OVP: Phantom of the Opera (1943)

Film: Phantom of the Opera (1943)

Stars: Claude Rains, Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster, Edgar Barrier

Director: Arthur Lubin

Oscar History: 4 nominations/2 wins (Best Sound Mixing, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

The Universal Monster canon, in its original run, largely went from 1931 with Dracula through the mid-1950's with Creature from the Black Lagoon.  I have been saying all month that we're finishing off the series, and to a degree we are-we're seeing all of the films that are connected to the classic monsters in a significant, tangible way, but we're not hitting every Universal monster movie with a vampire or a werewolf-that'd be impossible.  This is best illustrated not by our film today, which is almost always considered part of the "Universal Monster canon," and indeed it's the last "origin" film about one of their horror figures during this era, but by the fact that Universal didn't start with horror in 1931.  They had been doing it for years earlier, their most successful films being with Lon Chaney, Sr., whose wizardry with screen makeup is legendary and gained him the nickname "man of a thousand faces."  His most successful creation was as The Phantom of the Opera, a story that has been told through the decades repeatedly on screen & stage.  Today we're going to get to one of those iterations, and the only one that ever won an Academy Award.

(Spoilers Ahead) You know the story of Christine Dubois (Foster), a young soprano who has a mysterious benefactor who turns out to be (surprise!) the Phantom of the Opera (Rains) by heart even if you weren't a little gay boy humming along to the OBC version of "Masquerade" in your room.  But if you've somehow been living under a rock, we actually get more backstory here than we usually do, with us learning that the Phantom, who eventually haunts the opera and starts killing people in the Paris Opera house, is Erique Claudin, a broke violinist whose shaking hands have made it impossible for him to perform anymore, who in a jealous rage after his concerto is stolen from him, is disfigured by a vat of acid, and lives in the shadows of the Paris Opera, on the run from the law.  During a scene where he drops the chandelier (we get the chandelier drop, don't you worry), he runs off with Christine, but they don't escape together-the Phantom is crushed by falling rocks, and Christine gets away with all of his voice lessons, money, and her newfound fame (while the Phantom is dead).

If you think that description sounds cheeky, it's meant to be.  Phantom is a great guilty pleasure musical for me-I love it unabashedly, and know every song by heart.  But I'm also aware that there's a silliness to it, and this movie leans in on that motif hard.  For starters, there's basically two Raoul's (the actual one played by Barrier, as well as a hammy baritone played by Nelson Eddy), and both are unnecessary.  Foster is also as thrilling as dried paint as Christine, a character who is difficult to bring to life even for the best actors.  Rains is the best of the cast (duh), but he underplays Erique so much in the first half of the film that he feels like a weird 180 into being an actual "monster" in the second half of the picture.

The film, as I mentioned above, won two Oscars and an additional two nominations.  Of the four, the best is Art Direction, which is gorgeous.  We don't get the moody ambience we usually get from the Phantom's catacombs, but the recreations of the Paris Opera House are meticulous & well-designed, the chandelier is appropriately gaudy, and the additional drawing rooms paint the screen well.  The cinematography is beautiful (Technicolor in the 1940's often was), but it isn't as creative as I would've expected from an actual winner of this trophy, and I left less-impressed by this nomination than Oscar was.  The Scoring is ehh (it's hard not to compare pretty much anything that isn't Andrew Lloyd Webber favorably here), and the sound is okay (nothing great, though considering the dearth of nominees that Oscar nominated so far that I've seen, it's probably going to come out in the top half).  All-in-all, the Art Direction is the ticket for me, and the rest are just AMPAS being enamored with a classic cinematic tale that feels lifeless despite its inherent thrills.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death

OVP: Four Daughters (1938)

Film: Four Daughters (1938)

Stars: Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page, Claude Rains, John Garfield, Jeffrey Lynn, May Robson

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor-John Garfield, Adapted Screenplay, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We will likely in July restart the Sunday Leftovers series (I had one too many things on my plate over the past few weeks as I began to resume normal activities outside the house, and I needed to lift one of them-this ended up being the culprit), which will be nice because we're now in the 1950's for Hitchcock, so it'll be difficult for you to guess which movies we're still hitting in the coming weeks, and therefore each starlet is going to be a surprise.  But I'm going to spoil one today, and let you know one of Hitchcock's leading ladies who won't be part of our series this year: Priscilla Lane.  The star of 1942's Saboteur, best known today for her work as Cary Grant's hapless fiancee in Arsenic and Old Lace, was briefly a headliner for Warner Brothers in the late 1930's & early 1940's.  That fame was largely a byproduct of Four Daughters, a movie that Priscilla made with her sisters Rosemary & Lola, and which resulted in an unusual franchise (both Four Wives and Four Mothers would follow in the coming years).  While we'll get to Saboteur later this year in our 2021 devoted to Hitchcock, today we're going to take a look at how Priscilla Lane's stardom commenced.

