FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE (1934): Claudia Colbert as Sheena!

 

An almost Pre-Code jungle adventure by Cecil B. Demille – who can resist it?

This film wastes no time with set up to get straight to the action. Four desperate people are thrown together as they shanghai a lifeboat to escape from their bubonic plague-infected ship. Self-promoting newspaper reporter, Stewart (William Gargan) and Arnold (Herbert Marshall), a chemical researcher beaten down by his inconsequential life, grab unwilling accomplice, librarian Judy (Claudette Colbert) and the unflappable wife of a British official, Mrs. Mardick (Mary Boland), for their bit of self-justified piracy. Just when they think that they have found safety onshore Malaya, they discover that the local village is being burnt to ground — the plague has reached land!

 Gargan, Colbert & Marshall

Picking up white ex-pat (Leo Carillo) who has gone native, they are forced to bush whack through the jungle to reach the next port in hopes of returning home. They quickly become lost and have to contend with dangerous animals and hostile natives. The two men are chauvinistic bores who continually berate mousy Judy for being timid and having no sex appeal. But, by simply taking off her glasses, letting down her hair and bathing nude in a waterfall, Judy is transformed into a Sheena-like, sexpot goddess, knowledgeable in all jungle lore. From here on in it’s a grudge match between the two men for Judy’s affections. Just as the jungle has transformed Judy, indifferent Stewart rises to the challenges, while Arnold slowly unravels without the artificial adulation of his readers back home to prop up his ego.

 

Four Frightened People is not a great film by any criteria. Written by Bartlett Cormack (The Front Page, 1931 and Thirteen Women, the 1932 film that made a star of Irene Dunn) and Lenore J. Coffee (Evelyn Prentice, 1934) from a novel by E. Arnot Robertson, its 78 minute running time seems overly long for a plot that was already tired by the 1930’s. It mostly plays as a comedy, but there are times it gets quite dark. The film gets points for actually shooting in Hawaii, so the jungle feels authentic. 

Cecil B. Demille was always good at feeding the Christian indignation of the censors to get away with a little titillation. Here Mary Bolland's character is a crusader for ‘fewer babies' (i.e., no sex). In a fun scene after she’s been sidelined from the main plot, she emancipates the women of a jungle tribe from their baby (sex)-obsessed men. This very direct support for the suffragette movement is something that you would not see in films a year later. Mrs. Mardick’s morality crusade disguised in terms of population control let DeMille feature Colbert's nude shower (actually body double Annette Kellerman in a flesh-coloured body suit) in a scene that must have had the men on the edge of their theater seats, but it actually pales in comparison to Colbert’s milk bath in DeMille’s Cleopatra of the same year.

Distinguished actor Herbert Marshall has the best and most believable character arc in the film, moving smoothly from uninvolved, casual cad to believable romantic obsession for Judy's unleashed libido. Despite having lost a leg in WW1, Marshall navigates the real jungle set with ease.

Comedic relief, Mary Bolland, acquits herself well as a character that Natalie Schafer would perfect as Mrs. Howell years later on TV’s Gilligan’s Island. Of note is that whenever our lost troop camps for the night. they miraculously produce a 3-star lodge to sleep in that The Professor would have been proud of.

The Ineffectual jungle guide is played by Leo Carillo who would later become best known for playing The Cisco Kid’s sidekick, Pancho, for 6 seasons (1950-1956) on television. I fondly remember him from a few Universal Horror films such as the mystery-comedy Horror Island (1941) and starring in a better role next to Nelson Eddy and Claude Raines in The Phantom of The Opera (1943).

Four Frightened People was a one-off low point for Colbert in 1934, a year which saw three of her films being nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture; Cleopatra, Imitation of Life, and It Happened One Night, the latter winning her the award for Best Actress. Laura at Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings reviewed the recent BluRay release of this film and notes that it “was not considered a success in its day, which led to director DeMille being "locked in" to directing epics.”

Is Four Frightened People Worth My Time? If you've ever wanted to watch Claudette Colbert cavort in a leopard skin bathing suit, catch fish with a spear, hunt with a handmade bow, and order men around at the muzzle of a pistol, than this is the film for you.

