Mubi Monday: Hellzapoppin' (1941)

Chic Johnson and Ole Olson play . . . Chic Johnson and Ole Olson in this film version of a popular play that allows them to cram every scene with gags, references, and lots of moments in which they break the fourth wall.

What's the plot? Well, for the most part, it concerns Chic and Ole helping a couple to fall in love, which involves helping the successful staging of a play. Except for the confusion which leads to the pair thinking they should sabotage the play, working under the misapprehension that their friend (Jeff, played by Robert Paige) should no longer be interested in the lovely Kitty Rand (Jane Frazee). Meanwhile, Betty (Martha Raye) is trying to keep the suave Pepi (Mischa Auer) in her grasp. And this is all a plot being described as a potential way to adapt the show into a film, with the main narrative bookended by scenes featuring Richard Lane as a frustrated director, and Elisha Cook Jr as the man helping him to work through the script that is describing the main body of the picture. Confused yet? It makes sense when you watch the film, in a way that is enjoyably anarchic and nonsensical.

Hellzapoppin' is another perfect film to show people who think that all "old movies" were wooden affairs, limited by the technology of the time. If you've watched the likes of The Invisible Man and Sherlock Jr then you'll already know that artists have been working magic with camera trickery ever since the infancy of cinema, but this film arguably takes that to another level. As well as the in-jokes (and there's a Citizen Kane gag that deserves a special mention), you have characters interacting with their "offscreen" counterparts, a wonderful sequence in which our comedic duo both become partially invisible, and even some jiggery-pokery (yes, that is the exact term for it) with the celluloid itself, separating our duo over and under individual frames and also turning them upside down momentarily.

Major praise deserves to go to director H. C. Potter, and writers Nat Perrin and Warren Wilson (and an uncredited Alex Gottlieb, apparently), for managing to wrangle the absurdity and rat-a-tat gags into something even remotely resembling an actual film, but they're helped along by the people who managed to create the many effects and use their technical know-how to get everything onscreen that would be done nowadays with veritable ease.

Johnson and Olson are fine in the lead roles, and they take the majority of the best gags, but Martha Raye steals many scenes as the boisterous and non-nonsense Betty and Auer is a lot of fun as Pepi. Paige and Frazee are stuck with the relatively straight roles, and both do what the roles require, Lane and Cook Jr prompt some laughs in their limited amount of time onscreen, and Hugh Herbert wanders around in a variety of silly disguises.

If you haven't seen Hellzapoppin' then you owe it to yourself to change that. And once you've seen it then you may well want to watch it again immediately. It's a film that holds up to repeat viewings, and it deserves to reach a much wider audience.

9/10

You can buy this anarchic movie here.
Americans can pick it up here.
This is a film crying out for a special edition though, shame on whichever companies are responsible for leaving it to languish without being given enough love.

Noir November: The Big Sleep (1946)

Directed by Howard Hawks, and with a cast that includes Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers and Elisha Cook Jr, The Big Sleep is a movie that I'm sure many could automatically rate as an outright classic. And it is one. Having said that, it's not perfect, with the main weakness seeming to stem from the source material (by Raymond Chandler). Perhaps I'm being slightly blasphemous, but there's never any real sense of danger here, or even anything that crops up in the second half of the film that causes you to care any more about how things will turn out. Of course, that's partly because everything is set up so brilliantly in the first half, with great characters given great dialogue.

Bogart is Philip Marlowe, that most famous of American private detectives. He starts to get himself into trouble, as usual, when hired by an elderly man (General Sternwood, played by Charles Waldron) to investigate a case of blackmail. The old man has two daughters, one a bit of a wild child (Vickers) and the other a real tough cookie (Bacall). Marlowe wants to ensure that neither one ends up being the focus of any unwanted attention, but he soon ends up with a corpse or two added to the mix, at least one missing person he wants to track down, and some heavies intent on stopping him from sticking his nose where it doesn't belong.

Hawks is a good director, as fans of classic cinema already know, but it's hard to appreciate his craft when the leads are stealing your attention throughout the movie. The script, by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, absolutely crackles during every exchange of dialogue. I can't think of one major scene that doesn't have some eminently quotable lines in there. It's just a shame that it can't remain as pitch perfect when it comes to the twists and turns of the plot, and the resolution. The climax, in particular, feels a bit rushed and, well, anti-climactic. Perhaps that's because the case itself doesn't have too much to interest the viewer, or perhaps it's inevitable after so many great scenes filling up the rest of the runtime.