(Spoilers Ahead) Four Daughters is a story about the Lemp sisters: Ann (Priscilla), Kay (Rosemary), Thea (Lola), and Emma (Gale Page, the only one of the sisters who wasn't an actual blood relative in real life), all very musical and doted upon by their conductor father Adam (Rains).  At the beginning of the film, Thea is courted by a wealthy young bachelor, whom she eventually marries, and this kind of sets the stage for the remainder of the film, as the movie keeps us guessing over which of the suitors that are parading around the Lemp house are going to eventually end up with the beautiful daughters.  The primary love square exists between Emma & Ann, both of whom are initially in love with Felix (Lynn), a promising young composer who is clearly smitten with Ann, but Ann, not wanting to destroy her sister's heart, runs off with Felix's friend Mickey (Garfield), a vagabond composer who always "gets the short end of life."  As the film progresses, Emma realizes that the boy-next-door was her great love, not Felix, and when Ann returns, she's heartbroken that she gave up Felix for nothing, and is in a relationship that while loving, isn't what she wanted.  Mickey realizes that Felix is better for Ann, and commits suicide in an automobile accident.  The movie ends with Felix & Ann together again, Mickey dead, and three sisters happily in relationships (poor Kay ends up being the Mary Bennett of the group, continually singing by the piano).

The movie suffers pretty quickly from tonal issues, and they bog down the whole film.  The first 15 minutes or so are a delight, with all of the sisters showing a strong chemistry with one another (Rosemary being my favorite of the bunch), but as the movie progresses it becomes clear that it can't sustain a focus on four female characters without them having a bunch of men to fight over, and it becomes a more standard-issue romantic drama.  This is a problem because while Rosemary Lane is funny in a side role, the two primary women, played by Priscilla and Page, are kind of boring.  Page is beautiful but sort of a porcelain doll, never emoting past what her eyes are telling us, and Priscilla Lane's Ann is, and I mean this in the nicest possible way (I love Arsenic and Old Lace), kind of annoying.  There's a scene a third of the way through the film where she chastises John Garfield's Mickey, whom she's just met, for not laughing the second she wants him to.  Garfield refuses, and she instantly judges him even though she's kind of ridiculous for treating a stranger such a way (even in 1938).  Lane, who was 23 when this movie was released, plays Ann like she's 14, and never really matures her as the film goes on, and it gets weird considering by the end of the film she's literally a widow.

This is just one of several tonal problems with the movie.  The film's direction is all-over-the-place.  The sequence where Garfield kills himself suddenly shifts into the style of a 1940's noir, and then we're back in Frank Capra land in about three minutes after he dies, and it's clear that Curtiz doesn't really know how to manage the four different sisters, differentiating them enough for the audience to care about them as separate entities (by the end, it's mostly just "Ann" and "the other ones").  It's funny, except when it's deadly serious, and the jokes are repeated often (think of how Felix & Mickey flirt with Aunt Etta, played by May Robson, with virtually the same lines).  The script doesn't work, and the sound nomination is maybe plausible to a degree (there's lots of singing, I suppose), but the only thing that stood out to me was the grating, nauseating noise of the hinge on the front gate, which is repeatedly used as a comic device but literally had me covering my ears as the movie progresses.

The thing here, is, though, that there's a part of Four Daughters that really worked for me...except it doesn't work at all for the movie itself, and that's John Garfield.  Garfield, for those who aren't as familiar with him since he didn't have a lot of classic films under-his-belt before his untimely death at the age of 39, was a forerunner of the likes of Marlon Brando & James Dean, a young naturalistic performer that wasn't conventionally handsome, but still exuded a heat onscreen that was undeniable.  During Garfield's first scene onscreen, he is playing the piano like a virtuoso, in a clean-cut house, smoking a cigarette to its ashy end, and casually flirting with Aunt Etta, and it's...sexy.  John Garfield in this movie is smoldering, like, there's no denying it.  His character arch, as a man that doesn't quite know how to handle good news, and is clearly not the "right choice" for Ann even though he obviously loves her, is heartbreaking, but in most movies of this era, he'd be made to be a louse or a cad, deserving the eventual death that's coming his way.  Garfield doesn't play him that way, though-he's so engrained into this performer, that he is making him feel rich & complex onscreen, so that you leave feeling something you'd normally have to wait until at least 1940's noir, if not 1950's melodrama to get to-he's a three-dimensional human being.

