The Flying Serpent (1946), Sam Newfield.

The Flying Serpent

The screenshot above is quite a bit like a blurry Nessie snapshot, but this was never Producer Releasing Corporation's intention.  This is simply what a a terrible print of a grade-Z 40s flick looks like.  The Flying Serpent is a remake of The Devil Bat which was a huge hit for PRC.  George Zucco, who starred in countless poverty row movies but also had a brief career in serious theatre, takes the lead here (Bela Lugosi had it in Devil Bat) as mad-scientist and controller-of-beasts.  The Flying Serpent has zero budget so get ready for the same old painted backdrop over and over and over and a dull cast punctuated with embarrassing efforts at humour.  For your viewing pleasure:  the acting achievements of all those who have gazed on the Flying Serpent!

Not gazing at The Flying Serpent.  Smug reporter pulling superior, semi-interested face for his interview subject.

The Town Went Wild (1944), Ralph Murphy.

Something tells me there's no such guy as Tyremus! 

The Town Went Wild is a goofy teen date movie (I can just hear "Wake up, Little Suzie" in my head now).  The teenage kids of two feuding families go out to get a marriage license behind their parents' back.  But the city clerk discovers that the teens may have been switched at birth, meaning the husband and wife-to-be may actually be brother and sister!  Is this movie an effort to get teenagers to think twice before getting hitched (or worse)?  Aside from the teens (who are fairly natural) the acting is across-the-board hammy resulting in a lot of forced levity.

The script for The Town Went Wild  is attributed to Clarence Greene, Bernard Roth and Russell Rouse, who were all thirty years old at the time the film was released.  Roth had been working for an agent who represented both Freddie Bartholomew and Jimmy Lydon (both of whom appear in the film) and gave Greene and Rouse their "in" in the industry (at PRC).  Even though they started their work in a bottom-of-the-barrel poverty row studio, Greene and Rouse went on to collaborate on a number of classic scripts including D.O.A. and Pillow Talk.  Gotta start somewhere!

This is how teenagers dressed in the 40s!  

I'm From Arkansas (1944), Lew Landers.

Hi, friends!  Let's see what's cookin' as far as hillbilly B's go!  This is a PRC release showcasing country tunes and all other kinds of minor achievements in southern rural entertainment. In the thinnest of storylines, an all-female theatre troupe heads down south to see Esmeralda, the Jenkins' family's pig that "threw out" a record-breaking litter of 18 piglets.  Their manager thinks he can somehow develop a box-office smash out of the pig-inspired Pitchfork, Arkansas visit.  Coincidentally, staying at the Jenkins' house is an all male troupe of musicians that tease the girls, exaggerating their country roots wearing fake beards and carrying moonshine jugs.  

1, 3, 3...  that's a lot of piglets.  Well, at least I thinks it might be... I ain't never learned to count!

Yes, lodging at the Jenkins' is just an excuse to yodel, play some fiddle, get handsome Bruce Bennett and Iris Adrian together... and watch a godawful ventriloquist act!  

El Brendel, the "Swedish" boarder, likes to  force feed his dummy peanuts.

The idea of a fake Swedish accent being instantly hilarious is beyond me, and this dummy act is the worst.  But the musical numbers are not bad.  Apparently for all involved, white hicks were just simple doofuses that liked to sing.  I guess I'm looking for malice  - where's the illegal stills, the distrust of outsiders and evading the law?  Must keep searching old B's.  

Corregidor (1943), William Nigh.

Look, honey!  We're in the "Philippines"!

Corregidor is an ambitious production from poverty row studio PRC, telling the story of the attack of the strategic American post also known as "The Rock" by the Japanese in 1941.  A lively cast keeps this one going, even though the sets are threadbare (they are passable for dimly lit trench scenes, but make scenic views look sad and hokey).  Elissa Landi's beautiful smile buoys a small romantic subplot: does she love the man she just married (the always dignified Otto Kruger) or her old boyfriend, known only as "Dr Michael" (played without much magnetism by Donald Woods)?  (I would have stuck with Kruger).  A physician who has abandoned her career, she surprises one of her love interests by trekking thousands of miles from the US and surprising him with a proposal of marriage.  The story, partially written by Edward G Ulmer, focuses on the hastily assembled, poorly equipped medical team that attends to those wounded by the surprise attack.  The script throws everything at us, and isn't shy about the ugly truths of war. Corregidor is an interesting attempt to tell a current-events story and while it's no Bataan, I'll damn it with faint praise:  it's not a complete stinker!

"You have her, she likes you best, Dr. Michael."  "No, no, I insist, old man."

Machine Gun Mama (1944), Harold Young.

This is nothing more than a sad little sausage cranked from PRC.  As the extensive introductory titles explain, we basically have two guys from Brooklyn in Mexico, trying to sell an elephant.  Let's look at that again on paper.  Is there a movie here?  Well, there could have been but seems they just started the cameras rolling with a few notes on the back of a napkin.  Oh, PS, this movie has nothing to do with gangsters:  the Machine Gun Mama of the title is a stereotypical Latina spitfire who gets a hold of a carnival airgun and shoots the bejeezus out of a rack of ceramic prizes.   I've been hornswoggled!

