The Mystery of Juarez

There are a lot of mysteries concerning old-time Hollywood that will probably never be solved but if I had to pick the one that most intrigued me this week, it would be the mystery surrounding the reasons why the 1939 movie Juarez received its current title. After all, the movie itself did not seem to be too interested in telling the story of the Mexican president it was named after. Indeed, despite playing the title role, actor Paul Muni spent so little time on film that it seemed a wonder that he got any dialogue at all in the movie.

Nor did it help that he was constantly upstaged by actor Brian Aherne (who played would-be Mexican Emperor Maximilian I) and actress Bette Davis (who played Maximilian's wife Carlotta). True, Muni did get to make a lot of serious speeches but in the end, it was Aherne and Davis whose characters who got the bulk of the filmmaker's sympathy if for no other reason that they were among the few historical figures in the movie who got to be portrayed as human beings.

Thus the movie Juarez presented its viewers with a paradox: a movie that was allegedly about the triumph of the first Mexican president of Indian descent that nevertheless chose to concentrate most of its story on his European opposition. Which is a nice thing if you always wanted to see a movie about people like Maximilian and Carlotta but kinda besides the point if you wanted to see a movie about people like Benito Juarez.

If that wasn't a big enough paradox, the movie also found time to portray Porfirio Diaz (the head of Juarez's military forces) in a heroic role -- a development that seemed ironic considering what would happen to Diaz in later life. But, alas, this was a movie that had little room for irony.

Pity the Poor First Husband: Kisses for My President

Contrary to whatever impression the recent Hillary Clinton campaign might have given you, Hollywood hasn't made all that many movies about a female President in the White House. Indeed, apart from the 1964 movie Kisses for My President, it's difficult for me to think of one. And even Kisses for My President leaves more than a bit to be desired on the cinematic front.

For what it was worth, Polly Bergen made a fine impression as Leslie Harrison McCloud, the first woman president of the United States. But sadly the movie wasn't really about her. It was about her husband Thad (played by Fred MacMurray).

Thad used to be a big industrialist before his wife got elected, but now she was in the White House, he was just another First Spouse with little to do save for keeping out of trouble and attending meaningless social events -- a situation which was just fine for previous presidential spouses but not for Thad. Because he was a guy, you know. And according to the dogma of 1964 Hollywood, guy problems were much more important than woman problems.

Eventually he did get into trouble -- first when he was entertaining a conniving Latin American dictator named Raphael Valdez Jr. (played by Eli Wallach) and then again when he was almost seduced by a job offer from an ex-girlfriend named Doris Weaver (played by Arlene Dahl). For that matter, the children had issues too but the movie was not as interested in those issues as it was in the plight of poor Tad.

In any event, the movie was not a complete loss. Despite all the attention focused on Fred MacMurray, Polly Bergen managed to do a good job of convincingly portraying a female president, especially in the scenes in which she stood up to a patronizing U.S. senator (played by Edward Andrews) and Raphael Valdez Jr. Nor did Ms. Bergen have a monopoly on good roles. Wallach managed to play his role in a memorable fashion and it didn't hurt that he had a few good scenes with John Banner, an actor best known for playing Sgt. Schultz on the TV series Hogan's Heroes but seen in this film playing the role of the Soviet Ambassador.

Unfortunately, by turning the fictional story of the first female president into a romantic comedy and focusing primarily on male issues, the movie eventually undermined itself to the point that it's no surprise that it rarely seems to be mentioned in movie buff circles. If I had to pick the worst part of the film, it would be the ending which was the setup for a really bad one-liner by Mr. MacMurray that has not improved with age. Of course, Kisses for My President would not be the last Hollywood film to reflect a dubious attitude towards the Women's Liberation Movement. But it is one of the most obvious ones.

When Bud and Lou Met Frankie

If Equinox is the definite example of an old-fashioned horror movie that just did not age well, then the 1948 film Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is an example of the exact opposite. Indeed, I watched it just the other night and found myself laughing as much with the movie that night as I did when I first saw it as a little kid. Of course, one might argue that A&CMF is not really a horror movie but rather a horror comedy. Then again I can think of some horror comedies that have not aged well either and the chances are you can too.

Anyway, the secret to A&CMF's success lies in the fact that its makers were smart enough to play to their cast's strengths and not their weaknesses. The horror actors did not try to tell jokes or do pratfalls and the comedians did not try to look menacing or act scary. Of course, that approach seems obvious to most modern-day movie-goers but then the history of Hollywood is littered with cinematic failures whose flaws seem equally obvious in retrospect.

In any event, A&CMF was the first of the several films in which Bud Abbott and Lou Costello met monsters from the Universal movie lot and it is still the best -- and I'm not just saying that because this was the first Abbott and Costello movie I ever saw. I would like to say the same thing about a lot of Abbott and Costello movies I have seen but I just can't.

The movie begins with an eerie animated sequence which shows the Frankenstein Monster knocking on a tomb which contains the skeletons of Abbott and Costello -- who, of course, run away at the sight of him. From then on, it proceeds to introduce the various supernatural entities that will be appearing in the film. Even when the movie changes over to live-action sequences, it does not hesitate to set a mood and it keeps returning to that mood over and over again. Along the way, an easily scared deliveryman named Wilbur (played by Lou Costello) keeps running into Count Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster -- AKA Frankie -- and the Wolfman -- AKA Lawrence Talbot -- while driving his fellow deliveryman Chick (played by Bud Abbott, natch) crazy with the way he keeps acquiring the attention of two women -- a mysterious European brunette named Sandra Mornay and a blonde American woman named Joan Raymond. (I'm not sure why Wilbur and Chick never get last names in this movie but I suspect the writers thought the younger audience members would already be confused enough by the fact that Abbott and Costello were not playing characters named Bud and Lou. At least, I remember experiencing such confusion the first time I saw this film -- but maybe that was just me. And as I noted above, this was the first Abbott and Costello movie I had ever seen.)