The problem is that this is not the right approach for a movie like Four Daughters, where Garfield's acting is on such another level it feels like an anachronism.  It's not just better than anyone else onscreen, it's also a totally out-of-place.  Him next to Priscilla Lane's perky sweet Ann isn't just opposites attracting, it feels like they're in a different movie, and honestly it reads as kind of weird.  This is totally a great performance, and obviously this was the kind of film that a studio executive would watch & realize they had a talent on their hands...but within the confines of Four Daughters, it doesn't fit.

The Invisible Man (1933)

Film: The Invisible Man (1933)
Stars: Claude Rains, William Harrigan, Gloria Stuart, Henry Travers, Una O'Connor
Director: James Whale
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

So far this month, we haven't watched what we think of as a "traditional" monster movie classic.  While we've seen monsters (and Boris Karloff), we haven't really caught one of the truly iconic characters of the Universal canon.  That ends today, as I'm going to watch possibly the last really iconic monster of the Universal canon for the first time: the Invisible Man (other titles we've hit are listed below, including my thoughts on Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Mummy), and throughout the rest of the month we will look at Universal monster sequels, as well as a couple of other American classic horror films before the late-1960's, when violent slasher films started to become en vogue.  With that said, let's just dive into one of Universal's most transparently evil creations.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie stays (for the most part) loyal to the premise of HG Wells' novel, and finds Dr. Jack Griffin (Rains, in his American film debut) staying at a remote inn where he appears to be a burn victim of sorts, since he constantly covers his face.  This elicits suspicion from Mrs. Hall (O'Connor), who eventually realizes that the Griffin is 1) mad and 2) invisible, unable to be seen by anyone.  After being kicked out of the hotel room for not paying his rent, Griffin goes about terrorizing the community, and realizes that he can essentially do whatever he wants while being invisible.  He meets his cowering former partner Dr. Kemp (Harrigan), and blackmails Kemp into helping him obtain more-and-more power, and in the process Griffin becomes ruthless & murderous.  The only people who sympathize with him are his former fiancee Flora (Stuart) and her scientist father Dr. Cranley (Travers).  However, Griffin doesn't repent and is eventually found out by the police after killing several people (including Dr. Kemp).  In those final moments, he seems apologetic, and we see him appear in human form again, a sign that he has died.

The Invisible Man was a big hit for Universal, the biggest monster movie hit they'd had since Frankenstein, and it's easy to see why.  The movie's effects were pretty revolutionary at the time, using a black screen to make it appear as if certain hats or glasses that Rains is wearing onscreen are floating in thin air.  In an era before CGI, it's pretty cool how well this effect works (though obviously a modern audience can tell that some of this is done through wires).  Rains, a genuinely good actor whom we'd see graduate away from horror in a way that Karloff, Lugosi, & Chaney never would, instantly takes to the sinister nature of the character, and plays him with a bit of camp.

This is really what stands The Invisible Man apart from most of the remainder of the Universal classics (save The Bride of Frankenstein)-it's hilarious.  I always struggle with satire in older movies because I don't like it when people laugh at films that weren't meant to be funny (this happened when I saw live screenings of both Mad Love and Detour), but The Invisible Man is genuinely meant to have moments of humor, and it works beautifully.  Una O'Connor's shrieking Mrs. Hall is the highlight of the movie-you will cackle she's so ridiculous (she'd also play a key role in Bride of Frankenstein), and steals the first half of the movie even from Rains.  The film isn't perfect (Gloria Stuart is radiantly beautiful but shows no signs that she'll eventually be an Oscar nominee for her paint-by-numbers love interest), but it's delicious.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