Availability: The recent Kino Lober BluRay looks great and has a nice a commentary track by Nick Pinkerton.

Greta Garbo is the Two-Faced Woman (1941)

Greta Garbo’s last screen performance has her playing a prim ski instructor masquerading as her gold-digging twin sister to undermine her wandering husband’s (Melvyn Douglas) affair with Constance Bennett.

I can see why this George Cukor-directed film flopped at the box office; Garbo in a strictly comedic role was just too much of a stretch for audiences used to their stern, aloof heroine.  However, she is great; today she would be praised for stretching her boundaries.

Two-Faced Woman is a lot like Barbara Stanwyck’s The Mad Miss Manton (1938) in that it has lots of great parts that don’t add up to a whole. The script is inadequate and the direction dull. The fun in watching Garbo play polar opposite twin sisters is undermined by the fact that her philandering husband (Douglas) knows who she is all the time. This, for me, cuts the legs out from under the film, much like in The Little Shop Around the Corner (1940), where of the two pen-pal lovers, Jimmy Stewart knows who Margaret Sullivan is, but not vice versa. It becomes a bit painful watching both Sullivan and Garbo make fools out of themselves for men like Stewart who does not have the gumption to reveal his identity, or Douglas who is nothing more than a smooth talking egotist who treats women like chattel. 

Douglas played this highly unsympathetic role too many times opposite great actresses, e.g., Joan Blondell in There’s Always a Woman (1937) and Myrna Loy in Third Finger, Left Hand (1940), His character in these films is like watching a fine sports car trying to accelerate with the emergency brake on. It’s hard to imagine women ever falling for a cad like Douglas who is perpetually tittering on the edge of being physically abusive. Such was considered comedic back in the day.

Two-Faced Woman is buoyed up by Constance Bennett in her supporting role as Douglas’s paramour. Her one scene sparring with Garbo is worth the price of admission. Apparently most of Bennett’s scenes were cut as she upstaged Garbo whenever they were together. And one can see why. Although Garbo is excellent, she is clearly uncomfortable in her uncharacteristically comedic role, whereas Bennett is like a well-oiled machine playing the cool manipulator with a light comedic touch that she had perfected over the previous decade.

Kudos as well to the brilliant Ruth Gordon who sparkles as Douglas’s long suffering secretary. Did you know that in addition to winning an Academy Award (Rosemary’s Baby) and an Emmy (Taxi) for her acting, so had four Academy Award nominations for screenwriting?

A print exists of the original uncut & unaltered Two-Faced Woman, but, although it has been shown publicly, it has never been released to TV or DVD. Come on Criterion! It’s Garbo with Constance Bennett and Melvyn Douglas! If you can release The Atomic Submarine, surely this is more deserving of a spiffy 4K restoration and release!

Is It Worth My Time: A qualified yes. If you can sit through the first leaden 30 minutes, things pick up once Garbo switches from Karin to her Katherine persona. And while Constance Bennett’s knife-like hip bones are not on display, her razor sharp wit is undiminished.

Availability:   From Warner Archives and the usual on-line sources.

Ball of Fire in the Jungle - Law of the Jungle (1942)

Did anyone notice that a year after its release, Howard Hawk’s BALL OF FIRE (1941) was remade as a low budget jungle adventure?

In LAW OF THE JUNGLE (1942) singer Nora Jones (Arline Judge) is stuck in a small African town without a passport, singing for her keep at the local watering hole run by the shifty Simmons (Arthur O’Connell). When Nazi agents kill a British agent there, Nora hotfoots it into the jungle rather than stick around to get pinned for the murder. Fortunately she stumbles into palaeontologist Larry Mason (John King) and his assistant, Jefferson Jones (Mantan Moreland). Mason, being the stereotypical scientist, just wants to get rid of her so he can get back to his digging undisturbed. But Nora’s in a pickle and will have none of that and so tries to warm Larry up with her feminine charm.