Of course, this being a horror comedy, both women turn out to have ulterior motives for courting Wilbur. Ms. Raymond wants to use Wilbur to help solve an insurance case involving missing exhibits from a local wax museum while Ms. Mornay wants to use Wilbur for more nefarious purposes. Everything comes together on a dark but not so stormy night when Chick discovers the hard way that Wilbur was not fibbing about seeing monsters and then -- Well, you can probably appreciate what happens next much better if you see the actual movie.

For what it is worth, author Jeff Rovin once wrote a literary sequel to this movie called Return of the Wolf Man but unfortunately, it is out of print right now and almost impossible to find unless you're one of those people who can afford to spend a king's random on a paperback book. It would be nice to to say that I saw this book in my local library, but alas, I am not yet that lucky.

But, hey, in the meantime, we'll always have Bud and Lou. Not to mention a classic movie cameo at the film's finale -- if, indeed, "cameo" is the right word to use for a role in which a famous actor never actually appears on film yet utters a memorable line of dialogue. Confused? Well, that just means you haven't seen the movie yet. Shame on you!

But if you have already seen the movie, please feel free to consider that scene a classic example of cinematic torch passing -- a scene in which the torch passes from old school horror actors like Bela Lugosi to newer school horror actors like a certain gentleman from Missouri who "appears" in the above-mentioned "cameo." And if you still have no idea whom I'm talking about, that's okay. I do not remember knowing much about the actor in question the first time I saw this movie and yet I still enjoyed it.

Black as the Pit from Pole to Pole

Funny how stereotypes change over time. Back in the first century A.D., Germans were considered synonymous with chaos and barbarism. Today they are more often identified with order and efficiency. The Scandinavians horrified Western Europe with their Viking raids back in the Middle Ages but nowadays, they are known primarily for their pacifism. The Englishmen of the Elizabethan era were considered to be rude, crude individuals as were the Spaniards of Cervantes's time. Yet by the Victorian era, Englishmen were known for being anything but rude and crude and today we are more likely to associate Spaniards with foppish mannerisms than with the rude behavior they displayed in Cervantes's day.

In short, stereotypes are not engraved in stone and they tend to change over time. The average historian knows this quite well. The average chauvinist should know it as well but he tends to deny it -- even when the popular culture proves him wrong time after time.

Consider the way Poles were portrayed in the 1935 movie The Wedding Night. If you were to ask the average American nowadays what ethnic groups they most associated with arranged marriages, agricultural labor and domestic violence, neither Poles nor Polish Americans would be among the first few ethnic groups to come to mind. Ironically, they would be more apt to associate Mexicans or Mexican-Americans with these traits -- and yet, in this movie, there were no characters of Mexican descent that I could see. Instead it was the Polish characters in this movie who acted out the type of stereotypes that most people today would associate with Mexican immigrants. Indeed, the Poles in this flick were depicted as rural folk who are hot-tempered, prone to arranging marriages and obsessed with controlling women. Moreover, they were also depicted as being so different from mainstream Americans that one would hardly associate them with today's Polish-Americans.

So is this a good thing? Not necessarily. Then again The Wedding Night told its story so convincingly that it never occurred to me, the son of a Polish-American woman, to question its image of Polish-Americans. If anything, I found the movie quite convincing in its heartbreaking portrayal of the problems faced by a young immigrant woman named Manya Novak (played by Ukrainian-born actress Anna Sten) who struggled to reconcile her loyalty to her Polish roots with her attraction to the modernity of the American way and I could not help but wonder how often the same story could be told today about many non-Polish immigrants.

But enough about that.

The movie started out in New York City as bored author Tony Barrett (played by Gary Cooper) found out that his latest novel was such a flop that even his best friend and publisher chose to have nothing to do with it. He talked his wife Dora (played by Helen Vinson) into vamoosing back to his family homestead in Connecticut where he discovered that he had a family of Polish immigrants as neighbors. He became intrigued by their quaint ways and in return, the family's oldest daughter (the above-mentioned Manya) became intrigued by him and his quaint ways. Nothing came of it though until Dora departed for NYC and Tony was forced to rely more and more upon his Polish neighbors for supplies. Along the way, he learned something about the work ethic from Manya and before long, she was performing as the unofficial muse for his new novel.

Then Manya's father caught on that Manya was spending a little too much time at the Barrett household for an engaged woman. Tony found out that Manya did not love the man she was engaged to marry and that the engagement was part of an arrangement between her father and her husband-to-be. However, Tony was powerless to stop her from going through with it.

Things got worse when a snowstorm stranded Manya at Tony's place and she was forced to stay the night. Even though Manya and Tony spent the night in separate bedrooms, that fact did little to spare Manya from the wrath of her father the next morning. Then the audience discovered that Manya was not necessarily going along with her father by choice. At the first sign of defiance, Manya's father showed no hesitation in slapping her and reminded her that she did not have the same freedom as an American girl. After all, she was a Polish girl, which meant Manya had no choice but to obey her father's wishes -- whether she liked it or not.

Then Dora returned and learned of the relationship between Manya and Tony. Though Tony insisted that everything was innocent and that Dora was the one who should be explaining her social activities in his absence, Dora suspected differently. She read Tony's unfinished novel and realized from his written words just how strong the bond between writer and muse had become. But Dora was not yet ready to step aside from her marriage and poor Manya was already in enough trouble with her father as it was. Once Dora spoke to her, things just got worse.

Soon afterward, Manya got married and it looked as if everything would be finally settled. But, alas, Manya's wedding night had one last nasty surprise left for the Novaks and the Barretts. And someone ended up paying a big price for said surprise...

I don't know what I expected from The Wedding Night but I found myself far more moved by it than I had expected. Perhaps it was because I identified a bit with Manya. Perhaps it was because I identified a bit with Tony (though I hate to admit that). But most likely it was because I liked the rather complex relationship it depicted between Tony and Dora. Dora was hardly the ideal wife but she was not unsympathetic either. A bad movie would have portrayed her in shades of black, but this film just settled for portraying her in shades of gray and as a result, I actually felt for both her and Manya. Tony had his moments too but I could not help thinking that if he had been a more responsible person and not so intent on putting Manya in an impossible position, things would not have gotten so bad.

