Sunday, July 01, 2018

Movie review - "Dark Mountain" (1944) **1/2

This starts off with stock footage of burning forests and I thought it would be a typical Pine Thomas flick set in the world of a macho profession - to wit, working as a forest ranger and involve fire fighting. But it isn't really.

It is about two men in love with the one girl, their favourite story - here played by Robert Lowery (not a bad leading man, stepping in for Richard Arlen presumably) and Regis Toomey (replacing Chester Morris) and Ellen Drew (stepping in for Jean Parker presumably).

The difference here is the girl has married one of the guys - Toomey. But it's okay because Toomey is involved in criminal activity and has killed some people (including Elisha Cook Jnr!). So he goes on the run and most of the film's running time - the entire second half really - consists of Drew helping Toomey hide, Lowery helping Drew thinking she's alone and not noticing Toomey is hiding in the next room.

So this is more an "on the lam" type movie. (To save money? A lot of scenes of just two-three people in a room).

It's not bad - the acting is professional and the acting brisk. I thought the climax would be more forest-y but is really just a car driving fast down a road. The film ducks drama in a few places - no final fight between Lowery and Toomey, Drew kind of goes along with what Toomey does and changes sides out of opportunism than anything else (felt she needed to be more active) and I was surprised gangsters didn't go after Toomey at the end - that would've been a good complication.

Anyway, it was fine.

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