Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Steamboat Bill, Jr.
1928
Directed By Charles Reisner



SYNOPSIS

Steamboat Bill (Ernest Torrance) is upset his steamboat is been supplanted by a new bigger boat owned by the powerful John James King (Tom McGuire.) On a break from college, Bill's son Willie (Buster Keaton) comes to visit. The two haven't seen each other since Willie was little. Willie also runs into a girl from school who just happens to be King's daughter (Marion Byron.) Willie's dad tries to teach him the ropes of running a steamboat but Bill soon winds up in jail. When a major storm hits, King's ship sinks with him on-board, the jail is thrown into the water, and King's daughter is left clinging to a home floating away in the river. Only one man can save them all!



MY THOUGHTS

A masterpiece of comedy and stunt-work.
This just might be Buster Keaton's perfect blend of life-threatening stunts and silly slapstick.
Keaton's stunt-work here rivals The General in terms of its daring and epic-quality. The comedy is also on par with his best works.

The Great Stone Face's role is essentially the same inept, hapless character he always played. Anything that can he run into head-first or fall off of, is!

The film is structured better than most all silent comedies. The humorous moments in the film build and build. They start out small, like Willie's 'makeover,' where his father tries to buy him a new hat to replace his effeminate beret. The comedy builds and becomes bigger and bigger as the action moves to the steamboat and then a failed escape plan after his father has been jailed. This culminates in one of the biggest storms in Hollywood history.

The storm effects are still amazing to watch even 80 years later and are remarkably realistic. One of the highlights is this famous scene:



Real buildings are tossed about and crumble all over the place as Keaton runs among the flying debris.

Among the jokes and action is a love story. It resembles Romeo And Juliet, but of course the only tragedy here is the hero's incessant clumsiness!

This was Buster Keaton's last comedy before he signed with MGM and lost his total creative freedom... and his later films suffered. But this is one hell of a way to go out.

The Misfits

The Misfits
1961 - United Artists
Directed by John Huston



SYNOPSIS

The recently divorced Roslyn (Marilyn Monroe) meets mechanic Guido (Eli Wallach) and cowboy Gay (Clark Gable.) She leaves Reno and heads into the country with them. Both men fall for the beautiful but fragile woman. When they hire another cowboy (Montgomery Clift,) to go rustle some wild horses, he also falls in love. But the men's harsh lifestyle clashes with Roslyn's idealistic beliefs and she then clashes with them.



MY THOUGHTS

Death and doom set the tone for The Misfits.

Marilyn Monroe's character is fixated on death. Anytime anyone does anything remotely dangerous, she freaks out and chides them. She speaks of death often.

Gable, Clift, and Wallach's characters cling to a dying profession. Their world of the old west is dying and transforming around them.

Once, herds of hundreds of horses roamed the land, now only 6. They used to be caught for riding... now they become dog food.

The film is beautifully shot in black and white, which by 1961, was also dying in mainstream film.

The death motif also is evident off screen. Clark Gable died shortly after filming and Marilyn Monroe would be gone within a year. This would be their final (complete) screen appearances.

Clark Gable is excellent. On the surface, the character seems to be the usual tough guy role Gable played with style throughout his career. Though this man is deeper and has a bitter pain of lost chances and regrets.

Marilyn Monroe's character was a sort-of lost soul who eventually found herself after giving up everything and living out in the rugged country. Her role also proved to be deeper than what she was used to playing and she shines.

The script by Monroe's husband Arthur Miller sets an ominous tone and never lets up.

This is by no means a feel-good picture, but it is a dynamic showcase for several powerful performances under the direction of one of the all-time great misfits, John Huston.

Night Of The Demon

Night Of The Demon (AKA Curse Of The Demon - U.S. Release)
1957 - Sabre Films
Directed By Jacques Tourneur



SYNOPSIS

Psychologist Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews) heads to England for a conference designed to further debunk paranormal activity. When a colleague/ friend dies under peculiar circumstances, Holden takes over his research into a satanic cult led by Karswell (Niall McGinnis.) Holden has some assistance from the deceased's niece (Peggy Cummins) Karswell slips Holden a parchment which is a death curse and he has only a few days to live. Holden dismisses the supernatural mumbo-jumbo but a series of strange events begin to change his mind as the hours tick ever closer.



