Movie review - "Woman Who Came Back" (1945) **1/2

 Decent knock of off Cat People from an "idea" by Phil Yordan who bought a script from another guy. Made by Republic who did the odd horror - decently directed. Nancy Kelly is the woman who thinks she's something Bad - in her case a witch.

The film would have been better if someone had done something bad - once Kelly discovers her ancestor wasn't a witch she's cured. There's no real baddy. The townsfolk are mean but no one goes all out. Someone should have died. Ruth Ford as another woman looks as though she's going to do something.

The terrible John Loder is alas the male lead. The director deserved a better male lead and a story with more sting because he did a good job. 

Movie review - "Strange Case of Dr Manning" (1957) **

 Dull British kidnap thriller directed by Arthur Crabtree who once enjoyed some hits for Gainsborough but like many of his colleagues struggled away from that studio.

Greta Gynt is blonde and not much more as the wife of a kidnapped doctor. Ron Randell is an American private eye who combines with a British doctor.

It's sluggish and not very interesting. Ron Randell's American accent was so awkward I thought maybe it had been dubbed but I've said that a few times about him maybe he just had a bad American accent.

Movie review - "The Outcast" (1954) ***

 John Derek's Westerns are proving consistently interesting. This is directed by Tarantino fave William Witney and is full of action - people are always climbing through windows and pulling guns and double crossing. It's a decent script, if a familiar story - John Derek seeks revenge on his uncle Jim Davis.

Derek normally played spoiled weaklings, young things teamed with crusty older stars. Here he plays someone with balls, tough, a womaniser, flirty, ruthless, hires gunmen (who kill people). It's pretty good work. He romances a hayseed girl who gets whipped for kissing him which is full on but the guy who does it dies.

Vigorous entertainment.

Movie review - "Sea of Lost Ships" (1953) **

Republic Films borrowed John Derek from Columbia to star in the sort of services movie he made for Harry Cohn - and also Republic, in Thunderbirds. It's about duty and service and family members who die, and two friends are in love with the same gal.

Barton MacLane pops up at the top to play Derek's dad and die, Richard Jaekel is the guy he has to compete with over Wanda Hendrix, Walter Brennan is a bosun.

There's stock footage of planes crashing and ice bergs but it's dull. Really dull. I struggled to finish this.

Some fun in Hendrix assuming she and Derek are on from the get go. Those scenes have some life.

Derek and Jaekel are dull.

Movie review - "Thunderbirds" (1952) **

 Republic Pictures splashing a bit of cash for them, borrowing John Derek from Columbia. He appears opposite John Drew Barrymore - they're two mates in love with the same gal (Eileen Christy), and there's tough sergeant (Ward Bond), and another tough sergeant (Gene Evans).  Mona Freeman is a gal who rocks up very quickly after Christy picks Derek.

Support cast features people like Barton MacLane and Slim Pickens.

Some novelty in that the lead two are members of the Oklahoma National Guard and they have Indian mascots and there's an Indian motif going through the film.

The film seems to go for a long time. It was dull.

Movie review - "Hell Ship Mutiny" (1957) **

 Jon Hall tried to get up another TV series and made some pilots - while he couldn't sell them, he turned them into this film. There's some classy names on the credits - the cast includes John Carradine, Mike Mazurski and Peter Lorre, Elmo Williams edited and directed (along with lee Sholem).

It's a return to the south seas adventures with Hall as an adventurer boating around the Pacific - not dissimilar to Adventures in Paradise but that was a hit. Presumably this annoyed Hall. I guess he was getting on.

It's not very good. It feels like cobbled television. Lots of sets, darkened nighttime scenes, fake South Sea backlot recreations. Stop-start plot. Island girls, kissing, moonlight, all that... just rote.

Lorre livens things up the most.

Movie review - "Trouble in the Glen" (1954) **

 One of the films that helped kill Margaret Lockwood's career.  Is it so hard to rip off The Quiet Man? Republic and Herbert Wilcox got the same writer and Victor McLaglen. And if they couldn't get John Wayne they tried with Forrest Tucker.  

Tucker is no John Wayne - he can act and lumber but doesn't have the same charisma. He isn't helped by the dumb story. He's an outsider (an American who served in the army during the war) and so too are Margaret Lockwood and father Orson Welles. Why have three outsiders? 