It said a lot about the movie that although Gary Cooper played Tony as a sympathetic character, he too had scenes in which he was less than sympathetic. For example, the time he acted so priggish to his returning wife was not one of his better moments. Nor was his attempt to hit on Manya as if she were just a woman whose sole reason for existence was to please him and only him.

Towards the end of the movie, it became obvious that Tony felt strongly about Manya and that Manya felt strongly about him. But ultimately his feelings for her appeared to do her more harm than good. While it would seem naive to believe that Manya's life would have been happier had she never met Tony Barrett, it seems equally naive to believe that Tony bore no responsibility for Manya's fate. Perhaps this last part was why he was so quiet at the end of the movie. And why he was so eager to remember Manya as she had been in the comparatively happy past -- and not as she was in the present.

The Flight Not Taken: An Alternative View of Planet of the Apes

Does anyone who has ever seen the original 1968 version of Planet of the Apes ever remember Lieutenant Stewart, the blonde female astronaut (played by an uncredited Dianne Stanley) who was killed in her sleep by an air leak?

I must confess that I remember her fate from the first time that I saw PotA but I did not remember her name nor even her hair color until I rewatched PotA a few weeks ago. Since then, I can't help but wonder how different the movie would have been if Stewart had survived her time in cryosleep and Taylor (the character played by Charlton Heston) had been the one to perish.

Not that I have anything against Charlton Heston -- he did a great job with the part he had been given and it's no surprise to me that his role in this movie was one of his most memorable roles ever.

But just suppose Stewart had survived in his character's place. Would she do the same things that Taylor did? Would she laugh at the fellow astronaut who had planted an American flag on the shore where they had landed? Would she be so quick to utter misanthropic statements?

Would she be so casual about removing her clothes in an alien environment just so that she could go for a quick swim? Would she be so casual about nudity, period, whether it was in front of her fellow humans or in front of the apes themselves?

Would she be more aggressive than Taylor when she was captured by the apes? Would she try harder to communicate with her captors? Would she attract the attention of her female captor as much as Taylor did and would she be “rewarded” by said captor with a mate of the opposite sex? For that matter, would she welcome such a reward? Would she earn the nickname “Bright Eyes” like Taylor did or would the apes be more fascinated with another part of her anatomy?

For that matter, suppose she and her group had not been captured. Suppose she was more cautious than Taylor and managed to avoid the apes. Would she and her fellow astronauts be able to survive on their own in an ape-dominated planet? Would she survive long enough to become the new Eve or would she suffer an even worse fate than Taylor's companions suffered in the original movie?

For that matter, suppose Dodge (the black astronaut played in the original movie by Jeff Burton) survived the attack by the apes instead of Taylor. Would he do anything different from the things Taylor did? Would he be more wary about dealing with his captors? If he escaped capture, would he play Adam to Stewart's Eve? Or would Stewart choose to play Eve to both surviving males?

Come to think of it, if playing Adam and Eve was such an important part of the mission upon which Taylor's crew were sent, why did they send only one female? Why not send two? Or three? Why not send a predominantly female crew? After all, one would think that it would make more sense to send a group of female astronauts into space than to send a group of males for no other reason that the average woman tends to be lighter and shorter than the average man. Given all the fuss sci-fi writers like to make about the “cold equations” that govern space flight, one would think that it would save more fuel to send someone who was lighter than the average male than to stick with the status quo. Then again, we're talking about 1968 (not exactly a progressive time in regard to feminism). And anyway, people don't always think logically just because they profess to be more scientific.

I could probably spend all day writing what ifs about Planet of the Apes but at the end of the day, I would have to admit that it is still an interesting movie in its own right. Granted, the first time I heard about the movie, I was just a little kid and every time I heard about it, I could not help envisioning a movie about a world full of giant apes. I suppose I should admit to having been just a little disappointed when I first found out what the movie was really about, but I still remember the movie having a huge emotional impact upon me, regardless of my original impression. Indeed, the first time I saw it, I literally could not go to sleep for a long time afterward because of all the thoughts produced by the movie's final image.

I wish all movies were as thought-provoking as the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes. Indeed, it says something great about the flick that though it has been the subject of many parodies, it still holds up to multiple viewings. Of course, it does help if said viewings are at least a decade or so apart. It helps even more if you don't try to take the premise too literally. Even as a kid, I knew that apes would be no more immune than humans to the disaster hinted at in the original movie and that the movie worked best as an allegory about the horrors of atomic war and not as a thinly disguised science lesson. But then one would have to live in a madhouse to think differently, right?

A Spoiler-Free Guide to The Uninvited

It is a movie.

Oh, rats! I just gave away the whole plot.

Paris When It Sizzles Is Still a Tad Underdone

Movie comedies don't always age well. For every such comedy that manages to provoke just as many laughs out of today's audiences as it did from yesterday's, there are many which are lucky if they elicit as much as a smile.

Movie parodies especially tend to not age well because the material they parody changes so rapidly. Yes, there are rare exceptions but such exceptions tend to work because they aim at universal foibles: the greed of the rich, the stupidity of authority figures, the hypocrisy of religious people and so forth. Thus Life of Brian still elicits yuks by both focusing on human shortcomings and parodying Biblical epics while Wholly Moses! has managed to disappear into comic oblivion by focusing on just the parody part.

It would be nice to say that the 1964 Audrey Hepburn film Paris When It Sizzles was an exception to this rule because Ms. Hepburn has such a way with a comic line, but unfortunately, even the best actress can only spin gold out of dross for so long. And though her co-star William Holden is no stranger to good movies, it is difficult to think of anything worth watching in this movie which does not ultimately involve Ms. Hepburn.

Oh, well. The idea of Ms. Hepburn playing a typist who ultimately plays both muse and assistant to middle-aged screenwriter William Holden sounds like a good idea on paper. But the execution left much to be desired and a lot of scenes that had the potential to be very funny more often than not came across as just being very silly without being especially funny.

I will admit that Paris When It Sizzles is hardly the worst movie I have ever seen. But Ms. Hepburn has done better and deserves better. And quite frankly, it says something about the script that the inevitable parody of Hammer vampire films seems more realistic than the film's happy ending. Though I must admit that it has been a long time since I have seen a movie in which actor Tony Curtis was famous for being anything apart from Jamie Lee's father.

