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Wide Boy (1952)
Puff of smoke and shower of alarms finishes this sad epic
Sidney Tafler as a spiv is sort of believable, and his blond-stereotype girl, needy drink raddled neighbour are the stock characters of low budget b&w. Even 50/60 years ago the compromising letter by a toff was very stale, the unintended shooting would only have been murder in the commission of a crime but the evidence would not have seemed sound. But the main problems are, first, it sounds like a radio play and that the film is like illustrative clips rather than a continuous narrative- you can almost imagine a linear flow diagram. The blow by blow moral argument, finished off by a sermon like speech from Ronald Howard and a body on board let's you know the end titles are due. For much of the film, the sprocket-holes would be more entertaining.
She'll Have to Go (1962)
Erroneously listed as a comedy
The premise that a series of murderous attacks on an 'actress' whose main skills are in being foreign and scantily dressed, by a couple of standup comics is lost in tedious script. The attempt to make it funny with a carry-on style score that ranges from intrusive to fairground, to tell us that "this bit's very funny" in case we fall asleep and miss it. Then it's all rounded off with a 'jazzy' song sung by a middle aged youth (presumably) with lyrics that the writer have up on before the end of the first verse. All of the 'comedy sketches' if inserted into a comedy sketch show might raise a titter in the midst of more skilful material, but stacked together they don't distract from the popcorn or the ice lollies. I gave it a 4 because it might appeal to the sort of viewers who might find it more interesting than teleshopping.
Murder by Contract (1958)
B movie with A aspirations
Vince Edwards' performance deserves awards. The style: even with the real menace of the ordinary backed by some loose wires in the detonators, and Edwards switches between offhand threatening and philosophy. He nonchalantly deals with the minders, just as they begin to like him. The plot's thin but eventually is no more obtrusive than the electric guitar backing with the star performance and a Hitchcock psychological moment. You'll find yourself regretting when it goes haywire.
The realism impresses too. The minders aren't made into clueless stooges- not dumb or comic turns- there is only the sardonic humour of the underworld.
A striking feature is the female target, a fairly coarse bronx-style female, then sits down and plays a baroque fantasy while the killer attempts his task.
Panic in Year Zero! (1962)
Not star material
Really very poor. The Sci-fi is non existent, script shallow and unconvincing. Even Ray Milland's acting seems amateur, and the supporting cast could have phoned in their performances. The terrible music track, varying between trashy and raucous jazz and sixties Batman style orchestrations overlaid with an obtrusive sax soloist, with very little relevance to the action on the screen, forming an almost continuous noise.
The premise is that Los Angeles has been devastated by a nuclear attack and Milland and Frankie Avalon's family are making their way to safety, or something like that. There doesn't seem to be any understanding of the realities of the weaponry or dangers involved but an endless shootout. If you're in the edge of your seat it's because you don't want to wake up the rest of the audience by getting up to leave!
'Allo 'Allo! (1982)
'Secret Army' as comedy!
A Belgian café owner, Albert, and his wife act as a cover for resistance to German occupation. He manages, and wife Monique sings, slightly off key. The waitresses who arrange to hide British Airmen and locals, including policemen, the local doctor etc help; always at odds with the resistance, who are unaware of Café Candide's other activities. Familiar? Croft turns the oddities and eccentricities in terrific wit, merely by taking them and amplifying them, then adding a few extras like the invalid mother in law, the brit posing as a French cop with the weirdest 'franglais' and the catch phrases, always raising a laugh. This is pure music-hall c.1930s. I recommend getting hold of 'Secret Army' and watching several episodes, then watch episodes of 'allo, 'allo. I reckon knowing one will enhance your appreciation of the other!
Our Miss Fred (1972)
Dismal
Somebody must have paid a huge bribe to get this drivel onto cinemoid. Punchlines without jokes, a couple of well known actors with a tax bill to pay and Danny La Rue revealing that his talents don't go beyond a half-hour stand-up routines in bars, if this is a sample. It required 3, that is THREE writers to produce this collection of music hall nazi jokes- no tension, no sub-plots, no romantic storyline- just running on for over an hour because that's how much film they have in the cans!
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes: The Master Blackmailer (1992)
A fine cameo too.
