, not as quick-witted romancers who have lots of shootouts. The print’s OK. Including a $0.25 bonus for its significance as the inspiration for Dragnet, I’ll give it $1.50

Quicksand, 1950, b&w. Irving Pichel (dir.), Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney, Barbara Bates, Peter Lorre. 1:19.

This one’s not a mystery, but a film noir—exploring how an auto mechanic going after the wrong woman can go from “borrowing” $20 to murder in about half a dozen not-so-easy steps. Although I’m not a great Mickey Rooney fan and he’s in almost every frame of this film, I have to say he did a good job.

It’s a fairly effective story, with a continuously moving plot. Peter Lorre plays one of several fundamentally dishonest people, in his case the proprietor of an arcade. Good but not great; I’ll give it $1.25.

Eyes in the Night, 1942, b&w. Fred Zinnemann (dir.), Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Donna Reed, Stephen McNally. 1:20.

The setup: a woman (Harding) finds that her stepdaughter (a 21-year-old Reed) is in love with her own former lover, who’s managed to turn the stepdaughter against her. The former lover’s an actor and the stepdaughter plans a dramatic career; they’re both involved in a production that’s in the works. But the actor turns up dead…and the daughter believes the stepmother’s to blame. She goes to a famous blind detective, Duncan Maclain (Arnold) to see if he can help.

The reality: It’s all espionage. The woman’s husband has invented some formula important to the war effort. He’s flown off for a final test before delivering it to Washington—and the butler in the house is a plant, part of a ring determined to steal the formula. The playwright who’s directing the production is the leader of the gang, and they killed the former lover because he was unreliable (or something)

The bulk of the movie’s set in the scientist’s estate, with the detective portraying the woman’s uncle and trying to keep the bad guys from getting the formula. Somehow it all works out—largely due to Friday, the detective’s seeing-eye dog.

Generally well played. Arnold’s very effective as the blind detective. Not great, but pretty good. I’ll give it $1.50.

This one’s a real question, specifically to readers who:

• Have LCD HDTVs with 120Hz or 240Hz refresh rate and the option of interpolating new frames (which can go by any number of “smooth” or “blur-resisting” or similar names).
• Actually watch HDTV movies, preferably from Blu-ray but maybe even upconverted from DVD.

Here’s the question or questions:

• Do you use the frame-interpolation option?
• If you’re a movie buff, do you find that its “video-like” look harms your appreciation of the movie?

Here’s the thing. We don’t have an HDTV yet. When we get one, it will almost certainly be an LED-backlit LCD model, which also means it will almost certainly have at least a real 120Hz refresh rate (and either a 240Hz rate or the “pseudo-240″ fast-switching backlighting option).

The home theater/av magazines I read mostly have reviewers who believe that the judder in film–the fact that, at 24 frames per second, film action isn’t actually smooth (you’re seeing the flicker, at least subconsciously)–is what makes it film: That smoothing out that judder by adding interpolated frames somehow damages the flick, turning it into video.

That’s not a universal view–and I’m less than fully convinced that every director and director of photography really *wants* a flickery movie. Sometimes, yes–I believe that Woody Allen’s b&w films are probably intended to be seen with all the flicker of the original. But many times, I suspect, the director and DP deal with what’s feasible. I feel the same way about the notion that, in all pictures (as opposed to certain stylized pictures), the grain of the film should be visible.

So: How about you? I haven’t actually had the chance to make the decision yet. If (when) I do, I’ll try it both ways on a variety of flicks…but I’d love to gain the experience of those who’re already there.

Oh: If you’re thinking of giving me a sermon on how the creator’s work must be honored, don’t bother–unless you can prove to me that all those directors viewed judder as a positive, not simply the reality of film-based moviemaking. Just say “I would never use the smoothing feature on movies” and let it go at that.

Death Rides a Horse (orig. Da uomo a uomo or “From man to man,” a much better title), 1967, color. Giulio Petroni (dir.), Lee Van Cleef, John Phillip Law, Mario Brega, Luigi Pistilli, Anthony Dawson. 1:54.