Bogart is brilliant for every second that he's onscreen, as he so often was with this type of role. Tough, verbally dextrous, smart, and cynical. Bacall matches him almost every step of the way, although her character does have weaker moments, as the plot demands. Everyone should know by now that the two have a chemistry together you can't manufacture so the real surprise comes from seeing how much fun occurs when Bogart shares scenes with Vickers (who is wonderful), the gorgeous Dorothy Malone (not in it for long, but long enough to make an impression), or Sonia Darrin. Waldron is very good in his relatively small role, Elisha Cook Jr. pops up for a few scenes, and John Ridgely makes for a decent antagonist (but is he a villain or a red herring?).

It's not a perfect film, not to me, but it comes close. Very close.

9/10

http://www.amazon.com/TCM-Greatest-Classic-Films-Collection/dp/B002945DUM/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1416317112&sr=8-6&keywords=the+big+sleep

Noir November: The Killing (1956)

An early film in the career of one Mr. Stanley Kubrick, The Killing may be a relatively low-budget, low-key movie compared to some of his later works, but it's no less enjoyable for it. Based on a novel ("Clean Break") by Lionel White, this is a tense, unhurried look at a group of criminals planning a major heist.

The main players are: Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden), the man with the plan, a corrupt cop named Randy Kennan (Ted De Corsia), a teller who works at the racecourse they're planning to rob (Elisha Cook Jr), a sharpshooter (Timothy Carey), and a couple of other guys who will help to distract people while the robbery occurs. Everything is planned out precisely, and onscreen details, as well as narration, help viewers to keep track of just how all of the pieces fall into place. But no plan is foolproof, is it?

Kubrick may be working on a smaller scale here, compared to his more famous works, but he shows the same attention to detail and clinical approach to the material that cinema fans would respond so well to. The script, with dialogue by Jim Thompson, nicely balances things out between the specifics of the job and the drama derived from the fluctuating dynamic of the group.

Performances are pretty great across the board, especially for a film that many would consider as nothing more than a b-movie (I guess). Hayden, Corsia, Carey and the others all do well, but I have to admit that Cook Jr. is someone I have always loved seeing onscreen, and his role here is a great one. Coleen Gray and Marie Windsor also do well, being the two main women in a film that focuses very much on the men. The fact that two make such a memorable impression, for very different reasons, is further testament to the script and their performances.

I'm not sure how audiences would have reacted to the content back in 1956, when this was first released, but it seems to have enough darker elements in there to make some people uncomfortable. There are some moments of violence, as expected from a film about an armed robbery, a healthy dollop of cynicism coating everything, and at least one outburst that uses a racial slur to shocking, though also brilliant, effect.

With it being so slight, however, it's hard to push this forward as an essential noir viewing. Yet it's easy to see how influential it has been, at least on certain people (Tarantino, I'm looking at you). It's also simply an excellent little movie that doesn't outstay its welcome. Give it a watch soon, if you've not seen it already.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Criterion-Collection-Blu-ray/dp/B005152C78/ref=sr_1_10?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1415885702&sr=1-10&keywords=the+killing

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The Maltese Falcon (1941)

"My guess might be excellent or it might be crummy, but Mrs. Spade didn't raise any children dippy enough to make guesses in front of a district attorney, and an assistant district attorney and a stenographer."

That is just one of the many gems that will tickle your ears as you watch The Maltese Falcon, another of those classic movies that you watch and quickly realise just how deserving of its status it is.

Humphrey Bogart stars as detective Sam Spade, a man dragged into quite a sticky situation by the titular item of great value. Well, he is first dragged into the situation by a young, nervous woman (Mary Astor). After the death of his partner and another man, Spade is made to feel some pressure from local police. Then it's the turn of a man named Joe Cairo (Peter Lorre). And last, but not least, Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) and his right hand man (Wilmer, played by Elisha Cook Jr.) show just how much they want their hands on the artefact.

Directed by John Huston, who also wrote the screenplay (based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett), this is one of the best directorial debuts I can think of. Of course, Huston had been writing films for over a decade, so he certainly gave himself the best start possible by creating such a great script, but there's something else that makes this so completely and utterly brilliant. The cast are all great, and the camerawork is great, but the different aspects of the film come together to be more than just the sum of their parts. It's pure movie magic.

Bogart is, in case you didn't already know, brilliant in the lead role, and he's surrounded by such a wonderful variety of people doing some of their best work. Astor is very good, but her character impacts the events more offscreen than on. Peter Lorre is someone I will forever be a fan of, and this is yet another great turn from him, while Greenstreet and Cook Jr. both do great in two very different roles, with the former being polite and eloquent while the latter would rather use his gun, if given the chance. And then there's Lee Patrick, adding to the many pleasures that this movie has to offer as Effie, Sam Spade's secretary and, potentially, the most reliable person in the entire movie.

