Robert Mitchum in Where Danger Lives (1950) and Angel Face (1952)

 

Robert Mitchum made a career out of playing characters that dominated the screen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him turn his head to look at anything. When Mitchum turns to look at you, his whole body turns. And you’d better be ready for what happens next, because good or bad, you aren’t going to escape it.

And yet for all that implied control, a Mitchum character was often placed in a situation where he knows that no matter what he does, his fate is not his own and things are going to end up with him dead. Or worse - he might actually end up with that crazy women that he’s run off with.

 Faith Domergue (Where Danger Lives) and Jean Simmons (Angel Face)

Where Danger Lives and Angel Face are both about the dangers of falling for crazy women.

In 1948, Mitchum was the victim of a sting operation and busted for possession marijuana (later overturned). The skittish management reintroduced him to movie goers as the good guy in the relatively upbeat Christmas movie, Holiday Affair (1949), playing a war veteran who gets involved with war widow, Janet Leigh. Although Mitchum is never anything but gracious and accommodating in Holiday Affair, such is his presence that you are never quite sure where the film is going to end up. Will he get the girl or will there be a pile of dead bodies under the Christmas tree this year?

Mitchum’s next movie was a move back into film noir with Where Danger Lives (1950) directed by John Farrow and starring Faith Domergue, with small, but critical appearances by Claude Raines and Maureen O’Sullivan. Shot by Nicholas Musuraca, who had photographed Mitchum  in Out of the Past and the best of the Val Lewton RKO productions (i.e., the Jacques Tourneur directed, The Cat People (1942)), the film never looks anything less than gorgeous, with Muscuraca’s compositions and lighting effects driving the movie forward as much as Farrow’s direction.

Robert Mithcum, Claude Raines & Faith Domergue

The plot of Where Danger Lives is simple. Dr. Jeff Cameron (Mitchum) falls for an enigmatic attempted suicide Margo (Domergue) and dumps his faithful girlfriend (O’Sullivan) to pursue her. In a drunken confrontation with her very rich, supposed father (Raines), Mitchum suffers a concussion. Raines dies and with Jeff in a fog from the concussion, Margo grabs him and makes a run for the Mexican border. But just before he died, Raines had tried to warn Jeff of Margo’s dark secret. I wonder what that secret might have been?

Jeff just wants to call the police, but in his dazed condition he is can’t stop Margo’s desperate need to escape. On the run, the pair keeps falling prey to their own suspicions of being discovered when – at least initially  - the authorities are actually unaware of what’s happened to Raines. At one point they are captured and arrested – for not having beards when their car breaks down during a small town celebration! In an effort to talk their way out of their troubles, they’re forced to get married by the intoxicated crowd as the only way to avoid revealing who they are. And so it goes until they end up at the Mexican border. There the truth comes out as a half paralyzed, bullet-ridden Jeff hears Margo proclaim, “nobody ever pities me!” As great an exit scene as any femme fatale has ever made. 

 No way out for Faith Domergue In Where Danger Lives

Mitchum rehashed almost the same exact plot two years later in Angel Face (1952) directed by Otto Preminger and starring Jean Simmons in the femme fatale role. Both films start with an ambulance taking Mitchum to the medical aid of someone (Simmon’s stepmom in Angel Face) only to dump his girlfriend when he falls in lust with the young daughter/wife of a much older rich man. When that man ends up dead, the lovers struggle to avoid murder convictions and in the process end up married. And then things get worse.

Where Dangers Lives is a better film than Angel Face, although the latter has a much higher critical rating. Where Dangers Lives is a more satisfying movie with a polished, tightly written story. Each scene rackets up the tension as Jeff and Margo’s options exponentially diminish into a claustrophobic finale between a half dead Jeff and a mostly insane Margo. It was written by Charles Bennett who also wrote the screenplays for Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps and Foreign Correspondent, and who later joined The Cat People team of Jacques Tourneur and Nick Musuraca to write the classic British horror film, Night of the Demon. Although Domergue is not in Simmons league as an actress, she gives a compelling performance at the film’s climax where she becomes completely unhinged in one extended, single shot sequence.  