Remember the blue-eyed blind angel in Barbarella? What if he was a 21-year-old whose family was slaughtered (after his mom and older sister were raped) and house burned down 15 years earlier by a truly evil gang—one of whom saved him from the fire? And he became a crack shot, presumably planning revenge sometimes? Now mix in the ever-stoic, ever-slightly-sardonic Lee Van Cleef as an outlaw just emerging from prison after a 15-year sentence, after he’d been sold out by the gang he thought he was part of—and he finds that some of the gang members are now Highly Respected Citizens. Throw in a Morricone score with singing that’s either supposed to be incoherent or is marred by a poor soundtrack—oh, and a Mexican village so suppressed by an outlaw gang that they won’t even rise up against four of the gang left to guard a million-dollar theft.

There you have it: The seeds for a movie that combines vengeance and revenge, generational (and style) conflicts (Ryan, Van Cleef’s character, calls Bill, the younger one “kid”; “Grandpa” is the responding epithet), suppressed memory, lots of trick gunplay and not-so-trick gunbattles, truly bad bad guys and the gray Ryan and more. Law does a fine job as a hate-filled but naïve young sharpshooter; Van Cleef is, well, Van Cleef (after just two movies, I see why spaghetti western aficionados hold him in high regard.) It’s a solid spaghetti western, the print’s generally fine, and even with the muddy score I’ll give it $1.50.

Sundance and the Kid (orig. Vivi o, preferibilmente, morti or “Alive or Preferably Dead,”), 1969, color. Duccio Tessari (dir.), Giuliano Gemma, Nino Benvenuti, Sydne Rome. 1:43 [1:23].

Is there a theme here? First movie on a disc is a first-rate spaghetti western—and the second one is something else entirely. This time, the “something else” is tolerable, but maybe tries too hard, beginning with the on-screen title, “Sundance Cassidy and Butch the Kid.”

It’s a comedy/slapstick Western, and that’s a tough genre to bring off if you’re not Mel Brooks. The setup is that one of two brothers, a city slicker/gambler, finds the other—because they’re set to inherit $300,000 if and only if they live together peaceably for six months. The other brother, a down-to-earth Westerner (the time’s a little indistinct, but the first brother arrives in an early automobile), really wants nothing to do with it. And on the first evening, a huge bandit ring shows up, steals the horses and burns down the ranchhouse because the city brother challenges the theft.

Oh yes: Before that, the city brother’s had an encounter with an apparently down-on-his-luck gambler who’s “lost it all”—and after suggesting a friendly game, next thing we know the gambler owns the car (he later becomes the agent or coconspirator of the brothers). The brothers become wholly incompetent outlaws; there’s a kidnapping where the father really doesn’t want the daughter returned, which allows for romantic stuff; and there’s lots more. Oh, there’s also a score that uses kazoos heavily and has songs that comment directly on the plot (but the sound’s sometimes a little distorted to make sense of the lyrics).

Interesting details (along with the real title) at IMDB: the on-screen credits have good “American” names for the leads—e.g. Gemma’s billed as “John Wade” and Benevenuti as “Robert Neuman—and that includes renaming Sydne Rome (the heroine) “Karen Blake,” which is interesting because she hails from Akron, Ohio and Sydne Rome is her real name. Not terrible, but not terribly funny either. Maybe the missing 20 minutes would help? All things considered, it barely rises to $1.00.

Grand Duel (Il grande duello), 1972, color. Giancarlo Santi (dir.), Lee Van Cleef, Alberto Dentice/Peter O’Brien, Jess Hahn, Horst Frank, Klaus Grünberg, Antonio Casale, Marc Mazza, Dominique Darel. 1:38.

Here’s a true oddity—not necessarily the picture (which is a good spaghetti western) but the situation with Mill Creek. That is: I saw Grand Duel in late 2008, as part of the Classic Western set (see C&I October 2008). I gave it a so-so $1.00 rating.

