The Blossoming of Judy Jones: FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE (1934)

A cherished lump of stocking coal for Cecil B. DeMille devotees, FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE (1934) is remarkably lapse on realism for being such jungle-set escapade: no one seems to actually move through the jungle, or deal with any real danger, i.e. dehydration, tigers, or malaria. The frightened four's trusty guide whips up a camp with ladders and tree houses latched from vines and trees every night and the next day the men are free to mope after the...

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Casey Anthony and the Hollywood Stoners

In THEY WONT FORGET (1937) a frenzied mob takes the law into their own hands after the hottest girl in town is murdered and the ambitious local D.A. (Claude Rains) spurs it all on the with the help of an unscrupulous journalist. The murdered girl Lana Turner in her film debut and the camera catches her every tight sweater bounce as she struts through the blindly celebratory Memorial day crowd before her death. Audiences remembered that bouncing sweater,...

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Pre-Code Capsules VII: LOVE IS A RACKET, HEAT LIGHTNING, THE BIG SHAKEDOWN, THE KEYHOLE, TARZAN THE FEARLESS

LOVE IS A RACKET1932 - ***Douglas Fairbanks Jr. fares well in Clark Gable hair and soul as Jimmy the gossip hound in this ultra-typical (in the best of ways) WB film of the era. As a columnist who tangles over Francis Dee with generic gangster Lyle Talbot, Fairbanks races around and seeks counsel from fellow reporters Lee Tracy and Ann Dvorak who are hep enough to know their boy's getting taken to the cleaners by slumming Dee, but keep their yaps...

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God bless the Orgiast / who's brought his own: SIGN OF THE CROSS

Cecil B. DeMille's SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932) mixes pre-code decadence with stilted odes to the Lord of Dullness, have mercy. It makes a great exhibit A for the case against the prudes, as this was a Catholic-sanctioned favorite yet is far more lurid than anything they might condemn. Like much of Hollywood it quietly snickers at these prudes and rubes for treating it like some holy writ. DeMille loves to slyly  mimic his own audience in the lengthy...

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Great 70s Dads: Claude Rains in CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (1945)

"Caesar doesn't eat women. but he does eat girls... and cats."His manner like a doting father who brooks no weakness, iron with courage as the rock under his feet, a glorious advisor/sponsor/teacher for Cleopatra, played by Vivien Leigh like a panther cub on her first kill.  Such is Caesar as embodied by Claude Rains and emboldened by the lashing and so British pen of George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Gabriel Pascal, Caesar and Cleopatra is an...

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In the Oui Paul Hours: SOME CAME RUNNING (1958)

A brilliant but troubling film that gets both better and worse with repeat viewings, SOME CAME RUNNING (1958) is cited by Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli), a screenwriter-for-hire in Godard's 1963 CONTEMPT. Paul's in the bathtub but wearing his hat nonetheless, "like Dean Mar-Tan in Sum Cah-eem Ran-Neeng." Dean never takes his hat off either, you see.One of those small town hypocrisy critiques that were very popular after WW2, it's based on the novel...

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TCM Diary: LURED, THE MALE ANIMAL, THIS COULD BE THE NIGHT, NOTHING SACRED

For some of us, the name Lucille Ball produces shudders. Her long-running TV show was in constant late night reruns, and when nothing else was on TV we'd watch it, and so began to associate it in our minds with a feeling of trapped isolation. Yet LURED (1947) shows Ball as a tough, sassy distinct individual far more resonant than the the proto-Cathy "waaaa" housewife married to Cuban's greatest export. LURED is directed by Douglas Sirk, and the script...

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