 Mitchum falls for Simmons' angel face

Angel Face, by comparison, has a stop/start quality to it that makes its 69 minute running time seem 20 minutes too long. It succeeds on the strength of Mitchum and Simmons’ chemistry, and her riveting face that demands the viewer’s attention as much as Domergue’s playmate figure. In the end, however, Angel Face scores more points where it really counts; it has a once seen, never to be forgotten ending. Having watched Angel Face before Where Danger Lives, my shouted advice to Jeff was to not get in the car with Margo!

Notably, both actresses were involved with legendary billionaire, Howard Hughes, who had gained control of RKO studios in 1948. Hughes hooked up with Faith when she was just 17, buying her parents a house to keep them at arm’s length. But she eventually broke off with him when she discovered that he was also bedding Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth at the same time. She went on to star in a number of cult classics including Cult of the Cobra, This Island Earth and The Atomic Man (all 1955). She gives a credible performance as a Doctor of Invertebrate Zoology in Ray Harryhausen’s It Came from Beneath the Sea (also 1955) where at one point she uses a laboratory flask to replicate Veronica Lakes’ code-defying hairbrush scene in Sullivan’s Travels (1942). 

Jean Simmons also had her problems (contractual rather than personal) with Hughes. Apparently Angel Face needed to be made quickly as Simmons RKO contract was set to expire within 18 days of the start of production. Hughes’ instructions to Preminger were to make the shoot as difficult as possible for Simmons. You can see from her short bangs that Simmons had cut off her hair is an effort to dissuade Hughes from using her in a film and was forced to wear a wig during production. 

Character Actors of Note in Angel Face: Watch for Gertrude Astor as the prison matron. She had a long career in silent films, with a large part as Cecily in Paul Leni’s  genre defining The Cat and The Canary (1927). Also, the ubiquitous and wonderful Teresa Harris as a nurse at Simmons jailhouse bed side (above). Don’t blink or you will miss both!

Are Where Danger Lives and Angel Face Worth My Time? Yes to both. Although Where Danger Lives tells its story better, both films are solid B+ efforts. Each film in enlivened by small bits by lots of great character actors.

Availability: Both Angel Face and Where Danger Lives are available from Warner Archives, the latter twinned with Tension (1949)

The Addams Family - The Best Film of 2019

As a longtime Addams Family fan – both the original cartoons and the TV show – I was surprized to discover that a new animated feature film about them had been released last Fall. A quick scan of the interweb revealed the reason; it was universally panned and slipped into and out of theaters like a ghost through a locked door.

Steeling myself for disappointment, I watched it the day after I had sat through the turgid Frozen 2 (so many artificial plot twists! so many terrible songs!), only to be completely won over by the 10 minute mark with the introduction of the beloved butler, Lurch.

The CGI animation is the most faithful reproduction on the screen, to date, of Charles Addams’ original drawings: mother Morticia (voiced by Charlize Theron) is the thin and dark version of Luna from Tod Browning’s Mark of the Vampire (1935); father Gomez (voiced by Oscar Issac) is squat and slightly greasy; son Pugsley (voiced by Finn Wolfhard) has his blonde hair finally restored from the cartoon; and daughter Wednesday (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz, possibly the only weak spot in the film) is the suitably pallid, deadpan, deadshot-with-a-crossbow that Christina Ricci defined in the 1990’s live action films.

The reviews I read criticized the films for not having the ghoulish underpinning of the cartoon or the TV show. Not so! The Addams haunted home and environment is true to the original cartoon – dark, gloomy, and completely captivating. A child of any age would LOVE to live there. I would! I suspect that reviewers are referring to the glaring harsh, artificial town of ‘Assimilation’ that the Addams’ are pitted against in all its pink and lavender artificial ‘beauty’. It’s the too-bright Ying that makes the Addams Family the just-right dark Yang. In truth, since their inception, the Addams Family has always existed to be a counterpoint to the modern world, pointing out its foibles and hypocrisies while producing a morbid chuckle.

I suspect, too, that despite their spooky trappings, the Addams Family are just too darn nice for a cynical 21st century audience. They all genuinely like AND love one another. No one is uncouth, no one swears, no one belittles or hurts anyone else. Sure Wednesday buries her brother alive and fires arrows through Uncle Fester’s head, but in their world they would expect nothing less. And, more importantly, they would never do that to anyone outside their family (or at least never succeed at doing it).