But this isn’t the same print—not by a long shot. That one was full-screen; this one’s wide-screen. That one was missing 10 minutes or so; this one’s nearly full length. (Don’t expect miracles: It’s still VHS-quality at best, which is all you’re going to get with four films on one double-density/single-sided DVD under any circumstances.) And, maybe, I’m a little more attuned to the qualities of spaghetti Westerns and, particularly, Lee Van Cleef.

Anyway…the plot’s too complicated to summarize, but it involves an (ex-)sheriff (Van Cleef), a condemned (but innocent) murderer who has to be the most acrobatic sharpshooter I’ve ever seen (although Van Cleef’s the fastest gun in the state, the younger guy’s definitely the most nimble), a truly evil clan who slaughter the innocent and rule a town (with their name), the mystery of who really shot “the patriarch” of the clan and a “grand duel” that runs about three minutes and may be the least interesting part of the flick, even if it is the climax.

Somehow, it all seemed more logical and interesting than last time around. The flashbacks made more sense. The dialogue ranged from not bad to fairly tasty. Great scenery, good production values. (The film was coproduced by companies from Italy, France, Morocco and Germany.) Despite an absurdly large body count (but it becomes Movie Violence) and a lovingly-filmed massacre of innocents that seemed more brutal than really needed, I found it enjoyable, and give it an easy $1.25. (Lower the innocent body count, or at least don’t show it so vividly, and it gets $1.50.)

Twice a Judas (orig. Due volte Giuda), 1969, color. Nando Cicero (dir.), Klaus Kinski, Antonio Sabato, Cristina Galbo, Jose Calvo, Emma Baron. 1:32.

This one might have been better if presented widescreen (the movie itself was very widescreen), since it seems to be more “cropped & chopped” than panned & scanned, with some really awkward scenes resulting. It’s awkward in several other ways as well, including a beginning that’s never really explained and a situation pitting one set of bad guys against another force that’s pretty obviously bad, even if briefly semi-sympathetic. It’s also a movie that seems to view valiant Confederate fighters as noble, but overrun by those villainous Union soldiers and their murderous ways.

I’m not sure I can really summarize the plot, but it involves one long-lost brother who’s hired to kill his older brother, gets amnesia along the way as a result of an unexplained shooting, and at the last minute prevents the killing. There’s a drunken doctor, a sympathetic lady of negotiable virtue, a sheriff who really does seem to be favoring neither side and a banker who may or may not be evil.

Unfortunately, it’s sort of a mess. In the end, I found it brutal and incoherent and worth, at best, $0.75.

I had to do some driving today and, as usual, had the local NPR station on while driving–in this case, “On the Media,” catching part of a discussion of horror films, followed by a discussion of Psycho with a “film critic and author,” who has a book out about Psycho. (I’ll leave out the critic’s name, although it’s not hard to find…)

Part way through, the interviewer mentioned the film being in black & white and how this had to do with the sheer amount of blood and likelihood that all that red would send the censors around the bend.

In amplifying this point, the critic said that most of Hitchcock’s films prior to Psycho had been in color.

To which I said:

Huh?

I’m no Hitchcock expert, never will be–but I have seen 18 of Hitchcock’s pre-Hollywood films. All of which were in black & white.

Still, I thought, maybe he made a whole boatload of color flicks between the time he moved to Hollywood and when Psycho came out.

So I visited IMDB…and did a little tallying, including only feature-length films for which Hitchcock actually received credit as a director (and ignoring oddities such as a German version of a British film). Since all of the shorts, uncredited stints and oddities were b&w, this would bias the tally toward color, if anything. (If you included television episodes, it gets worse, since Alfred Hitchcock Presents was entirely b&w. I didn’t include TV.)

Here’s the total prior to Psycho:

• 36 Black & White.
• 10 Color.

As far as I can tell, the only way you could say “Most of Hitchcock’s earlier films were in color” is if you entirely ignore all the films he made in the UK…which is a view of Hitchcock’s career in which “ignor” is the key part.