If you haven't seen The Maltese Falcon by now then do so immediately. With that script, that cast, the most famous MacGuffin since "Rosebud" and everything else coming together so perfectly, this is essential viewing for cineastes.

10/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maltese-Falcon-Disc-Special-Edition/dp/B000IOMZTM/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1385562226&sr=8-5&keywords=the+maltese+falcon

Messiah Of Evil (1973)

A bit of a cult favourite nowadays amongst horror fans who are aware of it, Messiah Of Evil is certainly worth a watch if you're after something atmospheric and very different from the norm but it's also a highly flawed movie almost undone by the weaker aspects (the acting isn't all that great, the script is often full of random exclamations and numerous plot holes and the visual style veers from drab and lifeless to eye-catchingly brilliant).

Marianna Hill plays a woman who travels to a small seaside town to find her artist father. The few locals that talk to her include a number of people denying any knowledge of her father, a man and a couple of women living free and easy and a number of oddballs who just proceed to get stranger and stranger in their behaviour as the movie progresses.

Director Willard Huyck (who also co-wrote the movie with his wife Gloria Katz) may not be completely to blame for the final result because, apparently, the money ran out and this was what could be put together from the material already in the can. This explains the fact that the movie doesn't quite make sense but that adds to the wonderful strangeness of it.

Marianna Hill is okay in the lead role and Elisha Cook Jr. is always good to see onscreen but nobody else (Michael Greer, Joy Bang, Anita Ford, Royal Dano, etc)  makes an impression at all, at least not in a speaking part. The people who do make an impression onscreen are the people who play the more unusual, and possibly dangerous, characters inhabiting the town. In every sequence it's the mood and atmosphere that takes precedence over the acting of the leads or the quality of the dialogue. One scene in particular, set in a cinema, is particularly effective, reminiscent of a classic moment from The Birds.

Undeserving of its obscurity, Messiah Of Evil isn't an easy horror movie to recommend to everyone but the good news is that it's available to view for free here so you can always make your own mind up about it. Give it a watch and let me know what you think.

6/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devils-Nightmare-Messiah-Region-Import/dp/B00005Q63Z

Blacula (1972).

Yes, it’s a blaxploitation horror and, as you can guess from the title, it’s a riff on the Dracula tale. What you may not guess is that it’s actually quite a good little film.

William Marshall plays the title role (though the character’s proper name is actually Mamuwalde), a man bitten and cursed by Dracula himself in the opening sequence. Fast forward many years and Blacula’s coffin is taken to America by some interior decorators who have managed to pick up everything contained within Dracula’s household for quite a bargain price. It’s not long before people start dying from severe blood loss and Blacula, of course, discovers someone (Vonetta McGee) who seems to be the double of his deceased ex-wife. Thalmus Rasulala plays the cop who first decides to start considering the seemingly impossible as the bodies start to pile up (and, more worryingly, disappear).

While Blacula is not a great movie, in the standard sense, it does compare very favourably when weighed against other blacksploitation movies, and especially blacksploitation horrors. The cast mostly do a very good job with Marshall cutting an impressive figure as the caped vampire, McGee quite adorable and convincingly won over by a loving man and Rasulala putting on a gruff, tough act in a role that Fred Williamson would surely have loved to chew up.

The screenplay by Raymond Koenig and Joan Torres is adequate and contains laughs both intentional and unintentional (something that’s rarely avoidable nowadays when watching anything so very 70s). Where the movie scores is in the banter between Rasulala and everyone around him, especially Lt. Peters (played by Gordon Pinsent), and in the moments of nobility that Marshall makes the most of.

The direction by William Crain isn’t anything special but it’s quite a compliment that one or two factors haven’t actually dated as badly as you’d think. The classic heart (or should that be soul?) of the tale is timeless. The vampire make-up isn’t all that bad, though Marshall is given some majorly heavy eyebrows when baring his fangs, for some reason. And then we have the vamp to bat transformation, used fleetingly but well done with some simple animation as opposed to the big rubber bats that Hammer used to be so fond of. This ties in nicely to the amusing animated credit sequence.

There’s camp in abundance, the standard funky guitar you’d expect on the soundtrack (though, to be fair, the soundtrack is bloody good and it’s only the groovy 70s dancing that distracts from the enjoyment of the music), Elisha Cook Jr. and an amusing, scene-stealing repeated line delivered by a man named Ji-Tu Cumbuka, who plays a character called Skillet. Do give it a try.

8/10.

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