Not much mention among the reviews of the final appearance by Gwen Frangccon Davies, then aged 100-101. Instantly riveting just as her TV interview where at 98 she reproduced her performance of Juliet, as she performed it with John Gielgud back 70+ years before. Mainly a stage actor but retired because her eyesight was almost gone. Additionally, Robert Hardy, as truly slimy villain, and Colin Jeavons now over 90 as Lestrade. The lavish settings and fine detailing make for another class entertainment. The Milverton tale is rather thin, but the additional scripting and skilled casting makes it very watchable.
The Lady Vanishes (2013)
Let down by a duff script.
A potentially high quality cast but the script is all over the place and the female lead character is a complete travesty of the original- insistent rather than feisty. Direction fails to sequence the tale. Hitchcock had the right idea by firmly placing it in the European politics of the time rather than making it a low grade murder mystery. There appears to be some sort of effort to tackle the jingoistic racism of the English middle classes at the time but it falls flat because its impossible to empathise with our believe in these characters. With the likes of Stephanie Cole, Gemma Craven etc you'd think the director would have adapted the script to give them something memorable to say!
Castle Sinister (1948)
Not a career breakthrough for anybody
No idea how this one got as far as test shots. Suitably sinister music covers the barrenness of the script and plot. Most of the cast look as though they've been pulled off manoeuvres in the rough terrain to make an amateur movie. The film stock seems to be past its use-by date giving a 'filmed under water' look. The spoken soundtrack is blurred and thre actors give the impression they've never been in front of a camera before. The music score covers dead patches in the script, and the pace is slow. A very long sequence of the lead actress working the handset rest of a phone to establish that it's disconnected to a background of full orchestral music that would drown out any call she could make, until a lead actor asks if the phone is disconnected, presumably in case the slower wits in the audience don't get it, or, more likely, have been woken up by the loud music. Nearly all of the cast only made one film, probably a relief to all concerned.
Law & Order: UK: Deal (2011)
Potent and realistic.
Teenage drug dealers and guns. Father with MS wakes to find his wife has been shot dead in bed beside him. It turns out to be a stray shot from a crack den opposite. A heartbreaking tale of exploitation and drug dealing with cold blooded teens and cold blooded adults. Without the big resources of Hollywood, a small screen series has an impact movies rarely achieve. The cast on every level are believable, and, unusually, former soap actors manage to inhabit the parts credibly. The mother who will abandon her child, to death, even, for her next fix, and the parent who thinks his medicinal supply of illegal drugs can't possibly be so bad. It makes its point forcibly: drug dealing is not a victimless crime and the way dealers enforce their rule is devastating communities. Its also about child exploitation and that whole subculture. So much is packed in that it extends to two episodes, and the devastating end of part one gives Bradley Walsh the opportunity to display some fine, understated acting. The writers create true economy while manipulating the tension. They also have you wanting to punch some of the characters, without descending to soap opera cliche, just naked depiction of their inhumanity, while driving home the message that drugs dehumanise, and break down the bonds between parents and child. The mother who doesn't care that her young son will be arrested and imprisoned for murder, and the father who isn't able to care for his teenage daughter, whose work pays for the drugs that he thinks help him.
Well worth watching; maybe one to show the kids- sitting through it with them.
The Terror (1938)
Gothic murder mystery - predictable but saved by cast.
People who complain about the predictability of this film miss the quality. Just as with a sonnet you can expect a number of lines and syllables, and some occasional tweaking of the language to fit, so you can expect style and structure fitting a well rehearsed pattern. You have the gothic mansion, a former monastery, with secret doors and passages, an organ playing in the night (no one operating the bellows) and a detached but eerie chapel. The place is a guest house/ private house with a staff including Irene Handel as kitchen maid, Kathleen Harrison as the house maid playing the sorts of parts they played for decades. There is a lost £300,000 in stolen gold, two gaolbirds who, after ten years, waaant to recover it, and get the organiser of the gang who betrayed them. Star turns are Alistair Sim as a crook disguised as a dotty vicar, and James Bond's 'M' as a serial drunk. A number of murders and the melodramatic denouement complete the early 20th century stage play, transferred to film. The style of acting reminds us that several of the performers were already on stage when Victoria died, and the elocution and style were necessary to project across large audiences before sound films came along. The formula for a stage play is all there, including the expected 'crisis'. Worth a watch.
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983)
Arguably the worst.