Actually you don't need Tucker in the film. The movie should have been about Lockwood and Welles moving to Scotland, being fishes out of water... and she has a romance with Scotsman John McCallum. Tucker is an adjunct and so is that polio riddled girl they shove in and spend far too much screen time on

Also for a Scottish Quiet Man the film is incredibly non Scottish. The Quiet Man had Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald and all these Irish actors plus was filmed in Ireland. This feels totally un Scottish. It seems to have been mostly shot on the backlot and has non Scottish actors like John McCallum and Victor McLaglen. Was Finlay Currie not working?

The slackness of this just got to me.

Movie review - "Frisco Waterfront" (1935) **

I only watched this for completionists sake as I'm a fan of Arthur Lubin, who directed. The version I watched was only 52 minutes - I gather the original cut was 66 but it didn't feel as though I missed anything.

It's a very fast paced melodrama about two men in love with the same gal - a version of the sort of stories done by Warner Bros. This has some decent production value - it's lower budget but there's still plenty of scenes of extras plus some on the docks; it's not a mega cheapie.

There's quasi names in the lead: Ben Lyon, Helen Twelvetrees, Rod La Roque. There's some subtext with Twelvetrees not being happy being married to a waterfront foreman and she leaves Lyon because of his lack of ambition - I mean, it's not as though she can get a job herself - and she's not punished for it.

The acting is erratic and it lacks the polish of a top level studio film.

Movie review - "Laughing Anne" (1953) ** (warning: spoilers)

Margaret Lockwood signed with Herbert Wilcox in a multi picture deal attempting to revive her career. The films weren't popular, particularly this one which is a South Seas tale of all things, though with minimal location work although it is in colour.

It was a co production with Republic so there are two American "stars" - Forrest Tucker and Wendell Corey. Corey is a captain who hooks up with lounge singer Margaret Lockwood - in a French accent channelling Marlene Dietrich or Yvonne de Carlo. She flashes back to her romance with Forest Tucker, who got his hands chopped off because he wouldn't throw a fight.

The film really needed to star someone like de Carlo or Maureen O'Hara and Jeff Chandler. The basic story isn't bad - from a story by Joseph Conrad - but its sluggish. Corey and Tucker are second tier, and Lockwood looks uncomfortable. I mean she throws herself into it with the accent and singing but it's unconvincing.

Wilcox's direction is lethargic and the story is depressing - Tucker gets his hands cut off and is a loser, Lockwood winds up dead, Corey's wife leaves him.

Movie review - "Who Killed Aunt Maggie?" (1940) **1/2

Arthur Lubin was at his peak around this time and keeps his touch light and fun in an entertaining comedy chiller. It's not the sort of movie you expect from Republic but is bright and fast. It could do with a better cast but I liked John Hubbard - he was a decent second tier leading man. I've never been a fan of Wendy Barrie. In a big studio film you'd get a top support cast like say Gale Sondegaard but not here. Oh maybe that's mean - Walter Abel and Onslow Stevens are fine.

Still the old dark house has an atmosphere - it's one of those will reading over night movies. I liked how the female lead had a job, a radio writer - I wasn't wild how Barrie and Hubbard's relationship seems really nasty with them arguing at the end. How long will they last after getting married?

There's too much "comic scared black servant" stuff - no offence to Willie Best who did what he's asked, it's just uncomfortable.

Still, a decent effort from Lubin.

Movie review - "Two Sinners" (1935) **

Cheapie melodrama made by Lubin early in his career - Otto Kruger is a man who gets out of prison after fifteen years and finds love with a woman who looks after a kid and the woman winds up in prison too.

The kid actor isn't bad - Lubin was a decent director of children from the get go. I did watch it and think "why was this made? Was there an audience for this? Were Kruger and Martha Sleeper really big stars?"

The film probably would have been better told from Sleeper's point of view - the governess who falls for a mystery man with a Secret, who works for a horrible woman who blames Sleeper for things she didn't do.

It's low budget but not agonisingly so. Not a hidden classic or anything.

Book review - "John Wayne: The Life and the Legend" by Scott Eyman

Typically excellent biography by Eyman, marred by the only occasional smart arse throw away line, and by the fact that Wayne's life has been chronicled so many times before. He doesn't really come up with super new stuff but what's here is very solid.

It's an affectionate look at the actor-producer-director - Eyman clearly likes him though recognises the man's flaws. It explores some Cold War politics, but also goes really in depth into the financial machinations of Batjac, which almost went bust following The Alamo but Michael Wayne brought it back.