Now, if this film critic was only incidentally aware of Hitchcock, maybe you’d say “Hey, American film critic, never heard of UK productions, what d’you expect?” But he wrote a book about one Hitchcock movie; you’d expect him to have a passing acquaintance with the director’s career. And, any way you count them, most of Hitchcock’s movies were in B&W–in all, as far as I can see, 37 B&W (Psycho the last of them) and 16 color.

No deeper meaning here, except, of course, “Trust but verify”–even if you’re dealing with NPR discussions by experts in a field.

Nancy Drew, Reporter, 1939, b&w. William Clemens (dir.), Bonita Granville, John Litel, Frankie Thomas, Mary Lee, Dickie Jones. 1:08.

It’s fluff, but it’s really good fluff. Nancy Drew (who manages to combine being quite grown up, her own car and all, with being somewhat innocent—a tough act!), daughter of a prominent attorney, enters a newspaper’s contest for the best reportage from a high schooler—and turns it into an investigation into a poisoning and frameup. It’s more comedy than mystery, and Drew is all spunk and wits throughout.

Drew’s relationship to her neighbor Ted is strange, but that’s part of the charm, although Ted’s nasty tween sister and male friend, brats who suddenly turn professional entertainers when required, are a little hard to take. It’s hard not to love the scenes in a Chinese restaurant with a full-scale Chinese big band, all in traditional outfits—and the whole hotel sequence near the end is a long, complicated hoot.

The print’s fairly good and the whole thing’s quite a romp. It’s short (and not that mysterious), so I’ll only give it $1.25.

The Kennel Murder Case, 1933, b&w. Michael Curtiz (dir.), William Powell, Mary Astor, Eugene Pallette, Ralph Morgan, Robert McWade, Robert Barrat, Frank Conroy. 1:13.

Philo Vance raises prize dogs as well as doing some amateur detecting—and after his dog comes in second in breed, he chats with some irritating folks at the kennel club. The most irritating of all turns up dead the next morning, in a room bolted from the inside and with locked windows, an apparent suicide by gunshot. Only Vance, who’s told about it as he’s about to sail off on a cruise, doesn’t think it’s suicide, cancels the cruise and the fun begins.

William Powell as Philo Vance—right there, you can assume an enjoyable movie. You get the detective (Pallette) who’s all too ready to call it a suicide and declare the case over, even when it’s demonstrated that the guy died from a knife wound and suffered a blow to the head before that. You get the irritable coroner (Girardot) who gets called out twice while he’s trying to eat lunch (yes, twice—there’s another victim, the chief suspect in the first murder). You get a DA (McWade) who, for some reason, consistently pronounces the noun “suspect” as though it’s the adjective, accenting the second syllable. You get the niece (Astor, fine as always) who admits she had reason to kill the victim (but didn’t). Lots of odd little mustaches, romantic intrigue, and a victim who had nothing but suspects, since all those who knew him had reason to despise him.

It all works out in the end, of course, in a movie that’s mostly detection, well played and quite nicely done. (Turns out I’d seen it before, five years ago in an entirely unrelated set of public domain movies—but it was well worth watching again.) Decent print, but with just enough missed frames and syllables to be irritating, which is what reduces this to $1.50.

The Death Kiss, 1932, b&w. Edwin L. Marin (dir.), David Manners, Adrienne Ames, Bela Lugosi, John Wray, Vince Barnett, Alexander Carr, Edward Van Sloan. 1:15 [1:10].

Movies within movies are always good plot devices, and this movie takes place almost entirely on the set of The Death Kiss and other areas of the studio. Seems an actor who’s being shot at by eight other actors, with the usual blanks, was also being shot by someone not using blanks. The victim’s a Lothario, with lots of possible enemies. A little early amateur sleuthing, recovering a fragment of the bullet, demonstrates that this wasn’t a prop man’s accident: The fatal bullet’s a different caliber than the prop guns.

This time, a screenwriter who’s in love with the heroine of the flick (who’s been arrested as a likely suspect) becomes amateur detective (aided by a nearly-Keystone Kops-style studio cop) in order to find the real culprit. The real cops are, as you might imagine, less than overjoyed about the help. (If you’re wondering, Bela Lugosi is the studio head, in a relatively small but significant part, played entirely straight.)