Reflections on the Revolution in Hollywood: Part I

No, I'm not afraid of you. Nor of the nobles. Nor of the people. Nor of ideas.

The state will last my time. After me, the deluge.
--John Barrymore, Marie Antoinette (1938)

Heh. John Barrymore takes such joy in enunciating that above quote that one can be readily forgiven if one's first impulse upon hearing it is to examine the on-screen scenery for teethmarks. And that quote seems especially compelling when you consider that the character John Barrymore was portraying -- King Louis XV -- was not a very likable guy.

Of course, part of the odd fun of the 1938 film version of Marie Antoinette is the way it takes the well-known story of the French Revolution and tells it from the pov of one of history's least likable characters: Austrian-princess-turned-French-queen Marie Antoinette -- and manages to get away with it at the height of the Great Depression. On paper, such a project should not work. On film, it does -- due in part to such performances as Barrymore's which defy the audience to like them. It does not hurt that lead actress Norma Shearer -- who plays the title character -- can find likable qualities in her character as well. Even English actor Robert Morley -- who plays Marie Antoinette's husband King Louis XVI -- manages to be more sympathetic than one would expect.

Unlike more modern works, Marie Antoinette does not even pretend to tell a fair and balanced version of the French Revolution. The main person with whom it sympathizes is Marie Antoinette, who is portrayed not so much as the classic callous aristocrat of popular legend but as just another country cousin who got a chance to see the big city of the day -- Paris -- and ultimately paid for it with her life. Though many scenes are told from her point-of-view, few are told from the view of the common people and indeed, what glimpses we get of the French rebels are less than flattering.

Of course, it might be argued that Marie Antoinette was made in a different time. That back then movie audiences expected a bit of Hollywood glamour and that many movie-goers of the time had little if any interest in seeing on-screen depictions of the type of poverty that they could see for free in real life.

Then again it is not like movie audiences are all that progressive today. There is still a tendency for today's movies to focus on the rich and prosperous and ignore the poor and downtrodden. Indeed, one of the most popular series of movies -- The Hangover movies -- does not even pretend to portray the poor and downtrodden as anything but yet another obstacle for its protagonists to maneuver around.

If Marie Antoinette makes one especially bad mistake in the eyes of contemporary movie-goers, it is that it does not even attempt to deny its sympathy with aristocrats like Marie and her husband. There is no pretense about "feeling your pain" or "lifting up the masses" for this film.

Yet in an odd way, Marie Antoinette's approach seems more honest than I might have expected. Indeed, after seeing all too many modern movies encourage its audiences to cry crocodile tears for the down and out, Marie Antoinette's celebration of aristocratic disdain seems almost refreshing. Granted, it is not likely that the real-life Marie Antoinette was as likable as her movie counterpart is in this flick. But it would be nice for her sake to think so.

Bette Davis Eyes and the First of the Red Hot Latin Loathers: Bordertown

I never really understoond what the term "Bette Davis eyes" meant until after I recently saw this movie. Perhaps it was because, like most people of my generation, my main knowledge of Ms. Davis's work came from her post-Baby Jane days when she seemed to be cast more and more for shock value than for actual talent. Or perhaps it was because like most movie buffs, I took Ms. Davis' status in her younger days for granted. After all, one could argue that anyone could do good with the great dialogue of an All About Eve or The Petrified Forest; however, to stand out well enough to make a silk scarf of the pig's ear of a movie that is the 1935 movie Bordertown takes special talent.

Indeed, the script for Bordertown is bad enough that Ms. Davis's ability to stand out in her role as Marie Roark seems more of an accomplishment than any of her more famous roles. And of course, part of the reason Ms. Davis stands out so much in this movie is the way she uses her oh so noticeable eyes. In fact, she uses her eyes in a mad scene so different from previous movie mad scenes that the studio's first impulse was to make her do it over. It was not until after:

(1.) Ms. Davis agreed to do such a repeat only if the movie's preview audiences failed to realize her character's true mental status.

and

(2.) said preview audiences proved her right.

that they backed off of such a demand.

Ironically, Ms. Davis was never supposed to be cast in Bordertown. The male lead Paul Muni originally wanted either Carole Lombard or Lupe Vélez to play Ms. Davis' part opposite his Johnny Ramirez character. However, after Ms. Davis got a lot of positive attention as a result of her role in the 1934 RKO film Of Human Bondage, Warner Brothers studio head Jack L. Warner insisted that she be cast in the part -- which is just as well since Ms. Davis's performance is one of the few reasons Bordertown is still worth watching nowadays.

Part of the problem with this movie is that like all too many Hollywood movies about Mexican-Americans -- including some recent releases I could mention -- the movie is never quite as progressive as its creators think it is. On the surface, Johnny Ramirez is a lot more sympathetic than the thuggish title character Muni played in Scarface -- but not by much. Although the script makes much of him being a reformed hood who has turned his back on his former lifestyle and now just wants to play lawyer and please his mother, it also makes him seem incredibly naive. No sooner than he graduates from law school than he turns his back on his law books, and when he has the chance to help an old friend with a big civil case, he does not seem to even try to do much research, preferring instead to just wing it based on what little information he finds. As a result, he not only ends up losing what should have been an open-and-shut case against the rich white debutante who drunkenly ran into and totaled his friend's truck, he also ends up being held in contempt of court by a very biased judge. And as if that is not enough, he punches out the opposing attorney to boot.

Afterwards, Ramirez ends up abandoning his law practice and going to work as a manager for local bordertown casino owner Charlie Roark (played by Eugene Pallette). Ramirez proves more successful as a casino manager than he ever was as a lawyer, and he even manages to attract the attention of not just one but two Anglo women -- Charlie Roark's wife Marie and spoiled debutante Dale Elwell (the same woman who totaled the truck of Ramirez's friend). Ramirez makes it clear early on that he is not interested in returning Marie's affection. Instead he becomes obsessed with Ms. Elwell (played by Margaret Lindsay), a woman whose idea of romantic subtlety involves continuously addressing him as "Savage" and letting her girlfriends know that her interest in him is little more than social slumming. Eventually Marie grows jealous of Ms. Elwell and strives to win Johnny for herself. When Johnny refuses to cooperate, Marie takes it upon herself to free herself from her husband by using her spouse's own love of gadgets against him. And when that plan does not work to change Johnny's mind, she accuses Ramirez of a crime he did not commit...