MY THOUGHTS

This somewhat obscure horror gem needs to be seen by more people!

Night of the Demon was made with a small budget, but all it needed was a great director to make look
Director Jacques Tourneur weaves a tight, tense plot among the atmospheric visuals. Tourneur uses light and shadow so well, he makes most artistic shots in noir films look like garbage. He makes the beautiful English countryside look like a nightmare. With a mix of lighting and editing, he creates a great ominous sense of dread and tension. And some genuine scares!
Already accomplished as a director of moody horror films and some noir, this has to be his masterwork.



A usual horror villain in a low budget film like this would almost always be over the top and too silly to be menacing. Niall McGinnis plays Karswell as charming, down to earth, and likable. The fact that he's not menacing at all, makes him more mysterious and unsettling than a standard portrayal.
He is likable, but we never side with him since we see supernatural happenings from the start of the film.
We are meant to side with Dana Andrews' Dr. Holden. Andrews usually played tough guys and Holden fits the bill. A solid, but not remarkable, performance.



The titular demon looks a little corny to modern audiences. There are some great smoke special effects added around it to diffuse the cheesiness, which are very effective at great distances (see above.)
The only fault with the film is they revealed the demon (in a close up) so early in the film, so when it returns at the end, it lacks the punch to the story.

Night Of The Demon is one of the best horror films of the 1950s.

The film was released in America, shortened by 13 minutes, and under the title Curse Of The Demon (both versions are available together on 1 DVD.)

Force Of Evil

Force Of Evil
1948 - MGM
Directed By Abraham Polonsky



SYNOPSIS

Joe Morse (John Garfield) is the lawyer for a major gangster in the numbers racket. His brother Leo (Thomas Gomez) runs a smaller racket. When Joe's boss Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts) hatches a plan to make himself the sole numbers man in town... and that will make Joe rich. Joe tries to force Leo out of the business in order to save him from financial ruin, but Leo will have none of it. But Joe must step in to save his brother... with deadly consequences.



MY THOUGHTS

A masterful and gripping film noir that's as dark plot-wise as its shadows.

Visually, Force of Evil is a perfect example of how a noir should look. Amazing use of shadow and light along with some unique camera angles make the film a real treat for the eyes. Practically every frame looks like art.



John Garfield is charming and as the shyster lawyer. He delivers a very intelligent, believable performance and you believe his screwy logic in his head that makes him think what he's doing is legit.
Beatrice Pearson plays Doris, the former secretary of Leo, turned love interest of Joe. Her scenes with Garfield are very limited and their whole relationship seems to be an afterthought tacked on to the rather short story to pad it out.

The film carries a bleak message that in order to get ahead, you must lead a corrupt life - a big jab at capitalism. The film's short run-time means this message rules practically every scene, with little room for fluff.

That could be why the Joe/Doris scenes are so sparse.... and the complete lack of humor.

I wish this moody film were longer with more subplots. Ben Tucker's wife also seems to have a relationship (or trying to start one) with Joe. This also barely appears and is never really made clear. It would be a great subplot to expand upon.

Still in its 80 minutes, Force Of Evil delivers a compelling story that is amazingly well shot and should be wider known that it is.

Gaslight

Gaslight
1944 - MGM
Directed by George Cukor



SYNOPSIS

A young girl leaves her London home after her famous singing aunt/caretaker is murdered. 10 years later, Paula (Ingrid Bergman) returns to live in the home with her new husband (Charles Boyer.) Her husband increasingly isolates her from the world... but is it because she's going crazy... or being driven crazy? A detective from Scotland Yard (Joseph Cotten) who was a fan of Paula's aunt, believes something is amiss in the home.



MY THOUGHTS

An atmospheric classic that delivers in every possible way!