OVP: Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Film: Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
Stars: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains, Rita Johnson, James Gleason
Director: Alexander Hall
Oscar History: 7 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actor-Robert Montgomery, Supporting Actor-James Gleason, Director, Adapted Screenplay*, Motion Picture Story, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We are going to finish our week-long look at the Supporting Actor category with another repeat in years (unlike the two 2003 films, this was completely accidental and had more to do with what movies were leaving Criterion than anything else).  Today's film is also unusual because it's not what you'd expect from a Supporting Actor lineup.  If you just looked at the "Stars" line up top, you would assume that the Supporting Actor nominee that was coming out of Here Comes Mr. Jordan would be Claude Rains.  Rains, after all, was nominated for four Academy Awards throughout his career, and this was in the sweet spot when he was getting those nominations.  However, it is in fact James Gleason who is the nominee in this bunch, getting his sole Oscar nomination.  Unlike Rains, who is a pretty common name amongst Classic Hollywood fans, Gleason isn't a character actor that's easily identifiable today, and one whose work I was super familiar with.  I'd seen him in two of his biggest classics (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The Night of the Hunter), but those are small parts and are overshadowed in my memory.  At the time, Gleason was famous in the way TV stars of the coming decades would be for his roles in the Hildegarde Withers and Higgins Family movie serials.  Was he a worthy nominee, and why precisely was he chosen over someone more Academy-friendly like Rains?  Let's find out, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead) Here Comes Mr. Jordan is a tale you might already know, as it was remade in 1978 with Warren Beatty in the film Heaven Can Wait.  If you don't, here's the gist.  Joe Pendleton (Montgomery) is a world class boxer, someone who is poised to break out into the big time before he dies in a plane crash...or at least we initially think he dies in a plane crash.  It turns out when he gets to heaven that the angel who took him did so too early, as Joe was going to survive the crash, and live another fifty years.  Joe's body, though, has been cremated, and so the angel's superior Mr. Jordan (Rains) has to do something else-he has to find another body of someone who has just died for Joe to take over.  They settle on Bruce Farnsworth, a ruthless businessman who has just been murdered by his wife Julia (Johnson).  He chooses to do so to help Miss Logan (Keyes), a young woman whose father has taken the fall for Farnsworth, and thus will soon have both of their lives ruined.  Once in the body, he falls for Miss Logan and begins to train to become the champ as Farnsworth, eventually winning over with the help of Pop (Gleason), his old boxing trainer, the only person who knows Farnsworth's real identity.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan is clever and really sweet.  It's the sort of movie that I think if you were new to old Hollywood movies or easily jaded you'd mock pretty much from the start, but as I am neither new to this kind of movie nor jaded, I loved it.  Montgomery is not an actor I think of as particularly versatile, but he's well-cast as Joe Pendleton, a lug who has a big heart.  The story is ingenious, and the script is fun, getting in some solid one-liners (particularly from Rains & Gleason), and showing us a tale that could probably be remade a second time today, perhaps with a comic actor like Rebel Wilson or Tiffany Haddish.  The cinematography nomination is unusual (there's very little boxing in this boxing movie, which is usually where this might come from), but not bad (particularly the way that Farnsworth's mansion is lit), and the direction is tidy, if conventional.

The nomination for Gleason makes sense in some regards, though I did leave wondering more so why they didn't go to the more favored Rains.  Both actors have meaty parts-this isn't a case where Rains character is boring, and I preferred his performance to Gleason's in that it's more sophisticated & a-characteristic of the rest of the film.  But Gleason lands his comic bits, and is playing the more traditional role for Oscar; actors ranging from Burgess Meredith to Clint Eastwood to Paul Giamatti have been nominated for playing the tough-talking boxing trainer in the corner, as the sweet science is Oscar's favorite sport.  While this never rises above cliche and two-dimensional, it still works within the confines of the film, is quite amusing, and it's hard to begrudge a longtime character actor getting their moment in the sun.

OVP: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Film: The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Stars: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains
Director: Michael Curtiz & William Keighley
Oscar History: 4 nods/3 wins (Best Picture, Editing*, Art Direction*, Score*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Movies can tug on the hearts of men, they can make their souls fly and their eyes weep and their dreams flutter.  Movies like Schindler's List or Sunset Boulevard or Citizen Kane are heavy, discussing the human experience in all of its depth and complexity.  We need these sorts of movies to launch important discussions & to confirm the emotions that the medium can bring, as rich as any art form.