Good setup—but I found the plot wanting and the movie a lot less interesting than I’d hoped. It doesn’t help that this print has those little gaps that lose a syllable or word, making some of the dialogue hard to understand. It’s also noisy (background noise). All things considered, I come out with $1.00.

Suddenly, 1954, b&w. Lewis Allen (dir.), Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason, Nancy Gates, Kim Charney, Willis Bouchey, Paul Frees. 1:15.

In the sleepy little California town of Suddenly (it has something to do with the gold rush, although Suddenly seems to be slightly north of LA), the President’s going to arrive on a special 5:00 train, to go off on vacation. The sheriff (Hayden) and nearby cops cooperate with Secret Service agents who arrive on the regular 1:30 train to make sure everything’s secure—and that includes paying a courtesy visit to the house on the hill (with a direct sightline to the train station), where lives a retired Secret Service agent—he was the boss of the head of this detail—and his widow daughter, whom the Sheriff is trying (unsuccessfully) to woo.

That’s just the start of this excellently-acted, tautly-plotted, “half-time” movie (that is: the movie’s about 1:15 long and it covers only a little more than twice as much real time—from 1:30 to about 5:02). The kicker here is Frank Sinatra and two friends, who show up first at the house on the hill, saying they’re FBI agents there to protect the president. (After the father protests that the IRS protects the president, Sinatra says the agencies are cooperating.) But Sinata’s really an assassin, a pure mercenary out to collect the second half of a half-million-dollar fee.

Quite a movie, with Sinatra doing a remarkable job and all the rest acting credibly. It’s a thriller more than a mystery, and it’s excellent. I’d actually seen it several years ago, but thoroughly enjoyed seeing it again. About the only negatives are a couple of glitches and slight print damage; even so, it’s worth $1.75.

Full disclosure: This five-disc 20-movie set was one of the freebies Mill Creek Entertainment sent me when I had a tiny problem with one set (they also corrected the problem rapidly, at no cost to me and with an apology). As of December 1, 2009, it costs $13.49 from Amazon (less from other vendors).

I regard most spaghetti Westerns (or Eurowesterns, if you want to be dignified—but Mill Creek uses the title you see above) as guilty pleasures: Colorful, usually with good production values, frequently absurd plots, loads of odd translated dialogue but fun in their own way. My critical faculties are tuned to match—but, on the other hand, you expect full color and generally good transfers, and to my surprise you even get wide screen on some of these. They’re still generally VHS-quality, to be sure, but not bad at all. Not that there aren’t occasional issues…

Disc 1

Beyond the Law (orig. Al di là della legge), 1968, color. Giorgio Stegani (dir.), Lee Van Cleef, Antonio Sabato, Gordon Mitchell, Lionel Stander, Bud Spencer. 1:49.

An unusual trio of dusty bandits robs the payroll for a silver mine through an unusual ruse, dependent on the assumption that a black man would be required to ride on a stage’s backboard instead of inside—and on his ability to go underneath the moving wagon and saw out some boards so as to retrieve the payroll from its locked hiding place.

That’s the start…and in the end, the trio of casual outlaws winds up saving the silver mine and the town it supports, through a wild and wooly set of incidents and consequences. It’s hard to say much about the plot here, but it does include a fair amount of humor, a tiny bit of romance, an unlikely sheriff (Van Cleef), a truly loathsome villain with incredibly deep cheekbones and a vicious streak (Mitchell), Lionel Stander as a spitting preacher/bandit, and an extended, complex shootout at the climax. (Apparently this was released as a 90-minute version in the U.S.; this is the uncut version.)

I’m reluctant to give most any spaghetti Western much more than $1.50 (I might make exceptions for those starring future California city mayors and Oscar-winning directors). This one, which appears in widescreen and has generally very good print and sound quality, has one rough patch in the first quarter: For two minutes or so in an outdoor scene, the dialog is suddenly in Italian with semiliterate English subtitles. Then people go inside and they’re all speaking English—and then go back outside, and there’s another brief session of Italian dialogue with English subtitles. Before and after, it’s all English, partly dubbed and partly (based on lipsynch and accents) the original actors. Strange. All in all, though, this gets $1.25.

