Movie review - "The Farrows of Hollywood: Their Dark Side Of Paradise” by Marilyn Ann Moss

 John Farrow is a fascinating, under appreciated director and character in Hollywood history. He deserves a really strong book. This isn't quite there though it's got some good stuff. It also has a lot of waffle and psychology. I was hoping for more research, such as analysis of Farrow's writings (of which there were a lot eg his book on the popes and Damien the Leper). Being fair, there's some research, I wanted more of it and less psychology. Maureen O'Sullivan and Mia Farrow get decent airings as well.

Movie review - Jungle Jim #16 - "Devil Goddess" (1956) **

 The last in the series. It was about time. I did enjoy the second last one but this one felt tired. Another blonde. Another expedition to find a missing [insert thing]. Comic chimps.

I did like the white bearded scientist becoming this sort of Merlin figure. The acting was of decent quality. Too much stock footage. It struck me with this how much Weismuller was protected/hidden in these movies.

Movie review - Jungle Jim#15 - "Jungle Moon Men" (1955) **1/2

 The second "Johnny Weismuller" Jungle Jim again has a very good story, one of the strongest in the series, though the handling isn't up to it.

This gleefully pillages from H Rider Haggard's She as Johnny goes on an expedition with Jean Byron to the interior to rescue some random dude who has been kidnapped by little people. They work for an immortal queen (Helen Stanton). Bill Henry is also along for the ride - the queen falls for him and tries to marry him but Weismuller does a swap, offering himself in his place.

The film really should have made more of Stanton and Weismuller - Stanton seems very free and easy about who she'll hook up with. There are some villainous diamond hunters as well.

The handling isn't that good but I love Haggard so enjoyed the story and it was different. This is when Jungle Jim stories were best: outlandish fantasies.

Movie review - Jungle Jim#14 - "Cannibal Attack" (1954) ** (warning: spoilers)

 From this point on in the Jungle Jim series, Jim was called "Johnny" instead of "Jim". Actually it would have been fun had they gone full meta and had Weismuller play a lecherous, fattening, aging former swimmer trying to prolong his fame.

The Maguffin is cobalt, which is mentioned a lot in the script. Like, a lot.

This actually has a decent story: solid conflict with two duelling brothers, a manipulative colonial official, I didn't spot the twist that the girl was bad (maybe I should have twigged when it was specified she was half black... an attitude typical of the time). 

Yet somehow it doesn't hit earlier heights. Not enough action. Too much stock footage. Too much use of the word "cobalt".

Movie reviews - Jungle Jim#13 - "Jungle Man Eaters" (1954) **

 Some diamond smugglers want to get their hands on diamonds so cause troubles between the tribes - who seem to be played by more actually black actors than usual instead of white actors in blackface.

Karin Booth is the girl. Lester Matthews is Kingston. There seems to be more stock footage in this one. Tamba the Chimp goes up in a  plane. The second male lead seems to do more action that Jim.

There's not too many man eaters. This entry felt a little tired and over done with stock footage. Or maybe it's just me.

Movie review - Jungle Jim #12 - "Killer Ape" (1953) **1/2

 Jim wanders into Bela Lugosi territory, coming across a scientist who tests drugs on animals. It's silly and fun. A non white female lead - a native played by a white actor in brownface. Nestor Paiva is a trusty villain, Tamba the chimp has fun (getting his friends involved in overcoming the Ape), the Ape is a tragic figure in a way though that doesn't stop Jim burning him alive.

Done with polish and energy. I do wish Bela Lugosi had been involved!

Movie review - Jungle Jim#11 - "Valley of the Headhunters" (1953) **1/2

 Jim's boss, Kingston, wants Jim to help a government agent attain mineral rights to a tribal land, but the baddies want oil. What is the difference? Old Jim/Tarzan would have wanted to protect the land. This one is very pro development.

There's decent acting, some fake headhunters, dicey racial politics, Tamba the chimp gets drunk. A solid entry.

Movie review - Jungle Jim #10 - "Savage Mutiny" (1952) **1/2

 One of the more hawkish Cold War entries with a fascinating set up - Jim is asked to help some African islanders move off their island so the Allies can test atomic bombs, "but don't worry they'll be able to move back". And some pesky foreign agents presumably commies try to persuade the locals opposed it.

There is a blonde doctor trying to inoculate the locals, a doctor who is forced to work for the baddies, a divide among the blacks of pro Jim elders and younger leaders more open to the others (the corruptible young was a trope of post colonial filmmaking).