And then there are movies like The Adventures of Robin Hood, which are about as deep as a teaspoon, but are as frothy and fluffy and delightful as ice cream in August.  I don't know how I have not seen this movie (along with Strangers on a Train which we'll be seeing for this month's "Saturdays with the Stars," this might be the most important American film that I'd never seen before), as it regularly shows up on the lists of the "Greatest Films of All Time," but boy am I glad that I finally got around to the movie.  Shot in dizzying Technicolor, the movie is cinematic magic, wry & whimsical, the perfect way to spend an afternoon for even the most jaded of film lovers.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie doesn't really stray too much from what we think of as the Robin Hood legend (in many ways this is the film that most of the future Robin Hood filmic iterations is based upon), but I'll go over it briefly just for posterity.  Robin Hood (Flynn) is a Saxon nobleman loyal to Richard the Lionheart, who has been taken captive by an Austrian Duke, leaving behind his brother Prince John (Rains) to run England.  This is a problem since Prince John, as you surely must know, is terrible (side note: as a royalty buff, it's always bugged the crap out of me that the only English king to share my name is generally considered one of their worst).  He begins to fleece and hang the countryside with the aid of his ruthless righthand-man Sir Guy (Rathbone), who is smitten with King Richard's ward Lady Marian (de Havilland).  Robin Hood creates a band of merry men to stop Prince John & Sir Guy, and while he is captured, he quickly escapes in a fit of daring, and eventually brings back King Richard to throw Prince John into exile and Robin kills Sir Guy in combat.  The film ends with him getting to marry Lady Marian.

The film, as you can see from above, is relatively in-line with what we expect from the Robin Hood legend, but where Adventures sets itself apart is through the actual acting and production of the film.  Errol Flynn has never been more dashing & just impossibly sexy as Robin, a righteous do-gooder who still has a wry smile whenever he's in the presence of Lady Marian.  In real-life Flynn was a drunken scoundrel who slept with anything that moved, so it's proof of how well he could play against type here that he's honorable, noble, but giving off the sort of energy that he's clearly well-funded in his codpiece.  Rains is also so good even if this is also a bit of type-casting for the actor, who seems to always play erudite villains.  De Havilland makes the most of a role that could easily have just been no lines and just said "look beautiful," making her Marian true & actually landing her bigger scenes in a way that would recall her momentous work the following year in Gone with the Wind.  Overall, for an action-adventure the acting is a treat, and it enhanced the careers of pretty much everyone on set.  Even de Havilland's palomino, named Golden Cloud, got work as a result of this picture-the horse was seen by Roy Rogers, who loved it, purchased it, and renamed it Trigger...the rest is western history.

But it's the production value that makes this a classic.  The costuming is divine-de Havilland has never looked more radiant (and considering how long she was in pictures, this is saying something).  The movie didn't win an Oscar nomination for the category (because the category didn't exist yet, it certainly would have otherwise), but it did nab trophies for editing, art direction, and score, all of which were well-earned.  The editing is splendid-the action sequences are incredible, and while the stunts are in hindsight an OSHA nightmare (legend has it that men were paid $150 for actual arrows to be shot at their chest, a risky move in case, you know, the arrow moved north & missed the target), the scenes are riveting.  The moment where Flynn's Robin jumps from a noose onto a horse is staggering, and this ranks as one of the best action-adventures I've had the privilege of seeing, with the sharp editing a main culprit.  The art direction is sublime, especially in gaudy Technicolor, and the score is legend.  Erich Wolfgang Korngold thought the movie beneath him, but wanting an operatic score for the picture, Warner Brothers chief Hal Wallis allowed Korngold a weekly contract (unheard of at the time) to complete the picture.  Korngold relented, and while he was composing the score in Los Angeles, his Austrian home was broken into by the Nazis.  Korngold ended up making one of the cinema's most iconic scores & grabbing an Oscar for his work; had he not done the picture, it's very likely that the Jewish musician would have died in a concentration camp during World War II.