Random thoughts:
- Wayne's second wife always comes across as a Carmen Miranda caricature
- Michael Wayne seems to have been a very smart guy
- Wayne was a decent father
- the affair with Gail Russell seems to have been emotional more than anything else
- Eyman is rightly suspicious of the memoirs of screenwriters when it comes to encounters with Wayne
- he disliked John Farrow and got other directors to reshoot his stuff
- he didn't have that many affairs but he did do Marlene Dietrich
- he was a smart guy but was a terrible businessman and amazingly was always short of cash
- Eyman excellently pays overdue attention to Charles Feldman and James Edward Grant as hugely influential figures in Wayne's life.

Very good book.

Movie review - "Gangs of Chicago" (1940) ***

It feels like a Warner Bros movie but actually it was made at Republic, with Lloyd Nolan as a kid who wants to become a crook so goes into the law. I saw a shortened version but it was still pretty good - that concept is very strong. Of course Nolan has a poor but honest friend who shows him a different way (Ray Middleton)... actually he's not poor he's the son of a judge. I love how the judge supports Nolan and Nolan betrays him. And the film has an honesty - Nolan doesn't turn until the very end. His character has integrity.

So too do his associates, including his ruthlessly efficient female secretary. Rosemary Lane is in this as Middleton's sister but she didn't seem to have a big role - she felt like a beard because Nolan clearly loves Middleton. It's a strong emotional undercurrent though.

This is a very fine attempt at Republic to do a Warner Bros movie.

Movie - "The House of a Thousand Candles" (1936) **

The novel was filmed a few times - I'd never heard of it. This version feels like it was influenced by Hitchcock's early British thrillers though I may be wrong. There's spys running around Europe - Philip Holmes (who later died in a plane crash) is the Brit trying to crack a spy ring. He has a squabbling relationship with an heiress who chases him across Europe - that sounds more fun than it is, I think mostly due to casting. Mae Clarke is the girl - she was a star in the early thirties but was now on the slide. She's okay so is Holmes I just wanted someone really fun.

Movie review - "Flame of the Islands" (1956) **

In the mid 50s Yvonne de Carlo made two films for Republic Pictures, this and Magic Fire. Its an interesting ish tale about a PR woman who is given $100,000 by the man's very understanding widow who thinks de Carlo was his mistress.De Carlo heads down to the Bahamas with co worker (lover?) Zachary Scott and invests the money in a resort run by Kurt Kaznar, who was the poor man's Dr Smith in Land of the Giants. He's in cahoots with gangsters.

So essentially it's a film noir plot only its shot in colour and on location in the Bahamas. De Carlo's character is introduced as a sort of secretary but it's revealed she "did a bit of singing" so she performs at the night club - an awkward explanation to justify De Carlo doing a number (why not just set up her character as a singer instead of having her do that random office job?).

Also for a film noir there's a lot of talk of God - she visits a sermon by James Arness, where a lot of innocent black children sing (the only blacks we really see in this Bahamas-set film). There's also a bit of melodrama - De Carlo falls for Howard Duff, who she used to love but who doesn't remember her (nice!), and when he does remember her, his possessive mother won't let him go. So it's a film noir in color in the Bahamas with God and dance numbers and a bit of Douglas Sirk melodrama.

Then it becomes more Sirkian - it turns out de Carlo wasn't anyone's mistress, the mistress was Duff's mother, De Carlo was pregnant to Duff years ago and had a stillborn baby, de Carlo just took the money because someone offered and hey why not, and Duff's mother dies after talking to de Carlo and... anyway it just gets all silly and weird.

Like a lot of mid 50s de Carlo films, too much is going on. Why have Zachary Scott in this film? Why introduce an exciting element like gangsters co owning a casino and ignoring them until the end? Why spent all this time on Duff and De Carlo and have De Carlo just dump Duff over the phone? When did De Carlo and Arness fall in love? When he grabbed her?

There's a lot of pawing of De Carlo in this film - Scott does it and Kaznar and Arness. She sings two numbers both of which kind of stick out.

It's a bit of a mess but not unwatchable.

Movie review - "The Last Command" (1955) **1/2

Herbert Yates of Republic foolishly wouldn't give John Wayne what he wanted to make his Alamo picture, ending their relationship and thus losing Republic's one big star. Yates pushed ahead with his own Alamo movie - one that focuses on Jim Bowie.

Bowie is played by Sterling Hayden, a tall actor with a deep voice who I've never been that much of a fan of despite his iconic status and colourful personal life. He's quite well cast as Bowie though.

The film itself is choppy and not particularly well handled (it was Frank Lloyd's last movie). It covers a few years, starting when Bowie is trying to keep out of the conflict, not being a big fan of Texians; he loses his family to plague off screen and eventually becomes radicalised I guess you could say. He takes part in a fight or two then winds up at the Alamo.