Apache Blood, 1975, color. Vern Piehl (dir.), Ray Danton, Dewitt Lee. 1:26 [1:29].

If Beyond the Law was an unexpected pleasure, this flick makes up for it. People who believe Plan 9 from Outer Space is the worst movie ever made are sadly lacking in experience. Let’s talk about what’s wrong here—the first thing being that this doesn’t belong in the set, since it’s an American production.

Beyond that, the digitization’s lousy, with overcompression yielding block artifacts in various scenes (unless the film itself is that bad, which is quite possible).

Other than that, we have a poor 10-minute plot expanded into 86 minutes of nothing. Here’s the complete plot: An Apache chief, who along with his partner is among the only survivors of a U.S. slaughter of the tribe (which was peacefully obeying a treaty), goes on the warpath against U.S. troops. A party of half a dozen troops and a mountain-man scout knows he’s causing trouble and needs to get back to the fort—but the mountain man, who’s saved everyone’s skin once or twice, gets mauled by a bear and seems dead. They dig a shallow grave…but he’s not quite dead.

At the end of the picture, he is dead. I suppose that’s a spoiler, but it might save you 90 minutes of excruciating boredom. You’ll miss Ray Danton as an Apache and the co-writer as an overacting mountain man/scout. You’ll miss the discovery that Mescalero Apaches apparently don’t speak and that someone who’s barely able to crawl in one scene is suddenly able to run a couple of scenes later. You’ll miss some of the most incompetent filmmaking I’ve ever encountered. What can I say? This deserves a special price that I rarely give: $0.00—it’s not worth a cent.

This Man Can’t Die (orig. I lunghi giorni dell’odio), 1967, color. Gianfranco Baldanello (dir.), Guy Madison, Lucienne Bridou, Rik Battaglia, Anna Liotti, Steve Merrick, Rosalba Meri. 1:30.

On one hand, this one has English-language credits and no language oddities—and it’s fair to assume this doesn’t come from a videotape used for American TV showings, given bare breasts in a couple of scenes. On the other, there’s an unfortunate amount of sadism (the villains in this one are really villainous) and a lot of shootings—but then, it is a spaghetti Western.

The plot: Martin Benson’s a mercenary on a government mission to find out who’s sending guns and booze to a renegade tribe (in 1870—the location’s not clear, but the date is). Meanwhile, marauders have gone to the ranch where his parents and siblings live, killed the parents and ravaged one daughter (so badly that she may never speak again!), and ridden off.

Little by little, the plots intersect. It’s not quite clear whether the title refers to Martin or to Tony Guy, presumed to be a wounded member of the marauders but, as it turns out, actually a government undercover agent. If you’ve seen many cowboy B films, you’ll guess who the primary villain is long before it’s made clear.

Lots of scenery. Pretty good score. Some very strange secondary parts and dialogue, par for the course. Beautiful women (with remarkably well-tailored clothes for 1870) and the handsome loner hero, Martin. Long, complex shootouts with no false nobility. A ballad for the opening and closing titles that makes no sense at all (also par for the course). Google translates the original title as “I hate long days,” but the alternate U.S. title “Long days of hate” seems a little more plausible… Not great, not terrible. What the heck: $1.25.

Gunfight at Red Sands (orig. Duello nel Texas or “Duel in Texas”), 1963, color. Ricardo Blasco (dir.), Richard Harrison, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (“G.R. Stuart”), Maria Maria Huertas. 1:37 [1:35].

I reviewed this flick in the 50 Movie Western Classics set in early 2008—and at the time I was watching it on a 12″ screen. This time, I watched the first quarter on a 32″ screen, and noticed how often it was out of focus or otherwise “soft” in a way that good transfers aren’t. I’ve lowered the final value from the original $0.75 to $0.50, now that I see just how poor the transfer really is. What follows is the original review:

Red certainly seems appropriate as part of this movie’s title, since it’s in an odd sort of sepiacolor that only includes shades of red, browns, wood, and other faded colors—no blues or true greens that I could see. It’s apparently an early “spaghetti Western,” with decent production values but not a whole lot in the way of acting or, well, logic.