In any event, it would probably be a bit much to expect 2013 liberalism from a 1935 movie, especially one made at a time when Mexican-Americans were still facing massive discrimination throughout the American Southwest. Then again it seems a bit much to applaud such a movie for essentially implying that all such cases of discrimination were just the result of fiery Latin tempers and all too active Mexican fists.

It says something about the movie's concern for its Latin characters that we in the audience never do find out whether Johnny's friend ever got his truck fixed. Nor does it help that the script's idea of a happy ending means Johnny Ramirez leaving Anglo society in order to go back where he came from. True, it is implied in the movie that Johnny will be using his money and experience to finance a law school for his fellow Mexicans. But after eighty minutes of implying that you can take the boy out of the barrio but not the barrio out of the boy, such an ending does not seem all that cool. Moreover, Ms. Elwell's fate is depicted in such an over-the-top fashion that even the most ardent LULAC member might consider it to be overdone.

Indeed, Bordertown is a lot better when it comes to the unintentional irony. For example, when Ms. Elwell first sees Mr. Ramirez in the courtroom, she immediately draws a sketch of him and labels it "savage" despite knowing little more about Ramirez than his profession, his appearance and his ethnicity. Yet when Ramirez drops by her home later in the movie, Ms. Elwell is in her backyard sunbathing in the nude (said sunbathing, of course, being done in such a fashion that even the most conservative member of the Hays Office would not object). In short, like the stereotypical "savage" she undoubtedly looks down upon, Ms. Elwell is not only wearing no clothes when Mr. Rodriguez arrives but she is also doing her damnest to turn her skin darker. And like a "savage", she does not seem particularly guilty about the damage she caused earlier in the movie until it is almost too late to do anything about it.

Anyway, there are many movies about Mexican-Americans that are much better to watch than Bordertown. However, Bordertown does give modern audiences an interesting insight into what even the most progressive white non-Hispanics thought about Mexican-Americans back in 1935. And come to think of it, that is perhaps the most damnable thing about Bordertown -- not that it is so dated or so backward but that it was considered so progressive by the standards of its day. If nothing else, that makes me wonder how progressive today's best movies will seem in 2091.

Shaking the Veil

One of the oldest tropes in the book is that of the former sinner who becomes a saint -- or at least, that of the former troublemaker who mends his or her ways and becomes a more respectable person. Such is the trope used by the writers of the 1966 movie The Trouble with Angels, a comedy which would have you believe that adorable little Disney actress Hayley Mills was born to play both a rebellious Catholic girl and a future nun.

Unfortunately, Ms. Mills is not all that believable as rebellious Catholic girl Mary Clancy and though it is quite adorable to see her repeatedly lure her schoolmate Rachel Devery (played by June Harding) into one mess after another, I got the feeling that the film's writers just didn't have the heart to make a movie in which Ms. Mills was too rebellious. It doesn't help that most of Ms. Mills' misdeeds seem hilariously tame by today's standards; granted, Ms. Clancy's habit of smoking cigarettes will still get a girl in trouble with her teachers today even in public schools. But compared to the attitudes which would become common in future generations, Mary Clancy seems like an altar girl and the harshest sin we ever see her actually commit occurs in the opening credits sequence in which Clancy's animated self blows out the flame of the Columbia Studios torch. More often, Ms. Clancy's worst sin is trying to seem a lot more sophisticated than she actually is and she is hardly the first or last teenager to commit that misdeed.

Fortunately, there is Rosalind Russell as the strict but ultimately kind-hearted Mother Superior to give an antidote to whatever saccharine taste Ms. Mills gives the movie. Ms. Russell was hardly the first actress I would have picked to convincingly play a Catholic nun but she plays the role well enough that I can't help but think that if most real-life nuns in the 1960s were nothing like Ms. Russell's character, they should have been.

There is also a cameo by former stripper Gypsy Rose Lee whose role in this movie never quite makes sense as anything but either an in-joke reference to Ms. Russell's performance in Gypsy or else an excuse to allude to Ms. Lee's former career within the opening credits.

As a devout Catholic, I must admit that I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I actually did. After all, this was one of the last Hollywood movies to depict the nuns of the pre-Vatican II era in a sympathetic fashion and while I realize there is a darker side to recent church history than Hollywood movies of the Hays Code era liked to admit, I also doubt that such a system could have endured for so long if there was not at least some good in the system as well. However, this film just did not work for me as well as it should have.

Oh, well. Like Mary Clancy, I too was once a bit of a rebel against the Church even though I never went to Catholic school, and yet even back then, there was a part of me who could not resist the lure of holy water and stained glass. Wishful thinking, perhaps?

Perhaps. I'm still a long way from qualifying for a halo but at least I haven't been hit by lightning yet so maybe my guardian angel was trying to tell me something.

The Great Brain Robbery

Oh, no, Boris! Please don't put part of that gangster's brain in your best friend's skull. After all, you have no idea where it has been.

Nevertheless, Boris Karloff insisted on doing just that in the 1940 movie Black Friday. At first, Boris Karloff's character -- Dr. Ernest Sovac -- was just concerned about saving the life of his best friend George Kingsley (played by Stanley Ridges), a kindly English professor who taught at the local college. Then Dr. Sovac discovered that the brain he used to fix his friend's injured grey matter belonged to gangster Red Cannon, the only man who knew where $500,000 in stolen loot has been hidden. Of course, Dr. Sovac did not want the money for himself but he was not exactly eager to turn it over to the authorities either. Instead Dr. Sovac tempted himself with the thought of all the lab equipment he could buy with that stolen loot. And so it went.