OVP: Kings Row (1942)

Film: Kings Row (1942)
Stars: Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Betty Field, Charles Coburn, Claude Rains, Judith Anderson, Maria Ouspenskaya, Harry Davenport
Director: Sam Wood
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ann Sheridan-click here to learn more about Ms. Sheridan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are only two films into the career of Ann Sheridan as our January star, and I'm already starting to note a really strange pattern-Ann Sheridan gets top billing when she probably shouldn't.  I'm hoping, since I'm trying to learn about her as a leading woman, that this doesn't continue for our final two pictures, but last week she received second billing for The Man Who Came to Dinner when really the star of the film was the then-unknown Monty Woolley.  This week, while she's again one of the leads, few would argue that she's actually the lead of this film where she receives top billing, instead the film focuses more on up-and-coming actors Robert Cummings and Ronald Reagan.  Kings Row is the best-known Sheridan film we're going to profile this month (give or take Angels with Dirty Faces, it's her best-known film period but I couldn't easily get a copy of that 1938 film), so I was excited to investigate to learn more about Sheridan (as well as to take a look at what is widely considered to be Ronald Reagan's best performance), and left kind of floored-Kings Row is a pretty sordid melodrama, one based on an even more scandalous book, that for 1942 comes across as quite shocking.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a soap opera with a lot of plot, but here's the gist of it.  Essentially it's two alternating tragic love stories, both started in childhood and then continued into adulthood.  The first, that takes up the top half of the movie is between Cassie (Field) and Parris (Cummings), and the back half is dominated by the relationship between Drake (Reagan) and Randy (Sheridan).  Both have a lot of intrigue and mystery behind the relationship.  With Cassie & Parris, she is largely ostracized by her classmates for having a strange mother (who clearly suffers from some sort of dementia), and is pulled out of school/society as a young girl, though she never stopped thinking of Parris as her first love.  Parris, as an adult, tries to gain the respect of her father (Rains), and secretly starts to see Cassie, but she's now nervous, frail, and constantly paranoid about being found out and about seeing the world.  At the halfway point of the movie, she is killed by her father in a murder-suicide after she makes plans to run away with Parris.  At this point, Parris flees to Vienna to become a well-respected doctor, and the plot shifts to his lothario best friend Drake, who is engaged to the doctor's daughter (Nancy Coleman), but her parents (Coburn & Anderson) disapprove of such a man dating their daughter, and as a result he ends up in the arms of the (literally from the wrong side of the tracks) Randy.  After a freak accident, Drake's legs are amputated by the doctor, and he is forced to deal with being crippled & broke (oh, right, his money was stolen by a banker-forgot to mention that).  Eventually, now a psychiatrist, Parris finds out the doctor had been a Mengele of sorts and there was no need for Drake's legs to be amputated (he had done this to anyone in town he considered "dirty"), and he must tell Drake the truth.

Following so far?  If you are, you're doing better than I did.  Kings Row is, despite being just over 2 hours long, probably 2 hours too short to accomplish this level of plot.  For example, the film's most harrowing scene (Reagan screaming after seeing that his legs are gone "Where's the Rest of Me?!?", a line he would later title his 1965 memoir), pairs really poorly with the jolly-good moment where Drake finds out that his legs were not stolen by an accident, but by the father of a scorned daughter.  Looking to the book, we find that there's a lot seedier explanations for what in the movie comes across as intentionally veiled.  For example, it's pretty clear in the book that the relationship between Cassie and her father is incestuous, and that both Parris & Cassie and Randy & Drake consummated their relationships before marriage.  In the movie, they managed to slyly sneak in that Cassie is pregnant if you look below the surface, but in the book it's not entirely clear whether or not she's pregnant with Parris's baby or her father's.  They entire cut out a gay character from the novel who tries to put the moves on Parris, and it's pretty glossy over the sadistic surgeon, framing him more as a "father scorned" than as a true monster of the community.  Watching Kings Row, I realized it's that rare classic film that would be primed for a more modern telling that's loyal to the book-HBO, if you want me to get writing it, let me know.

The film received three Academy Awards, for Best Picture, Director, and Cinematography, none of which feels quite right but is understandable given the circumstances.  The movie isn't exactly good even if it's usually entertaining, throwing in too much plot and overstuffing with a lot of clutch-the-pearls moments to keep the audience entertained.  The cinematography feels relatively standard, though some of the closeup shots and especially the way that James Wong Howe frames Betty Field's face is intriguing.  Still, it doesn't feel like particularly inventive work, especially the year after Citizen Kane.