The plot is clear, the fact it is set on an African island gives it novelty, there is decent action (Jim does hand to hand combat to earn the local's respect) and effective acting - I really liked the guy who played the main baddie.

A very joyously pro nuclear testing film.

Movie review - Jungle Jim#9 - "Voodoo Tiger" (1952) **1/2

 This adventure feels more crowded than usual - there's lots of characters in the movie, many of them Jim's allies which makes it seem easier for him.

The script writer throws in a bunch of stuff: Jean Byron on an expedition, a former Nazi, an opening sacrifice sequence, Commissioner Kingston again, a valley of headhunters, a nasty hunter, a heroic major to hook up with Byron.

Weismuller was trimmer in the earlier JJ movies it seems. It's bright enough, done with energy. Weismuller looks like  a sexual harrasser but I may be doing the man a disservice.

Movie review - Jungle Jim #8 - "Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land" (1952) **1/2

 I wish the Jungle Jim movies pushed the fantastical elements more -the best bits about this one are when he gets involved with these half ape creatures. They live in the Land of the Giants, which Jim is protecting, which is fun.

There's some nasty ivory traders, a Good Woman and a Bad Woman, a chimp, a killer Zulu, lots of stock footage, Commissioner Kingston.

It's done with pace and high spirits.

Movie review - Jungle Jim#7 - "Jungle Manhunt" (1951) ***

 The series was in solid stride at this stage. This is made with care and energy. Low budget to be sure but enjoyable stock footage, a decent story.  Sheila Ryan plays one of the strongest female characters in a Jim film, a photographer looking for a scoop. The missing person here is a football player, played by Bob Waterfield - a real football star who was once married to Jane Russell. He's not a great actor but it adds to the fun.

There's people dressing up in skeleton outfits, Jim fighting a shark, Lyle Talbot as a crazed doctor, killer dinosaur reptiles in a valley, plenty of action. I had a good time watching it.

Movie review - Jungle Jim#5 - "Pygmy Island" (1950) **1/2

 Deliriously silly Jungle Jim epic with Jim dealing with a secret tribe of pygmies. Jim goes looking for a missing army captain - Ann Savage from Detour!

Foreign agents are after a super duper plant. They dress up as natives and do bad things.

There's stock footage, Weismuller does some swimming and pygmies. Actually there's less pygymy stuff than I thought. You might recognise David Bruce and Billy Curtis (little person) among the cast.

Movie review - Jungle Jim #6 - "Fury of the Congo" (1951) **1/2

 Weismuller takes off his shirt in the opening sequence to dive into a lagoon, Tarzan style. He's not in very good shape.

In this one Jim is protecting animals being hunted by drug runners because the animal gland produce a drug. That's a cool idea.

There's a lot of animal stock footage and fun stuff like a female tribe worried about their men and a good scientist coerced into doing Bad Things.

There's too much action though. That sounds weird, I know. I should say there's too much bland action. Stock footage and scenes of people running around. It felt padded.

Still not bad Tarzan lite.

Movie review - Jungle Jim #4 - "Captive Girl" (1950) ***

 Fun Jungle Jim. Maybe three stars is generous but it has energy and a plot that throws in everything but the kitchen sink. Well, Tarzan tropes, anyway. It's got an expedition into the interior, a Western educated leader (in brownface) trying to get back control of his tribe from nasty locals, a white woman who is raised in the jungle, nefarious treasure hunters (played by Buster Crabbe!).

It's silly and lots of fun with action, stock footage, rampaging chimpanzees. It's terrific to see Crabbe as a villain and John Dehner adds class to the support cast though you're most likely to remember Anita Lhoest as the girl.

Movie review - "Won Ton Ton the Dog That Saved Hollywood" (1976) *

Michael Winner wasn't known for being the king of comedy, though he did make The Jokers. Winner blamed Bruce Dern for a lot of the film's failure - he's not Mr Laughs either. He's definitely not up to Madeleine Kahn who is lots of fun - also spot on is Teri Garr who I wish had a bigger part.

On one hand I enjoyed the old person cameos but it did make the film feel old. Cameos are fun but everyone was elderly. It made the whole movie smell old time-y.

Winner keeps everything at a fast pace but there's an air of desperation about it. The movie has no heart. The Jokers had heart because it was about brothers and a world that Winner knew about. He's removed from 1920s Los Angeles. There's no warmth.