Richard Harrison is Gringo—adopted son of a Mexican family working a little gold mine in a just-north-of-the-border town, who returns from four years fighting in the Mexican civil war. As he returns, three bandits kill the father and steal all the gold (most of it supposedly hidden). The rest of the movie deals with that—and with a town whose handsome sheriff and a group of variously mean-spirited sidekicks all hate Mexicans, even though much of the town appears to be Hispanic. (The most interesting villain is a giggling sociopath who is also, of course, a deputy sheriff.)

I guess I shouldn’t expect logic in a flick like this. Seems as though the sheriff or his clearly-murderous sidekicks would have just shot Gringo in the back or in “self defense” fairly early in the plot, but that wouldn’t make for much of a movie or get us to the inevitable (and really ludicrous) showdown. Maybe I should be impressed by Ennio Morricone’s score. I guess it’s OK. Let’s see. Other than the pseudocolor, there’s a short section where there seem to be holes in the print (that is, real holes, not just the holes in the plot). I can’t see giving this more than $0.50.

Four more Sherlock Holmes! And in keeping with the occasion, the first one is rather a turkey–certainly the worst Holmes I’ve seen to date.

A Study in Scarlet, 1933, b&w. Edwin L. Marin (dir.), Reginald Owen, Anna May Wong, June Clyde, Alan Dinehart, John Warburton, Alan Mowbray, Warburton Gamble. 1:12.

This one has plenty of plot (pretty much unrelated to the story), including coded newspaper ads, mysterious rhyming messages with corpses and an odd group that turns into a tontine, with the survivor(s) collecting what’s left. There’s also a foreclosed mansion with secret passages and a plucky heroine.

Unfortunately, Reginald Owens is by far the least interesting and plausible Sherlock Holmes I’ve ever seen—if anything, he’s blander than Lestrade (or Lastrade in this movie’s credits). Additonally, the print has awful sound quality and a mediocre-to-worse picture. All in all, I can’t give this more than $0.50.

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, 1943, b&w. Roy William Neill (dir.), Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Lionel Atwill, Dennis Hoey, William Post Jr., Kaaren Verne. 1:20 [1:08].

This one’s wildly anachronistic, since it begins with a disguised Holmes off in Europe bringing a scientist back to England with his newfangled bombsight, to protect the sight from falling into the hands of Nazis and so that British bombers will have it.

Anachronistic, yes. A WWII propaganda film of sorts, absolutely (Holmes’ final speech is classic war propaganda). But also a good Holmes flick, with a fair amount of plot, Lestrade, Holmes and Watson in the thick of things, two showdowns between Holmes and Moriarty (with Moriarty apparently plunging to his death this time around), a coded message (the only link to the Doyle source) and more. Nigel Bruce is still a somewhat fatuous Watson, but it works better this time around—and Rathbone is just fine as Holmes. It’s also an excellent print (one of the best b&w prints I’ve seen in a public domain collection) with fine sound quality as well.

As it happens, I’d seen this movie five years ago, in the set of free DVDs I got from a long-since-departed DVD magazine. The difference: That version was a very poor print, difficult to watch. Sometimes, a good print makes a difference. I’ll give this one $1.25.

Terror by Night, 1946, b&w. Roy William Neill (dir.), Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Alan Mowbray, Dennis Hoey, Renee Godfrey, Frederick Worlock. 1:00.

Mysteries on trains: A stock setting that always adds several elements. This time, we begin with the fabulous Star of Rhodesia, a 400+-carat diamond that’s brought doom to its owners. Currently, the owner is a dowager who bought it to London and is going back to Edinburgh; her son hires Holmes to make sure the gem gets there safely.