I loved the way during the first hour it was somewhat ambiguous whether Bergman's character was really going crazy and Boyer was sheltering her... or he was the one trying to driver her crazy. This made the reveal that much more powerful.

Gaslight may be even more atmospheric than any Universal horror film. the Oscar-winning set design offers a claustrophobic feel to the interiors of the home. They're so cluttered with furniture, knick-knacks and pictures. The exteriors are flooded with fog at night lit only by the gaslights of the title.
Mostly only gas-lit lights also illuminate the interiors, giving it a practically noir-ish feel with heavy shadows and many dark corners.
These visuals give the film a dark and bleak... but beautiful look... and a perfect setting for some great performances.

Ingrid Bergman won her first of three Oscars for her performance. She wasn't even nominated the year before for Casablanca (though she was for another film,) but this award wasn't a consolation prize. She is amazing and even light-years better. You really feel she's going nuts.

Charles Boyer mixes nice guy with sinister so well that he makes the ambiguous-ness of the first hour possible. He was nominated.

In her first film, Angela Lansbury was also singled out by Oscar for her role as the cockney, slutty housekeeper, but didn't win. She turned 18 while making this film.

Joseph Cotten gives an understated by great performance as the detective who becomes a hero.

Gaslight was also nominated for Best Picture and it remains a stylish, atmospheric, exciting film to this day.

Bela Lugosi Week: Bela Bonus Post

Shortly after the success of Dracula, Bela Lugosi appeared in a short where he was interviewed at his home. He reveals why he left his native Hungary for the U.S. and other intimate details.



Bela also holds the dubious honor of being one of the first major Hollywood stars to enter rehab for drug addiction, for pain killers. Though his star was VERY tarnished by this point in his career, this was still big news. He granted this interview on the eve of his release from a sanitarium in 1955:



He died a year later.

Next week, Blues In The Night will be back to its usual hodge-podge of classic and contemporary films.

Bela Lugosi Week Film 7: The Black Cat

This week I've decided to do something a little different here at Blues In The Night. Every film reviewed this week will star Bela Lugosi. For the seventh and final film, we return back to Bela's days at Universal.

The Black Cat
1934 - Universal Pictures
Directed By Edward G. Ulmer



SYNOPSIS

An honeymooning couple (David Manners + Julie Bishop) is trapped in the home of Satan-worshiper Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff.) They are joined by Vitus (Bela Lugosi) who is searching for his wife and child who he hasn't seen since going off to fight in World War I. He is sure Poelzig knows where they are.



MY THOUGHTS

The greatest horror studio takes on the greatest horror writer and pits their greatest horror stars against each other.
The Black Cat is very loosely based on the Edgar Allen Poe story.

Bela Lugosi shines in a rare quasi-heroic role. His good-guy varies only slightly from his bad-guy portrayals. The body counts are really the only thing different. His role is mysterious and intriguing, but too dark for the average cinema-goer to root for him.
Films of the 1930's rarely delved into the psychology of characters but The Black Cat did, and Lugosi's role is much more interesting than it would have been otherwise. Lugosi uses this extra psychological aspect of the role to great effect.

Boris Karloff's performance is somewhat dry. But he looks menacing, especially with a widow's peak that would make Eddie Munster jealous, and his dark robes.

When Lugosi and Karloff are onscreen together there is a definite tension between the characters that is very real that seems to extend beyond the written page. They must have used their rivalry to great advantage in crafting their scenes together. This was the first of their 8 parings.

The Black Cat does have some major logic gaps that are too prominent to ignore:

1. Vitus fought in World War 1 as a young man and then spent the next 15 years in prison, and was released just prior to the events of this film. Yet we're supposed to believe he's also a preeminent psychologist as well?

2. Why would anyone build their expansive, modern home on a mine-laden old battlefield?

3. Of all the places in the world, why did the American couple choose Hungary to honeymoon? If there was a good reason, it was never given. I'm not knocking the country, it just seems like a completely random choice.

Despite those issues, the film is still enjoyable and stands as one of the best non-monster Universal horror films.