                                                     Arline Judge, John King & Arthur O'Connell

Unknown to Nora, she’s carrying important papers from the British agent that will blow the cover of her boss, Simmons, and his Nazi colleagues. Before you can say ‘Auchtung!’ our heroes are running for their lives, pursued by the Nazi’s and eventually captured by hostile tribesmen. Salvation comes in the form of the Oxford educated Chief Mojobo played by Laurence Criner, who you saw playing briefly opposite Fay Wray in Black Moon (1943) and in King of the Zombies (1942). Criner turns out to be a Lodge Brother of Jefferson’s with no love of nasty ‘foreign agents’, so, unsurprisingly, everything works out on the end. Nora even thaws out Larry and snags her man!

                                                                         Digging for fossils

Plotwise, the only notable thing about the production is how closely the Nora and Larry interactions mirror those of firebrand Barbara Stanwyck to Gary Cooper’s bookish professor in the screwball classic Ball of Fire. Arline Judge was a hard working B actress in the 30’s and 40’s, while John King is noted for playing the singing cowboy, Dusty, in the long running Monogram Range Buster series. King is a handsome stand in for Cooper, and dark-haired Judge looks and sounds a lot like Stanwyck. I’ll bet good money that director Jean Yarbrough noticed the similarities and directed Judge to delivery her lines as if she was Stanwyck in Ball of Fire. I’d go further and suggest that Judge and King were even hired for their resemblances to Stanwyck and Cooper. Or maybe Yarbrough just thought up an interesting way to put a fun spin on an otherwise pedestrian film.

                                                              The great Mantan Moreland

The real star of the film is, of course, Mantan Moreland. The brilliant comedian featured in dozens of Monogram films in the 30’s and 40’s, usually taking at least second billing and stealing every scene that he appeared in. Moreland perfected the pop-eyed, scared of his own shadow routine that was often the only part available to black actors in films of that era. But, Mantan made that part his own and, for all of his supposed cowardice, he more often than not ended up saving the day. You laugh with him, never at him. And given the predicaments that he usually finds himself in – chasing or being chased by murders and other sundry criminals – I can’t but help agree with him that those situations are best stayed out of!

                                                                        Arthur O'Connell

The other notable appearance is by Arthur O’Connell. His role as the treacherous Simmons was a rare occurrence for him in a Poverty Row B picture. He had a number of small-to-large roles in classic films such as Citizen Kane (1941), The Naked City (1942) and Force of Evil (1948) before earning Oscar nominations by recreating his Broadway role in Picnic (1956) and for playing Jimmy Stewart’s drunken mentor in Anatomy of a Murder (1956). Readers of a certain age will best remember him playing the pharmacist in a long running series of Crest toothpaste commercials in the 1970’s.

Finally, film aficionados will know prolific director Jean Yarbrough for his work with Abbott and Costello, and directing cult classics such as The Devil Bat (1941) with Bela Lugosi, and the last (and least) of the classic Universal monster films, such as She-Wolf of London (1946; the last of the Wolfman-related films) and the iconic Rondo Hatton in The Brute Man (1946).

Is Law of The Jungle Worth My Time? The presence of Mantan Moreland and the thin Ball of Fire connection will make this of interest to film buffs; otherwise I’m sure that there are hundreds of better films to spend your time with. Also to be avoided if you cringe at the stereotypical depiction of African natives.

Availability: Only on YouTube as far as I can tell.

George Zucco is The Black Raven (1943)

 

GEORGE ZUCCO was born to play mad scientists and creepy bad guys. Although he was always able to slip between A, B and Z-grade productions without getting ghetto-ized in the latter, he is probably best known for (typically) chewing up the scenery in the post-Karloff Mummy movies from Universal and for playing a long string of villains in Poverty Row films, e.g., Voodoo Man (1944), where his part as voodoo priest is only slightly less embarrassing than that of John Carradine’s role as Bela Lugosi’s imbecilic, bongo-playing henchman.

THE BLACK RAVEN (1943) is a PRC film produced and directed by super-prolific Sam Neufeld, starring Zucco in what is effectively an anti-hero role as Amos Bradford (aka the villainous ‘Raven’). It’s a variation on every Old Dark House plot where, over the course of one evening, the house is question gets stuffed with dodgy characters and young innocents as the murdered bodies stack up much to the bewilderment of the local hick sheriff (see my review of the similar film, Black Doll).