We know it’s going to be fun even before the train moves. Another familiar face also gets on the added day compartment that the dowager and Holmes are both on—Inspector Lestrade, supposedly off on a fishing vacation (a month before the season). Watson almost misses the train, and jumps on with a long-time acquaintance who…well, that would be telling. Moriarty’s still dead at this point—but there’s his sidekick Moran to deal with.

We get swapped jewels, several guilty parties (guilty of various things, including swiping a hotel coffeepot), death on the train, discussions of curry, and a remarkable (if contrived) set of scenes in the long climax. There are enough red herrings to stock a Communist fishmarket and an irascible mathematics professor who really should be the villain. It’s all high Holmesian drama…although this time Watson is, if anything, even more of a bumbling idiot than in other movies. The sound’s not perfect, but it’s still a great romp and a fun watch. Noting that, as with the others, this is a one-hour flick, I’ll give it $1.25.

Dressed to Kill, 1946, b&w. Roy William Neill (dir.), Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Patricia Morison, Frederick Worlock. 1:16 [1:08].

We begin in a prison where one convict, working on music boxes, is approached by another who suggests that the first can get a shorter sentence if he’ll just talk—which he won’t. Then to an auction house where three identical (and dull) music boxes are auctioned off to three different people—and, later in the day, a man frantically calls at the now-closed auctioneer to buy the music boxes (and pays to see who did buy them).

And we’re off. We have murder, mayhem and music boxes—and Holmes proves to be an expert whistler with an eidetic memory for tunes, along with his violin playing (on display in this flick). The music boxes turn out to be clues toward finding a set of engraving plates for five-pound notes—that is, real engraving plates. There’s a female villain. Watson is even more stupefyingly incompetent than usual even for Nigel Bruce’s version.

Not as satisfying as some of the others; the print’s not as good, there are slight sound problems and somehow this one just didn’t come off as well. Still, not bad. (Note that the 1:08 running time on the actual disc somehow shows up as 108 minutes—that is, full feature length—on the sleeve!) $1.00.

We put Across the Universe on our Netflix list when it came out–I’m not quite sure why. When it arrived and we read over the blurb, my wife said “This is probably one you’ll want to watch on your own–unless you think I’d like it.”

So I started in, using headphones as I usually would if I’m the only one watching. Using headphones: That’s a significant point, and in this case a Really. Bad. Idea. Because you can hear the musical arrangements extremely well…and that was unfortunate. Within ten minutes, I reassured my wife, “No, you probably don’t want to watch this.” I did watch it all the way through…a bad habit acquired when watching the old public-domain flicks.

Backing up a bit

Understand: We both like (most) musicals. We both enjoyed Mamma Mia!, which in some ways is a similar idea (build a movie around one group’s songs, with actors doing all the singing). (I know what people have said, but we thought Pierce Brosnan’s singing was perfectly acceptable for the situation.) We both like (some) Beatles music.

And, in fact, I don’t fault the actors singing the Beatles songs in Across the Universe. I thought Evan Rachel Wood did a credible job, Jim Sturgess was thin but OK, Martin Luther was good, and Dana Fuchs didn’t actually make my ears bleed very much (in any case, I think she was supposed to be channeling Janis Joplin at her most abrasive).

Set aside the “story”

I’m not going to concern myself with the so-called plot, the so-called acting and all that. It was what it was–pretty sad, but it was what it was. I’d certainly never sit through it again.

What really got to me were the arrangements.

[Section deleted because I really don't know much about the people in charge, and so shouldn't ascribe motives. What I do know is what I heard--which was particularly uninteresting, leaden electric bass and drum parts in the arrangements that use the instruments.]

OK, I get that McCartney was somewhat of a revolutionary in making the electric bass something other than a percussion instrument. I’ll admit that I never thought of Starr as a world-class drummer, but compared to what goes on in these arrangements, he’s a master of subtlety and technique.

There were a couple of real singers in the performance. Bono should be ashamed. Let’s let it go at that. Still, going to IMDB, I see dozens (hundreds!) of enthusiastic reviews, along with some bad ones (apparently, 186 reviewers out of 441 gave it less than 7.5 stars out of 10–and 52 of those gave it the lowest possible rating. I’m with that group, thanks).