The creators of the film know their Addams Family cartoon and TV lore and fill each scene to the brim with little touches that will delight the knowledgeable fan and simply enrich the viewing experience for the average viewers. Watch out for many of Addams’ original cartoon characters appearing as the Addams’ extended family. And, the addition of a hangman’s noose to the ends of Wednesday’s braids is a touch that I am sure Charles Addams would have approved of!

Other nice touches: name checking Monty Python’s Holy hand grenades; making the lyrics of Harry Nilsson’s Coconut song the basis for Gomez and Morticia’s wedding vows; recreating the ‘It’s Alive!’ scene from Frankenstein (1931) when Wednesday reanimates the frogs in her science class and then sick’s them on the school bully with a Donald Sutherland shriek from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978); the spiders streaming out from under Morticia’s dress; the appearance of Lurch’s original cartoon incarnation (inspired by Boris Karloff in The Old Dark House (1932)) as the drummer in the band; Morticia’s crystal ball that looks like Jack Kirby’s burning planet of Apokolips as she channels the spirits of her parents (Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara) , amongst many other delightful touches.

Behold! Apokolips!

One scene features an animated cartoon reference so obscure that it actually made my jaw drop. As the Addams family try to introduce themselves to their newly discovered neighbouring town (previously obscured by swamp gas), Uncle Fester sings a short snippet of the song, “I Haven’t Got a Hat”. The only place that I’ve ever heard this song is in the 1935 Warner Bros Merrie Melodie’s cartoon of the same name that introduced a bunch of new characters, all destined for obscurity, except for Porky Pig (read more about it at Trailers From Hell). The song was written by Bob Bernier (lyrics) and Bob Emmerich (music). Emmerich was a pianist and composer for the Tommy Dorsey band and, together with Bernier, he wrote a number of popular jazz songs (now mostly forgotten) in the late 30’s.

The Addams Family (2019) was directed by Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan, and written by Matt Leiberman and Pamela O’Brien, from a story by Vernon, Leiberman and Erica Rivinoja. It’s a delightful film, well worth your time whether or not you’re a fan of animated films. It certainly should make Frozen 2 shrink with embarrassment in comparison!

Is The Addams Family Worth My Time? Yes, it’s a wonderful film that holds up over multiple viewings.

Availability: Out now on DVD, BluRay and streaming from your usual sources.

John Agar Vs.The Mole People (1956)

The Mole People is a 1956 SF film best known from the classic monster photos of the Mole Men that appeared in almost every issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland back in the 60’s. Starring John Agar and Hugh Beaumont, nothing else about the movie can be considered ‘classic’ as it tries to stretch 20 minutes of plot into an 80 minute movie. 

Hugh Beaumont, John Agar and Nestor Paiva

Archaeologists Agar and Beaumont discovery an ancient tablet in what looks a lot like the Gobi desert of Mongolia (a place that I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time in digging up dinosaurs) that leads them to climb a nearby mountain(!) in search of an ancient Sumerian civilization. And find it they do, in all of its terrible matte painting glory after most of their team (including seemingly dozens of their climbing support team) is killed on the trek. 

Agar, Beaumont, and the only other survivor of their ill-fated expedition, Nestor Paiva, discover a lost city of sun-phobic, albino Sumerians ruled over by a weak king and his crafty chancellor, Alan Napier (TV Batman’s Alfred) who want the interlopers dead so as to not disrupt their cozy lifestyle lording over their subjects. Although I’m not sure how cozy it is. They subsist off of mushrooms grown by their slave race of Mole People, with the occasional cave rat and lost goat thrown in to, I guess, provide some much needed vitamins and prevent scurvy.

 Alan Napier (right)

Our heroes keep the Sumerians and their mole people slaves at bay with the help of Agar’s flashlight (sun-phobic, remember?). But, eventually it all goes south and the city collapses on itself (of course). The heroes escape with the help of a plucky slave girl (Cynthia Patrick) and the mole people who rally at the last moment to turn the tables on their oppressors, inspired by Agar’s act of kindness that saved them from a Sumerian whipping.