This being the Hays Code era, it does not really seem like much of a spoiler to note that Dr. Sovac's scheme did not exactly go off without a hitch. For one thing, he found that he was able to summon Red's personality into Professor Kingsley's body through hypnosis but he was not so good at controlling Red while he was in there. Moreover, Sovac and Cannon were not the only ones searching for the loot. The rest of Red's gang -- led by gangster Eric Mornay (played by Bela Lugosi, natch) -- were searching for it too and they could be every bit as brutal as Red too. Would Dr. Sovac be able to beat them to the dough? And if so, how long could he hold on to it?

Like most scientific horror films made in the 1930s and 1940s, much of the plot details seem almost laughable by today's standards. After all, the film would have you believe that Dr. Sovac managed to singlehandedly put off an operation on not just one but two human brains without arousing the suspicions of any outsiders. Not once did a nurse or orderly interfere or show up at the wrong time and of course, Dr. Sovac had no trouble keeping everything sterile and operating at the same time. Moreover, though Dr. Sovac was said to have transplanted part of a gangster's brain into Professor Kingsley's skull to replace brain matter that was too damaged to survive, there seemed little concern on his part about whether or not his friend's true personality would survive just an operation. Indeed, the possibility that Red Cannon's true self might live on in his best friend's brain came almost as a complete surprise to Dr. Sovac though I would think that the opposite result would be more unlikely.

In any event, the true purpose of this movie was not to tantalize viewers with the possibilities of future medical advances but to issue the same old warning about meddling with things man was not meant to mess with that we always seem to get from horror films of this era. However, for a change, Dr. Sovac seemed to worry more about the risks such an operation might pose to his medical license than the notion that he might be punished by a higher power. Then again, this being a Hays Code picture, he got enough punishment as it was.

Just Because They Show It on Thanksgiving Doesn't Mean It's a Turkey

I don't know what inspired my local public television station to show the 1963 movie Charade on Thanksgiving night and I know even less about the reasons why my mother and my youngest brother chose to tune into it. I do know that it proved to be a remarkably good movie that even people who aren't as ardently dedicated to old movies as yours truly can appreciate -- which might explain why my mother and my youngest sibling could not help but watch it all the way through. Some critics have called it the "best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made" and some may argue that it's actually a lot better than some of Hitchcock's lesser films. (For example, Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry could have learned a lot about suspense from this flick.)

On paper, this movie should have been a failure. After all, there was a huge age gap between the two romantic leads and it's not a big coincidence that the male lead -- Cary Grant -- retired from movies two films after this one was released. (In his last movie, Walk, Don't Run, Grant didn't even pretend to be romantically interested in that movie's female lead and in the one before that, he was matched for some odd reason with younger actress Leslie Caron, perhaps in the vain hope of capturing the same chemistry found between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in this flick.) Moreover, Charade itself is a mixture of romance, comedy and suspense that could have easily proved tasteless in the hands of a lesser filmmaker than director Stanley Donen.

And yet it doesn't. I actually found myself laughing at lines of dialogue I never expected to find all that funny and being amused at the actors' reactions as often as their actions. The plot, for those unfamiliar with it, involved a young widow named Regina "Reggie" Lambert whose husband was discovered by the side of a French railroad track at the beginning of the movie. Not only did she have much reason to suspect her husband was murdered, but she soon discovered that he was also suspected of being a crook. One of his last actions involved stripping the apartment that he and Reggie had shared and selling the furnishings without leaving a single clue as to what he did with all the cash he got for them.

Moreover, Mrs. Lambert found herself being pursued by three thugs who were certain she knew where her late husband hid a fortune in stolen loot. Add to that a mysterious CIA agent who claimed to have been investigating her late husband and an equally mysterious person -- played by Cary Grant -- who might or might not be another government agent and poor Mrs. Lambert had her hands full trying to get herself free of a sticky situation.

I could say more but the movie is too good to spoil. Suffice to say that Hepburn and Grant make a great team and even if you don't particularly care for May-October romances like the one in this movie, you will probably still enjoy it. I would like to think that Cary Grant stopped making movies three years afterwards because he knew deep down that he would never top this movie. But I'm sure Grant's autobiography would have you believe something else. C'est la vie!

A Turn for the Curse

Time is not always kind to old movies and time has a tendency to be especially unkind to old horror movies. Perhaps this is because horror movie fans inevitably grow up and seek different thrills than the ones they experienced in youth. More often, it is because the things that scare one generation don't always scare the next to the same degree.

Thus I have always been amused by those rare horror movies that have actually managed to grow more respectable with age. The Hammer films, for example, were rarely popular with critics when they first came out and as recently as the 1970s, it was popular for old school horror critics to blame the House of Hammer for the decline and fall of the old-fashioned horror film. Yet judging from most film critics nowadays, one would never imagine there was a time when the Hammer films were less than respectable.

Of course, part of this might lie in the fact that Hammer Studios were among the last people -- apart from the good people at Roger Corman's American International -- to set horror in the past and make it work. There has been many cinematic attempts to create horror period pieces since Hammer quit making such films but unfortunately, few such films have been as successful as the early Hammer films and indeed, my mind winces at the thought of having to rewatch such works as Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula in a way that it doesn't wince at watching, say, Hammer's Horror of Dracula.

But as good as the 1958 Horror of Dracula is, it would have never come about were it not for the success of the 1957 flick The Curse of Frankenstein. Curse was Hammer's first attempt at remaking the old Universal classic and it was a doozy. It was not necessarily all that perfect on an artistic basis. For example, as much as I admire the way Hammer makeup artists created a look for Christopher Lee's creature which was as convincing as the makeup used for Universal's Frankenstein Monster, it is hard for me to pretend that Lee's portrayal was an improvement on the more sympathetic Boris Karloff version. Indeed, one of the failings of Curse is the way it doesn't even try to portray the Frankenstein Creature as a being worth caring about.

Then again the movie doesn't try to create any sympathy for the monster's creator, either. If the creature is bad, its creator -- Baron Victor Frankenstein (played by Peter Cushing, natch) -- is worse. In order to achieve his ends, the Baron is not above robbing graves, cheating on his own bride-to-be and even murdering innocent people. Even on his wedding night to his cousin Elizabeth (played by the always gorgeous Hazel Court), he can't bring himself to think of anyone else but himself and his creation.

