Radio review – SDP – “My Favourite Wife” (1951) **

The playing of Cary Grant and Betsy Drake (standing in for Irene Dunne) is immaculate, the central idea is a good one – but listening to this again it is striking how bitsy this is for a comedy considered to be a classic. There’s an awful lot of jumping up and down on the spot as the ex-wife turns up, then the other guy on the island turns up. This really needed a spine –some reason to propel the action (of course in the 40s maybe it was enough to stop Grant having sex with his new wife but that doesn’t come across now). At the end producer Leo McCarey speaks and he’s careful to praise actual director Garson Kanin.

Movie review – “Voodoo Woman” (1958) *

Tom Conway once achieved movie greatness with voodoo in I Walked with a Zombie and is here with some natives again this time for AIP – however Alex Gordon was no Val Lewton and Edward Cahn no Jacques Tourneur, and this is very poor. His co-star is Marla English, who comes across in Mark McGee’s book on AIP as a sexy, enigmatic good time girl – it was because of her I wanted to see this. She’s quite fun – never as good looking at the beginning as she is later on when she goes on safari along with great white hunter Mike Connors to look for some treasure. They run into Conway who has a creature who he gets to kill people. Typically dull handling from Cahn – if you ever want to know why Corman is regarded so highly, compare Corman’s films from this time. 

This doesn’t really feel like an AIP film – there’s no teenagers, or crazy creature, just a lot of running around a studio jungle – it’s more like a Monogram Picture from the 40s, without George Zucco, Lionel Atwill or Bela Lugosi (the film cries out for someone like this, a mistake AIP would rectify in their 60s horror films.) 

Very ordinary.

Movie review – “Shake, Rattle and Rock” (1956) *1/2

One of the those juke box rock and roll musicals which flourished in the late 50s, which featured a loose plot, usually about establishment figures worried about the corrupting influence of rock music being defeated by a hero who shows that the kids are alright, that served to enable a bunch of guest artists to sing. This was an AIP entry into the series, from one of their most prolific and boring directors, Edward Cahn. Mike Connors plays a DJ determined to hold a concert that the kids are alright and rock music is okay; Margaret Dumont is one of the fuddy duddies who wants to stop it. Among the guests are Fats Domino who sings ‘Aint that a Shame’. There’s an irritating beatnik comic relief who I kept thinking was Harpo Marx. It’s fairly tired with really dull handling, despite the talent of the acts. By the end, when Connors takes place in a trial to try and get the concert to go ahead, it’s just irritating, with a particularly drawn out scene where Connors cross examines himself.

Radio review – Escape – “The Most Dangerous Game” (1947) ***1/2

Escape didn’t always have the best actors but here they’ve got Hans Conreid and Paul Frees and the result is an excellent, faithful adaptation of the famous story. Exciting and enjoyable.

Radio review – SDP – “The Fugitive” (1951) *

One of John Ford’s lesser known films, this is about a priest who is being pursued in an unnamed American country simply by virtue of being a priest. Henry Fonda isn’t very good as said priest, mainly because he doesn’t convey the complexities of the part (which is one of Graham Greene’s “whiskey priests”). 

There are some interesting chats about the nature of religion, but this piece really had its balls cut off – and anyway I don’t think Ford was the director for it; he was better with myth than a serious treatment of religious prosecution, even if done in the guise of a chase fiml.

Movie review – “How to Make a Monster” (1958) **

Roger Corman was the best known producer for AIP in the 50s, but for a while Herman Cohen was just as important, as he’s the guy who made I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Cohen followed this up with I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and Blood of Dracula (posters for which appear in this) – then spun things on it’s head and sent it all up, with this film. Well it’s a kind of a send up – it’s set at American International Studios, a clear reference to AIP, but it actually seems more based on Universal – they used to make horror films but the studio’s moving in a new direction so they sack the make up man who swears revenge.

That’s a pretty good idea for a horror film – you have your crucial ingredient, a sympathetic villain/protagonist – but after that the ideas run out. There’s not enough satire of AIP, or horro movies, or teen films, or anything memorable really apart from the fact the last ten minutes are in colour.

It lacks interesting teenage characters (there are two young actors who are drawn in to kill on behalf of the make up man) and is really badly undercast. I kept wishing it was written by Chuck Griffith and starred someone like Vincent Price or Dick Miller – the lead guy is bland. John Ashley makes a cameo singing an Elvis-style number.

Radio review – Escape – “Man who Would be King” (1947) **1/2

Kipling’s marvellous story of adventure and hubris isn’t very long so it adapts well to the half hour Escape format – but this version lacks atmosphere and decent acting from the two leads (if they couldn’t have gotten decent English actors they just should have changed the two leads to Americans, it still would have worked and wouldn’t have had that naughty-naughty cockneys thing. After all, that's what John Huston was going to do when he wanted to make it with Gable and Bogart.)