Sheridan, our star of the month, literally doesn't show up in the movie until we're 64 minutes into the picture.  I want to say Dev Patel probably takes that long to get into Lion (I haven't taken out a stop watch there, but it feels about right), but otherwise can you think of another film where the top-billed star doesn't show up until we're an hour into the movie?  Sheridan, for her part, is not as much fun as she was in last week's The Man Who Came to Dinner.  I liked her scenes where she tries to justify the casualness of her fling with Drake (it's pretty clear she doesn't consider him a potential-husband, but he's good in the sack so she's keeping him around), but once she becomes the doting girlfriend/wife, she loses all sense of personality with Drake and her performance suffers as a result.  Reagan (and I don't know that I'll ever say this again considering his abilities as an actor) is the best part of the film, particularly as a fun-loving rake in the first half of the movie, and it's easy to see how he became a star.  It's a pity he couldn't have translated this into some of his other performances, and we might have been spared his political career.

The Wolf Man (1941)

Film: The Wolf Man (1941)
Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, Evelyn Ankers, Bela Lugosi
Director: George Waggner
Oscar History: The Best Makeup category didn't come around until 1981, so Jack Pierce's iconic work in The Wolf Man didn't end up with a trophy that it surely deserved.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is watching old horror movies, something I don't get to do very often as they're not nearly as featured on Turner Classic Movies in recent years (it used to be you couldn't turn on the channel without Vincent Price bellowing into the night).  But it's October, and Halloween approaches, and as a result they're looking through the Universal vault this month which led me to finally see one of the remaining Universal monster movies that I haven't caught.  I've long thought it was essential that you eventually see all seven of the biggest headliners of the Universal collection's origin stories (the seven being Dracula, Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Phantom of the Opera, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy), but for some reason The Wolf Man is missing on Netflix DVD so I have been patiently waiting for TCM to show it.  Thankfully last week they rewarded me, and so I got to catch this oft-imitated original.

(Spoilers Ahead) Nothing thrills me more than finding out a genuinely unknown fact during the TCM intros, and I had never realized how much of werewolf lore (like being killed by a silver bullet and turning into a werewolf if bitten) wasn't from centuries of stories about lupine men, but in fact came straight from the script of Curt Siodmak.  Kudos have to go to Siodmak for so well-establishing something that would be central to dozens of other movies (though the full moon bit would come from the next Wolf Man picture, as it's less clear what drives the transformation in this film), and for creating a story that feels cliched by the time you finally watch it, you know the picture by heart.

The film centers around Larry Talbot (Chaney), a man who has returned home for his brother's funeral at the behest of his distant father Sir John (Rains).  Larry hears tale of werewolf culture from a beautiful girl named Gwen (Ankers) whom he meets, well, stalking her (seriously-the most shocking thing about this movie may have been that they tried to romanticize Larry pulling a Peeping Tom routine on Gwen that turns into a burgeoning flirtation).  Gwen is engaged, but still drawn to Larry, and they go out one night with another of her friends, meeting a fortuneteller named Bela (Lugosi, in a brief part), who bites Larry after he transforms, leaving him the Wolf Man.  Unable to control his urges, he kills (though almost always men who are largely inconsequential to the actual plot), and is haunted by what he's become but unable to stop it.  Eventually he tries to get Gwen to flee, as she bears the mark of the werewolf's next victim, and is killed by his own silver walking stick by his father, Sir John, who looks on in horror as his son is transformed back into a man, and we're left to wonder if Sir John has been bitten, thus carrying on the curse.

The movie is short, clocking in at 70 minutes, a brief interlude of a picture which saves it as the clunkier parts (namely anything involving the doomed romance between Chaney and Ankers) doesn't have much time to simmer.  If you're able to appreciate the film as both a pretty universal metaphor (homosexuality and alcoholism seemed most obvious, but I'd buy nearly anything you hid about yourself) or just as sheer camp, it's quite fun to watch.  The makeup effects are still pretty fresh if admittedly not insanely lifelike, and the film's supporting players like Lugosi and Ouspenskaya are creepy enough that you actually might get a scare or two as you're watching the dated effects unfold (also cinematographer Joseph Valentine does an ace job with mood lighting for a B-Picture...he's clearly an underserved talent who would eventually graduate to the movies of Alfred Hitchcock and win an Oscar for Joan of Arc).  Plus, the ending is actually solid-I didn't entirely expect the Wolf Man to die, assuming he'd be just left-for-dead to provide sequel fodder, but Universal wasn't shy about killing off their monsters (though they knew reincarnation was always an option).  All-in-all, it's worth an investigation, particularly if you're at home on a Saturday night and want a scare (but not a big one).

Those are my thoughts on this screen classic-how about yours?  Anyone seen The Wolf Man for the first time recently?  And if you've seen al seven-who is your favorite Universal monster (I'm still finishing up the list on my end)?  Share your thoughts down below!