In the end, the Baron finally succeeds in either killing or alienating everyone close to him. And ironically, his own creation comes closer to bringing him to justice than any mere human...

As you might guess, Curse doesn't even pretend to be faithful to the original Mary Shelley novel and given the legal necessity of avoiding any close similarity to the original Universal movie lest Hammer be sued for plagiarism, it's probably just as well. All the same, Curse manages to be more memorable than I expected as well as a fitting beginning to Peter Cushing's long career as a horror movie icon. Come to think of it, Christopher Lee's career since this film has not been too shabby, either.

The Werewolf of Madrid

There’s a great scene toward the end of the 1961 Hammer film The Curse of the Werewolf but unfortunately you have to wade through a lot of scenes of people doing cruel things to other people to get there.

Is it worth to get there?

Well, it depends. The Curse of the Werewolf gives us a young Oliver Reed, a likable narrator, a surprisingly benign Spanish cleric and a novel explanation for lycanthropy. The movie is loosely -- very loosely -- based on Guy Endore’s novel The Werewolf of Paris but unfortunately, the adaptation eschews almost every scene in The Werewolf of Paris worth reading and includes a few I would rather not have revisited.

Hammer deserves credit for attempting to do something more complex than the usual Lawrence Talbot routine but I can not honestly say that this is one of their better movies. The main problem with the plot is that Reed is sympathetic enough as cursed Spanish lycanthrope Leon Corledo that I can not help but wish a happy ending for his character yet an unhappy ending is all but a foregone conclusion. To be fair, the plot does hint at possible alternative endings. For example, Corledo attempts to elope with his girlfriend at one point, only to be stymied by the police. At another point, the cleric hints that Corledo could be sent to a monastery. (An odd solution given the Catholic Church’s traditional attitude towards the supernatural but in the wake of recent events, all too believable.) However, this plan ultimately fails as well.

So is Curse of the Werewolf worth seeing? Not really. Yet there is something about that final scene in which Corledo’s girlfriend, dressed in black, stands alone in a way which suggests Goya’s famous painting of the Black Duchess. Perhaps I am stretching things a bit but then again I do not often see scenes that remind me of Goya paintings in a movie, let alone a Hammer movie. I just wish this one scene had appeared in a better film.

Cinema Indocumentado

I have seen so many bad illegal alien movies over the years that it often seems like a miracle to come across one that is actually good. This is not to say that such films are rare. I could sing the praises of movies like El Norte and My Family all day but unfortunately, not all films dealing with Mexican illegal aliens are up to the standards of those films.

More often, they are up to the standards of the 1980 exploitation flick Border Cop, which starred Telly Savalas as a tough but kind border patrolman and which featured Michael V. Gazzo as a local crime boss named Chico Suarez who just happened to speak with the same accent Gazzo used for his Mafioso character in The Godfather, Part II. It says something about how bad this particular movie was that one of the most likable characters in this movie -- a Mexican female immigrant, natch -- ended up getting raped for seemingly no other reason than to give the Savalas character an excuse to show what a badass he was when he went after the rapist. In all too many such movies, the Mexican characters seemed to have little reason to exist apart from giving the Anglo heroes a chance to show how brave and noble they were and Border Cop was no different.

Granted, the USA does not have a monopoly on such bad movies. The 1985 Mexican exploitation flick La Tumba del Mojado presented such a downbeat view of the United States and the type of life awaiting those Mexicans who make it here that a Mexican acquaintance theorized that it was part of her government's plan to discourage illegal immigration. The only Anglos shown on-screen spoke with thick Texas accents and were depicted as being just a tad more friendly than the Wehrmacht. One of the few friendly faces the illegal immigrant of the title* met in the US belonged to a drug dealer who befriended the immigrant and eventually involved him in his business -- an involvement which, of course, had tragic results.

Ironically, one of the better movies I have seen concerning this issue is the 1949 drama Border Incident, one of the first American movies that dealt with this subject. Of course, this film was made during the heyday of the bracero program (a government program by which Mexican agricultural workers were transported to the US to help out American farmers). Back then, illegal immigration still seemed like a novelty and while the movie's writers expressed their share of sympathy for the Mexicans who choose to illegally enter the US, the movie still emphasized the importance of immigrating the legal way.

Nevertheless, the movie's villains were not the poor devils who crossed the border without government approval but the Latino and Anglo criminals who smuggled them across and then preyed on them. Indeed, the number of young Mexicans who fell victim to these crooks became so great that the Mexican and American governments teamed up to bring the crooks to justice. The Mexican side was represented by Ricardo Montalbán, who played Pablo Rodriguez, a Mexican policeman who went undercover as a Mexican peon. The American side was represented by future Senator George Murphy, who played Jack Bearnes, the federal agent who assisted Montalbán in his mission.

Contrary to American movie tradition, Rodriguez did not die the traditional early death Hollywood usually reserves for minority characters. Instead he ended up becoming the hero of the movie while Bearnes ended up becoming a victim of the bad guys -- quite a daring plot development when you consider that this movie was made at a time when many restaurants, theatres and public pools in the Southwest still discriminated against Mexicans and Latin heroes were far from the norm in American movies.

Could a film like Border Incident be made today? Not likely, given that the bracero program which partially inspired it no longer exists. For that matter, the idea of the Mexican and American government cooperating today to bust an international ring of immigrant smugglers seems highly unlikely as well. But it would be nice to pretend it was possible, if only in dreams.

* Mojado is a not so nice Spanish word for "illegal immigrant" which usually translates as "wetback" in English. It is often used in the titles of Mexican songs and movies and one relative of mine even claimed to have once seen a T-shirt that pitted a vehicle labeled "Mojado Power" against a vehicle labeled "Chicano Power." However, it is not a word that most Spanish-speaking people knowingly use in polite company.

The Not So Old Dark House

It’s one thing to go to bat for a movie like the original 1932 version of The Old Dark House. After all, who doesn’t love Gloria Stuart or Boris Karloff?

But the more “modern” 1963 version directed by William Castle? Perish the thought.