The film should have focused on the dog and its relationship with Kahn, but everything feels surface. Kahn is fun but looking at it, she's too broad. She plays it like a support part. Teri Garr would have been better in her role with Kahn in support. Or have Kahn play Dern's role. There were some female directors. But that was probably too much for the filmmakers. Maybe Michael Crawford would have worked in Dern's role.

I laughed at some bits like the dog trying to hang himself. But this felt too much like a movie where they went for laughs without thinking of the point - and the laughs aren't of sufficient quality. They're not Mel Brooks.

There's a good movie to be made in the story of Rin Tin Tin. But the satire is too broad. The filmmakers get bored with the dog and keep changing focus - Rob Liebman takes over the movie at one stage playing a Valentino type. Mad cap in the worst way.

Still, I've seen it now, at least.

Movie review - "Swamp Fire" (1946) **

Johnny Weismuller swaps a loin cloth for clothes in this Pine-Thomas actioner which is probably best remembered (if at all) for uniting him with Buster Crabbe and for being his first non-Tarzan movie.

Actually the best thing about it is the setting - the Louisiana swamps. Cajun country, from Southern Comfort.

Weismuller looks awkward - a big lumbering dude who seems to have ambled in from, well, the set of a Tarzan film. Crabbe is a lot more effective, with his moustache and a decent ish stab at a French accent. Actually all the other performances are fine except Weismuller. I started riffing that the characters would bag out Weismuller's when he walked off screen ("he's an idiot", "oh I know he's the worst" etc etc) and that passed the time.

It feels as though they couldn't make up their mind as to what sort of movie this is, it's all over the place. There's a love quadrangle with Weismuller loved by local girl Carol Thurston and stylish city gal Virginia Grey and Crabbe loving Thurston. Weismuller has some PTSD because of the war. Thurston's brother dies. Crabbe poaches on someone's land. There's a swamp fire and a battle with an alligator.

It's all over the shop - melodrama with a bit of action. Feels like an "oh put that in" movie.

It is of some interest I just wish it was more disciplined.

Movie review – Hardy #16 – “Andy Hardy Comes Home” (1958) **

A combination of declining box office receipts and the increase in troubles dealing with Mickey Rooney saw MGM cancel the Hardy family series – until it was revived 12 years later. But then Lewis Stone had gone to the great character actor waiting list in the sky, but Rooney, Fay Holden, Sara Haden and Cecilia Parker were still around. (The also bring back Andy’s mate Breezy, but I think he’s played by a different actor.) It’s a jolt to see an aged Rooney and Parker but you get used to it.

Andy has two kids – who he’s called Andy and Marian. He works for a company in LA which he’s persuaded that Carvel is a good place to manufacture missile plants. In the course of doing so he runs into some local corruption, which we haven’t really seen since A Family Affair. Johnny Weissmuller Jnr plays Parker’s son, called Jim (presumably she married drink driver Jim). Andy’s kids and wife arrive – it turns out he’s married a woman as bland and undemanding as his mother. At the end he’s appointed a judge and there’s an end title “to be continued”… but there were no more Andy Hardy films.

This movie falls between a lot of stools. It aims for nostalgia, including three flashback clips (one within the first three minutes) of the best known Hardy girls, Judy Garland, Esther Williams and Lana Turner – but the Judy Garland clip is from Babes in Arms, not any Andy Hardy movie, which is cheating. There’s no plot involving any of the old regulars, except for Breezy – who was never really much of a regular, and is played by a different actor. They don’t mention Polly Benedict, which is inexcusable, or say what happened to Marian (was she married? What happened to her husband?). They don’t even use the old theme music.

It also aims to be an old style Hardy family movie – but there’s only the land development and corruption plot, which is a little thin by itself; they seem to forget these were usually the B plots, with Andy and Marian’s romances carrying the bulk of the story. So the script is light on.

Finally, the film seems to aim for the teen audience by including the Weissmuller Jnr character and his mates – but they aren’t given a subplot either, he and his mates just hang around and are impressed by Andy’s ordering a big meal (he’s a middle aged man – cholesterol), knowing cars and his old records. Yeah, right.

Having said that, Hardy fans will enjoy the movie, if only for completism sake, and at least none if it is bad natured like some of the others.

Movie review – Tarzan #14 - “Tarzan and the Slave Girl” (1950) **

The Zoolander Tarzan, Lex Barker, is given a new Jane in Vanessa Brown – no real improvement on Brenda Joyce, she’s like Tarzan’s slightly underage girlfriend. (How come Tarzan got to strut around in a loincloth while Jane only showed a bit of midriff?). The plot of this one involves girls who are abducted by members of (yet another predominantly white) lost civilisation looking for a cure.