 Robert Randell and Wanda McKay

The Black Raven is a small inn just south of the Canadian border that is the last stop for people trying to flee the US. Thanks to a convenient storm, the only bridge in the area is washed out, so in trickle: mob boss-on-the-run, Mike Bardoni (Noel Madison), mousy embezzler, Horace Weatherby (Byron Foulger) and crooked politician, Tim Winfield (Robert MIddlemass) who is hot on the trail of his underage daughter, Lee (Wanda McKay; she’s ‘only’ 20 years old) who is trying to elope with Allen Bentley (Robert Randall aka Bob Livingston). Add to the mix escaped convict, Whitey Cole (I. Stanford Jolley) who is trying to shake down and then rub out his two-timing former partner (Zucco) and you’ve got a jar of hornets just waiting to be shook up. Shots are fired, people die, the embezzled money vanishes, and soon all the characters are running up and down stairs, and being chased in and out of rooms until all of the bad guys eventually get what’s coming to ‘em!

Glenn Strange and Bryon Foulger

Zucco gives a restrained, almost nuanced performance as the suave proprietor of The Black Raven Inn. He seems to take as much pride in running a well-managed facility as he does in whatever his only-hinted at nefarious activities might be. What else is he up besides being an innkeeper? For sure you don’t get a cool moniker like The Raven without building up a significantly notable past! Did he once tangle with The Shadow or Doc Savage? The Spider or the Blonde Phantom? Did he once hold New York City for ransom with some exaggerated, raven-themed explosive device? Perhaps he’s actually an alias of Professor Moriarty that Zucco played in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939).

 

 Zucco and McKay

I can envision The Raven semi-retiring to the country after a high profile life of crime in the big city, but still running his vast organization without leaving his beloved inn. Occasionally he gets tangled up with some local crime, such as the events of this movie, which allows him to play amused amateur detective running rings around the less than competent law officials.

Like the best anti-heroes, The Raven is not without his own moral code. In this movie he does not want to see the lives of the two young lovers destroyed by a stupid sheriff over anxious to pin the first murder on the wrong man. In a better-written movie, Zucco’s character would have manoeuvred all the bad guys to their own comeuppances and then settled back with a glass of brandy to plan his next big scheme.

 I think PRC missed a great opportunity to kick start a franchise with Zucco’s Raven character. The only other ingredient necessary would have been a sympathetic, but sharp-tongued female foil (e.g., Gale Sondergaard) in addition to The Raven’s comic-relief heavy, here played by the sometimes Frankenstein monster, Glenn Strange.

 

Charlie Middleton and Zucco

As in so many Poverty Row films, almost all the actors in The Black Raven had deep acting careers both in the theatre and on the stage. Did you notice that the sheriff, Charlie Middleton, had already played opposite Groucho Marx in Duck Soup (1933) and was soon to become Sci-Fi’s quintessential baddie, Ming the Merciless, in Buster Crabbe’s three Flash Gordon serials during the 1940’s?  Perpetually nervous Byron Foulger was part of Preston Sturges' stock company of actors and appeared in almost all of his films throughout the 40’s. And, lovely B-actress Wanda McKay is always a bright spot in any picture. Too bad her fetching role as the Jungle Goddess (1948) is not more readily available as a good quality print.

 

I. Standford Jolley

Is The Black Raven Worth My Time? Yes, especially if you’re sympathetic to 64 minute poverty row programmers, which I clearly am. The acting is well above average for this sort of movie with good performances by Zucco, Noel Madison and Byron Foulger. Even Glenn Strange is enjoyable to watch coming across as a more emotive Lon Chaney, Jr. (sorry, Lon, I still love you!). I suspect that if its limited budget and shooting schedule had of allowed for some rehearsal time and more than one take, The Black Raven could well have risen well above its disparaging review in Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide (one and a half stars!).

Availability: Watch it on YouTube, or watch it or download it from Archive.org, the latter being a great resource for public domain films.

 Bonus: Wanda McKay is the Jungle Goddess (1948)