Too much screen time is spent on a Mexican woman who pants after Bowie, played by Anna Marie Alberghetti. I enjoyed Arthur Hunnicutt's Davy Crockett and wish he'd been given more screen time. Ditto for Ernest Borgnine's settler. Richard Carlson's Travis was so-so.

Things pick up once everyone gets to the Alamo - really I wish the whole film had been set there. Maybe the filmmakers were worried about the female audience, devoting so much time to Alberghetti's character - but they could've just had her meet Bowie there. It was dramatically unsatisfactory.

The movie gets better as it goes along and there's some decent production value for Republic. It's not unsympathetic to Santa Anna.

Movie review - "The Vampire's Ghost" (1945) **1/2

Republic Pictures only made a few horror films, which is a shame because they normally allocated a decent budget ("decent" is relative - I'm talking more than Monogram) and gave things a bit more care. This is an entirely decent vampire film.

It's set in Africa, which means a Hollywood Africa where blacks only have a few lines of dialogue and the focus is on the whites. The star is John Abbott, who I'd never heard of - David del Valle told me about him - a solid hammy British actor. If Karloff or Lugosi had played the part the film would've been a minor classic or at least quite well known. Abbott is fine - he's not a star though.

Abbott becomes obsessed with Peggy Stewart and tries to get Charles Gordon on board. There's a priest who stops him.

It's reasonably logical with some effective moments - not so much scares or shocks but Abbott's manipulation of Stewart. Leigh Brackett co wrote it.

Movie review - "Magic Fire" (1956) **

William Dieterle had a fondness for biopics - he did Juarez at Warners - and managed to persuade Republic Pictures to pony up the cash for this look at the life of Wagner.

Wagner's life was action packed and had plenty of music and drama but this is a fairly ordinary film, with a slack structure, inadequate cast and poor script.

I think the movie tries to pack too much in - a lot happens, three main romances, revolution, musical success and failure, jail... too much, so nothing every really has much impact.

I also think the cast isn't particularly up to it. Alan Badel was effective as crazy John the Baptist in Salome but lacks a certain something as Wagner - warmth, empathy... something. I didn't care what happened to him. Yvonne de Carlo does what she can as his first girl which isn't much with some terrible dialogue; but she's better than Rita Gam and Valentina Cortese in support. Actors play Ludwig II and Liszt but no one makes much impact.

There are some pretty location shots and decent slabs of music but the whole sense I got from this was "meh".

Movie review - "War of the Wildcats" (1943) **1/2 (aka "In Old Oklahoma")

Part of John Wayne's appeal was that men liked him but many of the films he made were romances, where he often battled wills against a feisty dame.

Here the dame is Martha Scott who has a decent character to play - she's a teacher run out of town for writing a romance novel who wants to see the world. That's a fantastic set up. The film doesn't really develop it in an interesting way - or maybe I was biased because I wasn't a fan of Scott, who seemed to yell a lot. She also got shunted out of the action in the second half. However it is a better role than would be found in many John Wayne periods - two of the writers were women.

Albert Dekker isn't really good looking enough for his role since he has to be a romantic rival with Wayne for Scott. However he's a strong actor at least and is a formidable opponent. Although, why have the final fist fight off screen?

The support cast includes Gabby Hayes and Dale Evans (who would be Roy Rogers' partner). There's also Sidney Blackmer, playing President Teddy Roosevelt - who rode with Wayne in the Rough Riders (a good idea for a film).

On that Roosevelt note, this isn't a Western per se - it's set in 1906, during the oil boom. There are horses and Indians (getting kicked off their land for oil) and shoot outs but also oil.

Plenty of production value and pace. They didn't quite get the script and the cast right for me.

Movie review - "Flame of the Barbary Coast" (1945) **1/2

John Wayne and Ann Dvorak aren't one of the legendary teams of cinema- Wayne and Marlene Dietrich are, and that's who I assume Republic wanted for this movie. Wayne's a cowboy who winds up in Old San Francisco and falls for singer Dvorak; he gets ripped off by gambler Joseph Schildkraut then goes off, learns to gamble, and comes back to get revenge.

So it's part-cowboy movie part-20th Century Fox nostalgia musical - more of the latter really with Wayne using poker games instead of gunfights.

This really lacks colour and needed a few more songs and a proper musical star like Betty Grable or June Haver. Or maybe I'm just not used to Dvorak - she's got an enjoyable insolent quality and is refreshingly independent.

It's cheerful and lively - Joseph Kane does a decent job as director and Schildkraut is an effective villain. Borden Chase wrote the script.