Other than the Mole People’s imaginative design – attributed to Bud Westmore, but more likely the work of an unnamed studio tech – there is little to recommend this film. The only interesting point for me is speculating on how the underground ecosystem could actually function. I’d like to think that the Sumerians exploited a naturally occuring symbiotic relationship between the Mole People and fungus they cultivated to establish a city-sustaining food source. 

 Dr. Frank Baxter, cashing a paycheck

A few other things of note. The overlong opening by Dr. Frank Baxter explaining the multiple ‘worlds inside the Earth theories’ is painful watch. It’s hard to believe the Baxter was an award-winning TV presenter who appeared as “Dr. Research” (I want that as my new title!) in the Bell System Science Series of television specials that ran from 1956 to 1962, and whose TV show Shakespeare on TV won seven Emmy Awards, according to Wikipedia.

It’s also great to see hard working actor, Nestor Paiva, playing a respected scientist in a substantial role. Paiva is best known to most film buffs as the slightly dodgy Captain Lucas in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and its first sequel, Revenge of the Creature (1955), but he also had small parts in Mighty Joe Young (1949) and as the Sherriff in Tarantula (1955). He also had a nice role in one of my favourite Tom Conway RKO ‘Falcon’ movies, The Falcon in Mexico (1944).

I’d like to think that the Mole People race survived the cave-in that seemingly destroyed the Sumerian city. Being a subterranean race that can tunnel anywhere, I can imagine that they eventually popped up in Arizona where they developed a productive relationship with a race of giant ants. Hopefully they are peacefully living in the vast underground colonies, tending to the ants fungus gardens in exchange for protection from the cruel human surface world.

Is The Mole People Worth Time? Only if you must see all of the 1950’s SF films associated with Universal (they only distributed this one). Otherwise, skip it.

Availability: I watched the recently released (2019) BluRay version from Shout Factory available from the usual sources. If you must watch the film, this is the version to see – the print is beautiful.

Does anyone else think that the Mole People may have influenced the design of Futurama's, Dr. Zoidberg?

Gun Crazy (aka Deadly Is The Female) (1950) Photo Comic

Read the photo comic at the Atomic Surgery FB page

The Conquered Earth by Steve Ditko

Read Steve Ditko's 'The Conquered Earth' at the Atomic Surgery FB page.

Dr. Death from This Magazine Is Haunted

The first two series of This Magazine Is Haunted (1952-54) were hosted by the genuinely macabre Dr. Death, a horror host in the best tradition of EC Comics. When TMiH as revived in mid-1957, Dr. Death was replaced by Dr. Haunt, who was almost indistinguishable from The Mysterious Traveler and was definitely much more acceptable to the recently formed Comics Code Authority. The following pages feature some of Dr. Death's more notable appearances.

See  more at the Atomic Surgery FB page: https://tinyurl.com/Dr-Death-at-Atomic-Surgery

Myrna Loy is Man-Proof! (1938)

Mimi Swift (Myrna Loy) is obsessed with her penniless playboy boyfriend, Alan Wythe (Walter Pidgeon). When he throws her over to marry the rich heiress, Elizabeth Kent (Rosalind Russell), Mimi is devastated, but plots to win Alan back. She is counseled against this by her ever-wise novelist mother, Meg Swift (Nana Bryant) and her mother’s friend, newspaper artist Jimmy Kilmartin (Franchot Tone).

Man-Proof is a four-sided love triangle with each character caught up in one of the many facets of love. Immature Mimi believes she is in love, but has no clue what it really is. Desperate Elizabeth hopes that Alan is in love with her, but fears that he’s really just a gold digging gigolo. Savvy Alan manipulates the women around him by holding out the carrot of true love, but secretly knows that he has never known love, only the lust for money and prestige. Put upon Jimmy cynically rejects love and spends his time flirting harmlessly with Meg because he knows that Mimi doesn’t even notice him.