OVP: Twilight of Honor (1963)

Film: Twilight of Honor (1963)
Stars: Richard Chamberlain, Nick Adams, Claude Rains, Joan Blackman, James Gregory, Joey Heatherton
Director: Boris Sagal
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Nick Adams, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

During the 1960's, crime dramas at the movies were all the rage.  Perhaps it was the massive success of Perry Mason on the small screen, but whatever the reason, crime dramas, frequently involving corruption, murder, sex, and ultimately a gigantic twist that brought back a "Not Guilty" verdict were all the rage.  As a result of this you got films like To Kill a Mockingbird, considered the quintessential courtroom drama, as well as classics like 12 Angry Men and Witness for the Prosecution.  You also got run-of-the-mill sorts of dramas like Twilight of Honor, released in 1963 as a starring vehicle for the new matinee idol Richard Chamberlain, who was at the peak of his Dr. Kildare fame.  Unfortunately Chamberlain is left with a bland turn with two key supporting actors stuck with scenery-chewing parts on the sidelines.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows David Mitchell (Chamberlain) after he is assigned a seemingly unwinnable case.  A local hero named Cole Clinton has been murdered by a local hood named Ben Brown (Adams), and the entire small town is determined to have him get the death penalty as a result.  An ambitious and unscrupulous lawyer named Norris Bixby (Gregory) is the prosecutor, and is frequently skirting the law, aided by a rather naive judge.  The film follows the court as it unfolds, as we learn that Cole Clinton has been having an affair, and was in the throes with Ben's wife Laura Mae (Joey Heatherton, in her big screen debut that won her a Golden Globe nomination) during the murder.

The film feels dated principally because the law that they discuss and that allows a loophole in the court case, where a husband can kill a man sleeping with his wife, seems pretty sexist and not something you'd see as admissible in court today.  The film's entire point, in fact, is to prove that Cole Clinton is having an affair with Laura Mae, thus getting Ben off on a technicality.  Eventually this is proven in the court, with people believing Ben during an extended testimony, but it casts a pall over the entire film, which reeks of sexism (the key female roles are the grieving-and-sacrificing widow, the sultry Laura Mae who is constantly slut-shamed, and Chamberlain's doormat of a love interest, played by Joan Blackman without any sense of reality or even self-respect) and feels very off-putting in its attitude toward women, not just by the lecherous old man but also by the dashing lawyer (there's a speech he gives toward the end of the film to Joan Blackman's father that will make you want to vomit).  It's a different time and all that, but when it's everywhere in the film it feels really disgusting.

The film received two Oscar nominations, most notably Best Supporting Actor for Nick Adams as the man-on-trial.  Adams is a largely forgotten actor now, but was quite famous at the time and was relatively young (in his early thirties) when he scored this citation.  He was famous for his friendship with Natalie Wood (some thought they were going to wed) and for his alleged romantic dalliances with James Dean and Elvis Presley.  His performance here seems a bit odd for a nomination.  He plays a guy completely smitten with Joey Heatherton (understandable), who is willing to essentially go to the gas chamber to not besmirch her honor, which she has no trouble doing herself (less understandable).  His big scenes come late in the film, when he's shown in flashback but his weird jealousy and reason for killing Cole Clinton don't jive with the meek, damaged man we see earlier in the film, and he seems to not understand subtlety remotely as he frequently breaks into histrionics, which someone like Dean, for example, could have done with a similar role.  As a result I'm not really impressed but the 1963 Supporting Actor field in general has sort of been a yawn so far (waiting for Bobby Darin and John Huston to make a definitive statement there though).  The Art Direction for the film was also cited, and that was better (I loved the lived-in quality of the offices and the courtroom scenes were well-constructed), though the homes still had too much elegance in my opinion (particularly the Clinton mansion).  I also suspect that Heatherton, who became a huge star briefly after this picture, was probably close to a nomination as it's the sort of performance the Oscars notice (sexy, near-prostitute, woman on the edge of morality, and all that).  I wonder how different her career, which petered and is best remembered for performances on USO tours would have been if she had been nominated so early in her career.

Those are my thoughts on this legal drama-what are yours?  Have you seen the film-if so, let's hear about it!  If not, weigh in on sexism in old movies-do you find yourself able to put your "it was a different time" hat on or do you find yourself gagging on stereotypes?