Good cast, mainly, but the script seems to have been done by someone in advertising rather than a devotee of literature. Dialogue very much not Doyle. Terrible soundtrack, amateur photography and cheapo property values, like a sort of spaghetti western for Victorian England. I gave it two because it has a couple of cast fighting lacklustre conditions. Despite difficulties, Conan Doyle knew how to make and implausible story work. Sadly this production team don't.
The Limping Man (1953)
Reminds one just how rank Music Hall was
A potboiler with Moira Lister, Alan Wheatley, Leslie Phillips, Lloyd Bridges trying to make a lame premise and a pedestrian script appear entertaining by inserting music-hall performances. The love interest isn't.
The Blue Parrot (1953)
Last Squawk for Blue Bird
Direction by numbers doesn't help nor does an absence of shadow or flat focus. Aims at noir without the noir. The scene where the cast are madly winking across a 'sleazy' nightclub with no patrons and a band designed for earplugs is especially excruciating. Ballard Berkley and John LeMesurier try hard with a nuance free script and Ferdy Maine tries hard to look sinister. The film's origins with journalism are painfully obvious in a totally linear account; no sub plots, no character development, no humorous asides. The one joke is the name of the night club, 'The Blue Parrot' which is, of course, the name of Signor Ugatti's nightclub in Casablanca- maybe they should have borrowed the set designer, the extras, the scriptwriters from that film. A Sidney Greenstreet lookalike might have helped. Whole thing could have been phoned in.
You Pay Your Money (1957)
Something you watch if you can't find the remote!
The story is pedestrian, the acting indescribable and the sets seem buried from some other movie. No living people ever spoke dialogue like this, like a Home Service 'drama'. At one point Honor Blackman becomes almost animated when her car horn upstages her. McDermid creeps into the hotel like a cartoon wolf under cover of this dialogue by numbers. His detective skills are not exactly Hercule Poirot and the demands of the script cannot be the cause of his mugging to camera.
All of the cast speak in turn- like an old- time radio phonecall, ship to ship. Hilton and Blackman show all the acting skills of photographic models in a clothing catalogue.
75 minutes I won't get back.
Magic (1978)
Inspired by an early psychological work.
The idea comes from the supernatural thriller from 1945, 'Dead of Night.' In one segment, Michael Redgrave is an introverted ventriloquist who is taken over by his extremely sinister looking dummy it worked then- Redgrave, the normally mild character in films eventually becomes subsumed in the dummy and kills his manager. It's odd that 'Magic' doesn't acknowledge the original where even the character of the dummy is a straight lift. That said, the cracking-up ventriloquist, (Hopkins) and the manager (Burgess Meredith in full Rosemary's Baby mode) are very well done but the dummy, as in the other film, steals every scene. There's a very 'Dorian Grey' feel about the situation. The dummy becomes more sharply focused, menacing and ugly as the ventriloquist becomes more distant and expressionless. As with Dorian Grey, the image of his inner soul becomes a doll as Hopkins becomes the mental patient.
Penny and the Pownall Case (1948)
Before they were famous?
A curiosity rather than a must see. A mousy Diana Dors, a jittery Christopher Lee and a not very engaging Olaf Pooley. It's the director's one and only, and has the feel of early work. Not much else to say.
One Jump Ahead (1955)
One jump ahead of the dole queue
Wooden performances telling in their act, a script that meanders away. Trying to remake one of those wisecracking Cary Grant movies of an earlier period, but none of the performers have any charisma at all. Jill Adams couldn't be more wooden if she was fitted with castors. The rest of the cast belong in toilet roll commercials.
Our Girl Friday (1953)
The comic music score is the most intelligent part.
Joan Collings shows the full range of her talents ie she appears in the acting credits, Kenneth More in his heyday, for once, not playing a middle-class know-all, Robertson Hare the real farceur, as usual, underused. Sexist sinking pudding of a movie but with plenty of comic cliches in the musical score which seems to be the most consistent and continuous idea.
The Pale Horse (2020)
Is this the worst Christie adaptation ever?
Illiterate retelling of Christie tale. Basically an episode of a tedious soap opera with a Christie story tagged on to draw in the audience. Lots of arty camera work conceals a poverty of imagination. The characters added are all completely meaningless, the violence totally irrelevant to the plot. The Christie estate should sue!