After Alan returns from his honeymoon, he and Mimi agree to continue on as the best of friends, with no hindrance of romantic love between them. However, both of them, and the viewer, know better. When Mimi finally believes that she has finally won Alan, his wife, Elizabeth, is forced to confront Alan’s true nature. That realization, in a well-crafted and well-delivered speech, ends up leaving each of them in out in the cold. No one wins.

Spinning out of control, Mimi decides to take Jimmy’s advice and reject the whole concept of love. When the two of them decide to embark on their own non-romantic friendship, of course the inevitable happens. As the movie ends on a happy note (at least for them), Mimi’s mother laughs and proclaims, “The end of a beautiful friendship!”

Sound familiar? Bogey said a much more famous variation on this line to Claude Rains as two of them walked off into the rain in at the end of Casablanca (1943).

Directed by Richard Thorpe, Man-Proof is based on a Ladies Home Journal weeper by Fannie Heaslip Lea, but the stars inject it with more humor than I’m sure the original script had. Despite a big scene at Alan and Elizabeth’s wedding, and a later scene at a boxing match, most of the story takes place in smaller rooms in combinations of just two or three actors. In this way, the film has the feel of a stage play, but without its sometimes claustrophobic nature. Each actor gets to chew a good bit of well-written dialogue that manages to avoid falling over into excessive melodrama.

In a rarity for Loy, she gets a couple of extended drunk scenes. Even in her heavy drinking days with William Powell in the first few Thin Man movies, we never saw her drunk and only once ever feeling the effects of a hangover (The Thin Man, 1934). In an early gripping scene as a drunken bridesmaid at the wedding of her ex-lover, Pidgeon, Loy suddenly sobers up to offer him a chilling piece of advice:

“Oh, I’m not a nice girl, Alan. I tried every trick in the bag to be the bride. But I’m this nice. I’m perfectly willing to warn you; when you come back, I wouldn’t have anything to do with a girl like me, if I were you. I’d keep the seven seas between us – and wish they were eight.”

This scene gives us a hint of what Loy could have done as a 1940’s-style film noir femme fatale if Man-Proof had been one, as its title strongly evokes. Loy broke into films in 1925 and quickly became type-cast playing the vamp or a villainous ‘exotic’; roles that anticipated the classic femme fatale to come later. These roles persisted up through 1932 in which year Loy played the villainous (and sadistic) daughter of the title character in The Mask of Fu Manchu and the revenge-driven ‘half-caste’ in Thirteen Woman – both well worth watching!. Her role as Nora Charles in The Thin Man series finally revealed her flair for comedy and established her as a star, allowing Loy to leave the ‘bad girl’ roles she disliked so much far behind.

Is Man-Proof worth my time? Definitely. The stars are all in top form, and despite a few creaks in the script, it is very well written and directed. The movie also benefits from a score by Franz Waxman and cinematography by Karl Freund who stages some stylish shots that help elevate the movie.

 
Availability: Man-Proof was released as a Warner Archive POD, but I don't see it listed there now. Fortunately, other on-line sellers carry it.

Living Great Apes are Smarter than Australopithecines

Kamandi created by Jack Kirby. © DC Comics

Scientists have measured the rate of blood flow to the cognitive part of the brain, based on the size of the holes in the skull that passed the supply arteries.

“Our study revealed a higher rate of blood flow to the cognitive part of the brain of living great apes compared to Australopithecus,” Professor Seymour said.

“At first, brain size seems reasonable because it is a measure of the number of neurons. On second thought, however, cognition relies not only on the number of neurons, but also on the number of connections between them, called synapses.”

“How does the intelligence of modern great apes stack up against that in our 3 million-year-old relatives, the australopithicines such as Lucy? Non-human great apes have smaller or equal sized brains compared to the size indicated by the fossil braincases of Australopithecus species, so Lucy is generally considered to have been smarter.”

“However, the study shows that cerebral blood flow rate of human ancestors falls well below the data derived from modern, non-human primates.”

Roger S. Seymour et al. 2019. Cerebral blood flow rates in recent great apes are greater than in Australopithecus species that had equal or larger brains. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 286 (1915)

Part 3 of the Jack Davis "You'll Die Laughing" Topps Card Series

Part 3 of the Jack Davis "You'll Die Laughing" Topps card series is now up at the
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