Even as a kid, I thought some of the movie’s sight gags were stupid and some of the “special effects” (for example, attempting to pass off a stuffed dog as a wild hyena) worse than stupid. Indeed, it might be argued that William Castle’s The Old Dark House was one of those films you saw as a child which you expected to make more sense when you saw it as a grown-up but never did.

And yet the movie has an odd air about it, the same air you’d expect to find in an eccentric cousin whom no one else in the family liked but who nevertheless always found time to entertain you when no one else would have anything to do with you.

It is not really a very good movie. Apart from an animated sequence created by Charles Addams -- yes, the same Charles Addams whose cartoons inspired the creation of The Addams Family -- there is not much in the first twenty minutes to merit attention and more often than not, the movie’s attempts to be funny come across as more silly than comic.

But then again it has Robert Morley who is always good no matter what type of role he’s stuck in. And Tom Poston -- an actor best known for his roles on Newhart and The Bob Newhart Show -- certainly makes an interesting -- if odd -- choice for the American-born protagonist Tom Penderel. Plus the eccentric music score proves that such scores existed long before Danny Elfman composed his first overture.

But then there is that plot. Tom Penderel is a dull, ordinary American who shares a flat with an eccentric English gambler Jasper Femm. Femm invites Penderel to his family estate to meet his female cousin but he never shows up. Instead, Penderel is introduced to the various members of Femm's family, each one more eccentric than the last.

There is Petiphar who is obsessed with Noah’s ark; Agatha, who is obsessed with knitting; Roderick, who is obsessed with guns, and Casper who is the identical twin of Jasper the gambler. The two female cousins are Cecilia, a seemingly normal young woman, and Morgana, an allegedly man-hungry woman whose impromptu courtship of Penderel seems to smack more of desperation than genuine lust. Then there is Morgana’s imaginatively named father Morgan who is so possessive of Morgana that he continually threatens to beat up any man who even looks in her direction. (And yes, that includes reluctant objects of Morgana’s affection like Tom Penderel.)

No sooner has Penderel met most of the family than they begin dying off. Each time they do, a mysterious voice recites part of an old nursery rhyme involving old English church bells and the flag atop the family mansion is lowered to half-mast by some equally mysterious personage. Since there is no telling where the murderer will strike next, Penderel gets involved with the attempts to track him down, only to run afoul of various surviving family members. It’s not until the end that the true culprit is revealed -- and shortly afterwards, it becomes up to Penderel to save the mansion -- and all the living people still left within it -- from destruction.

So why do I like this movie so much when I know I shouldn’t? Well, like most people, I have a deep fondness for stuff I watched in childhood even when I know it is not good for me. Plus there is that music score I mentioned above and the sheer implausibility of that plot that seems almost breathtaking in its awfulness. At one point, we get a fight scene in the mansion’s cellar which was undoubtedly supposed to be reminiscent of the old silent film comics but instead seems more like an outtake from an old Three Stooges short. On the plus side, poor old uncle Petiphar’s obsession with arks and the end of the world seems like a possible inspiration for the apocalyptically obsessed protagonists of such later -- and better -- films as The Rapture and The Unbelievable Truth -- but I somehow doubt the makers of those films will ever acknowledge that.

Given the promise inherent in the film’s title, I can’t help wishing director William Castle tried a little bit harder in regard to this film. Then again, after seeing other William Castle movies, it seems apparent that comedy was not really Castle’s strong point. Just as one would never ask Busby Berkeley to direct a horror movie or Woody Allen to direct a Busby Berkeley-type musical, so must one reluctantly concede the fact that Castle was not much of a comedy director. Except when he was not trying to be.

Love in the Age of the En-Lightning-Ment

When we last left Tyrone Power, he was playing a journalist named Stephen Fitzgerald who was journeying to the Emerald Isle to meet cute with his future love interest. This time out in the 1951 movie I'll Never Forget You, he is a scientist named Peter Standish who is visiting Mother England in order to participate in a very important atomic experiment, only to end up traveling back in time via lightning bolt to the Age of Enlightenment where he promptly changes places with a rich American who is preparing to wed a charming young damsel who just happens to be the beautiful daughter of a local aristocrat. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

Unfortunately, life in 1784 England does not quite suit Standish as much as he would have supposed and to make matters worse, he keeps giving away the fact that he knows so much about the locals' future. In short, he is just ignorant enough of eighteenth century ways to attract the suspicions of the locals and too knowledgeable enough about things his counterpart would not know to win their trust. As if Standish's life is not complicated enough, he finds himself falling for the sister of his counterpart's intended, a scandalous complication in any century.

Will Standish be able to win over the good people of 1784 London? Or will he end up in an insane asylum?

Since this movie is not billed as an example of alternative history, it does not take a lot of imagination to guess that the eventual ending will be a less than happy one. Indeed, this movie has one of the most depressing endings for a romantic movie that I have seen in a long while.

Yet it gives nothing away to note that it hints at an ultimately happy ending for Standish as well. Add to that the witticisms of Dennis Price as Standish's British “cousin” -- one of those black sheep relatives who is inevitably more fun to listen to than the white lamb kinfolk -- and the movie is actually quite watchable. After all, it is hard to hate a movie that has enough confidence in its audience to not only include Dr. Samuel Johnson as a character but to do so without going out of its way to explain who he was or why he was so famous. And I must confess that I find it amusing to see yet another old movie which treats marriage between cousins as no big deal while most modern Americans I know would regard the same idea with horror.

Besides, after having seen my share of “time travel for dummies” movies, I could not help finding it refreshing to finally see a movie that had a fairly realistic attitude about how a visitor from the future would be received in real life. After all, as my father used to note whenever he and I were watching old syndicated reruns of Time Tunnel, it is not like we sophisticated people in the modern era would automatically accept the word of a person who claimed to be from our future. Indeed, if such a person turned up in Washington D.C., he or she would be very lucky if he or she did not vanish into the clutches of Homeland Security. And that is just one of the more optimistic scenarios.

While I must admit that it would be fun to see a movie in which such a traveler actually did change history, I am not sure I trust modern Hollywood to bring off such a story with the same panache we see in I'll Never Forget You. Mind you, I will admit that title needs work. But apart from that, I found it quite memorable.