David Copperfield (1974)
Perfect casting- needs repeating
One of those magic moments when a whole cast produces a version of a novel that every critic can applaud. Patience Collier, a complete Aunt Betsey, Arthur Lowe and Patricia Routledge as the Micawbers, Martin Jarvis and a newly emerging Liz Smith as the Heeps. Anthony Sharp as the pompous Spenlow and Sheila Keith as Mrs Steerforth- two careless parents.
Two issues which Dickens could only avert to in 19th century England are broadened out. First, there's Anthony Andrews, as Steerforth, blatantly grooming the young David (or Daisy); done subtlely but causing disquiet. And the other issue is Steerforth's almost sado-masochistic relationship with Rosa Dartle. Surely this is the finest performance by Jacqueline Pearce, the abused and rejected woman who bears a facial scar of Steerforth's psychopathic innocence, but who has an insane and possessive love for her abuser to the point of tracking down and threatening the damaged and abused Emily, his more recently damaged victim. Lots of Victorian critics miss these themes or even bypass them, but they are there and, if film does a service to literature, this is it. The idea of Steerforth passing on Emily when he's used her and, to Victorian eyes, ruined her for life is again unusually pointed for its day. Anthony Andrews, then moviegoers heartthrob everywhere is perfect as the handsome but wicked betrayer who never loses his looks and whose charm ensnares David too. David Yelland's handsomeness is more homely and the series manages to convey his equivocal feelings about Steerforth without the director feeling the need to provide extra lines to spell things out, add might be done by more 'popular' versions.
The rest of the cast are perfect for the more satirical Dickens characters and the tragedy of Ham Peggoty are rendered with less excess than is usual.
Six riveting episodes. The scene where Micawber finally denounces Heep, should have won Arthur Lowe that bafta, and the oligenous and insinuating Martin Jarvis might have shared it.
A Study in Scarlet (1933)
Holmes Steals from Christie!
The plot only has the thinnest connection with the novel. The plot is Agatha Christie's, "And Then There Were None," a series of tontine style murders set to nursery rhyme clues. Anna May Wong looking extremely 'sinister oriental' for the seconds she appears, and a cast of 'old stagers' with a strong emphasis on 'stage.' They all 'project' well, fit to drown out the sorts of music hall audience many of them are used to. The script is the type that works quite well in the page but you can almost hear, "full stop, speech marks, new paragraph, open speech marks..." in places. Pregnant pauses have their uses, but they have to serve the drama rather than the wait for the next cue-card. Very much a 'script by numbers' with linear direction. A couple of music-hall style humorous interludes help lighten the strain of watching though some of the 'walk-on' parts should have been "walk- on and go back to your regular job." Its age doesn't really excuse the 'home movie's feel and the hesitant dialogue. After all, the big Busby Berkley movies were hitting Hollywood at the time and, without those prediction values, it was still possible to achieve flow and pace.
Cats (2019)
Should get 10/10
As a tribute to the dreadful 'tunesmith' Lloyd-Webber it was a perfect career ending debacle. 10/10 for a weapon of mass destruction. Even if they had a sudden, urgent tax bill to pay, I can't see why some serious star performers didn't sue their agents for even suggesting they might appear.
Cash on Demand (1961)
Scrooge converted by a crook.
An interesting take on a Christmas Carol. A martinet bank manager (Peter Cushing)who treats his clerks like serfs is confronted by a smooth bank robber (André Morell) who tells him that his family are being held hostage at home until he's helped them rob the bank and made a get away. The ordeal transforms the manager and threw way he treats his staff. Excellent performances from Peter Cushing, Morell and Richard Vernon maintain tension in this low budget Hammer thriller.
Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973)
Shot like a super 8: Burtons latest divorce.
Shot in blurry primary colours, a no- budget vehicle for Burton and Taylor, with as much insight as could fit on the back of an envelope. It's probably on video-tape so the best way to rate is by placing a large magnet on top of the reel. Recorded on that US system designed to get the signal across wide open spaces on VHF so don't expect vivid, realistic fidelity. The Femme-fatale seems to be dressed in a nylon wig that doesn't move- rather like Granny Munster with bottle- blonde highlights! It steals the scene. Burton and Taylor always required a big budget and production values to gloss over some extremely wooden acting. This would have been improved I'd they'd failed to budget for an electric bill.