This is like the eighth film in a row which features a more interesting female character than Jane (even though the last six had Jane in them) – in this case a French nurse, Lola (Denise Darcel) who pants over Tarzan and winds up abducted with Jane. She’s a great character – wild, sexually uninhibited, spunky; Robert Alda is her love interest and you know he’ll have her hands full with her down the track.

Barker still looks like he’s on his way to a tanning session at a Paddington gym, but he’s a bit more comfortable in the role now – and he does give Tarzan a bit more intelligence than Weismuller did (Barker’s Tarzan is more of a grown up). Tarzan is treated as a sex object here for the first time in a while, with Lola panting over Tarzan at an infirmary – she and Jane even have a cat fight (Jane flips her – alright!).

The soldiers from the lost civilisation are dressed like Robin Hood’s merry men, complete with bows and arrows. Cheetah gets drunk, there is quite a suspenseful sequence where Tarzan is leading an expedition and it all goes silent (this lasts around five minutes. There’s also a decent finale where they’re going to throw a nice priest to the lions.

Movie review – Tarzan #11 – “Tarzan and the Huntress” (1947) **

Brenda Joyce’s third film as Jane and she still hadn’t managed to get any chemistry going with Johnny Weismuller. By this stage also Johnny Sheffield’s balls had dropped, meaning that Boy should really be renamed “Young Man”. The three of them frolic in a pool and watch cheetah fly a sort of glider thing but it’s not the same as when O’Sullivan was there.

Tarzan’s neighbours around this time were normally colonial outposts or hidden kingdoms. This one has him dealing with a full fledged independent kingdom, run by a kindly native king – perhaps a sign of the post-war times.

This one has a very strong conservation theme, even more so than usual: some hunters arrive looking for animals to take back to zoos; the nice king allows them to take a restricted amount but they want more and so support a nasty usurper. “Animals belong in jungle not in cages” says Tarzan. As usual the expedition contains some a mixture of good people (pretty girl, comic servant) and nasty (Barton MacLane – who was a villain in Tarzan and the Amazons). Cheetah winds up in a cage, a lioness is shot trying to protect her cubs… it’s pretty traumatic.

But despite the interesting conservation angle, this is one of the duller Weismuller Tarzans. It lacks excitement – mainly because our lead trio are rarely in danger. Jane does hardly anything the whole film, and you expect Boy or Tarzan to get involved in the hunters but they don’t really. The main one in danger is Cheetah, but this promising aspect isn’t really developed (it doesn’t make sense that Cheetah should be imprisoned by the hunters, then later on help them… just so he can use a compact.)

 As usual, the death toll is quite high: Tarzan spears one henchman and stabs another, various wildlife are killed, the king is shot in front of his own son, the son is thrown off a cliff, elephants trample over everyone, etc, etc.

NB the pretty girl and comic servant are allowed to live at the end – for no real reason other than they’re pretty and comic. But they still are all for taking in excess of their quota and don’t really protest when really bad stuff happens and are part of blazing guns at the wildlife.

Movie review – Tarzan #8 – “Tarzan’s Desert Mystery” (1943) ***

Tarzan gets out of the house for a change and heads to the desert, where he’s to pick up some medicine for Jane, who is off in London nursing the troops. We don’t see her, but there is a female lead – Nancy Kelly, who’s a lot of fun as a spunky American chorus girl out in the desert to entertain the troops who winds up getting involved with Tarzan and his ensuring clashes with Arabs and assorted Nazis.

There’s no romance between Kelly and Tarzan – though, like Tarzan Triumphs, I think you could read one into it. (They set up this American educated Arab to be Kelly’s love interest… then kill him off). Come to think of it, you could have had a bit more emotion in the film if you had Kelly fall in love with Tarzan (they kind of imply it at the end that she’d like to stay in the jungle with Tarzan and Boy).

Weismuller was starting to look pretty flabby around now (you can see him suck in his gut in a few scenes), but there’s plenty of action: rescuing someone from being hanged, a stampede of horses, a sandstorm, Boy winds up in a spider web and is attacked by a huge spider, Tarzan is trapped by a plant.

The desert setting is refreshing but the last 15 minutes are still set back in the jungle. The anti-Nazi propaganda is less overt in this one – the baddies are just there