The Brute Man (1946), Jean Yarborough.

The Brute Man has a clunky storyline, weak supporting acting and some chestnuts of dialogue ("because, you see, I'm blind"), but the approach to the material creates a sufficiently creepy atmosphere.  Rondo Hatton plays a disfigured man who ekes out an invisible existence in a small town --  until he goes on a murder spree that seems rooted in revenge.   Hatton, who suffered from acromegaly (a disease that produces bone malformations) is a quiet, awkward presence.  The fact that this is not a makeup job lends a sense of sadness to the role.   The movie was promoted as a "revenge" story, but the indiscriminate choice of victims and method - back breaking - deepens the revulsion.  

A grocery boy spies on The Creeper in his wharf-side shack.

Lady in the Death House (1944), Steve Sekely.

Slightly preposterous PRC prison movie has Jean Parker playing prim bank clerk Mary Kirk Logan whose terrible past consists of her father's running of a legal pinball business.  When Logan's blackmailer, a character named Willis Millen (say that ten times), is killed she is sent to prison for his murder.  Lionel Atwill plays a criminologist who attempts to free her.  Jean Parker is lovely but once she's in the slammer this movie takes a dive; Atwill just can't keep the movie going.  The narrative structure doesn't help: Atwill statically reads Mary's last letter to the world before her execution and the entire film is told in dreary flashback.  We have no more dreadful villain than circumstance as once again in a classic poverty row film, a virtuous young person is erroneously sent to jail for a crime he or she didn't commit.  The audience knows this, and even the characters say so!  In fact, there's almost a fist fight over whether or not to throw the switch on the electric chair!  Note the use of the word "almost" - once again, an opportunity for a lively moment of action is lost.

Manny Farber had it right when he pinpointed the problem with B-movies.  In his 1943 essay Our Town, he wrote: "since we find that the B picture is not experimental, we might then expect, because censorship and box-office decree that no one's feelings be either examined or hurt, that is at least be a fairly innocuous picture of an average American family."  Often Bs attempting to be noirs fail because they are ultimately crime pictures without criminals and all the gooey good stuff that comes along with crime - betrayals, secrets, motives and antagonists - is missing!  In any B without a Lugosi or a Karloff, the perpetrators only pop up in the last minute to tie a bow on the whole thing.   

The film's weakest link is Marcia Mae Jones who appears as Suzie Kirk, Mary's dissolute sister who brags that Atwill will probably need a lot more paper if he wants to write down the names of all of her boyfriends!  Though her character is pivotal to the plot, we never really understand Suzie's motivations aside from the fact that she's dippy and a bit of a nymphomaniac.  This lack of understanding just creates more slack in what should have been a taut thriller! 

Problems with the chafing dish at The Grotto

The Missing Corpse (1945), Albert Herman.

Oh my God, he's in the linen chest!

One-note comedy of manners in which a murdered body is planted on an innocent businessman who happened to have a grudge against the deceased.  Everyone turns in their work on time, but nobody shows any imagination.   Do you hear me, PRC? 

Oh my God, he's in the woodpile!

I Take This Oath / Police Rookie (1940), Sam Newfield.

Mike Hanagan is a veteran policeman who uncovers some juicy tidbits on the numbers racket, but right after a cozy dinner of "Irish turkey" (corned beef and cabbage) he gets bombed to pieces in his garage.  Son Steve decides to go through police training and track down the mugs that got his dear old da.  The story is toothless and predictable and despite a few actions scenes (car accidents and shootouts), unimaginative staging sees them fall flat.  Steve repeatedly bounces between clues to his father's death and being chewed out by the police captain for missing classes.  Baddies don't materialize until the end, which doesn't provide much tension, either!  A triangular love story is supposed to add a little sizzle but it's pretty clear that Steve's girlfriend just wants to get married as soon as he graduates.

The scene in which Steve is attempting to track down a shady character illustrates how poverty row B's err on the safe side with their perennially bland protagonists:  clearly ill at ease in a night club, Steve balks at the high price of a drink.  Feeling uncomfortable when a house girl asks him for a drink, he shuffles out and naively asks too many questions of the doorman.  I can't help but think that if this were an A picture (or at least a 50s B), the audience would escape with the character into the forbidden world of a seedy nightclub and at least enjoy the ambiance as he maneuvered the scene smoothly.  Instead in B-land we are stuck with a middle class schmuck as our tour guide.  Bah!

As actress Joyce Compton demonstrates, by 1940 women's hairdos got a little complicated.  Is it just me or is the guy on the left a dead ringer for Norm MacDonald?

Detour (1945), Edgar G Ulmer.

You know when two men start discussing scars, it's only going to get more interesting.  Nightmarish hitchhiking thriller that's just about entirely filmed with process shots - you know, those  annoyingly fake scenes of actors pretending to drive a car with a stock footage background.  But in this case, the story's too good to worry about whether or not he's really steering all the bends in the roads.  Ann Savage plays just about the most hideous, loathsome, witchy female film character I can think of.  In an interview with Bogdanovich, Edgar G Ulmer reminds us that his leading man, Tom Neale, had many shady misadventures off-screen as well.  Next: must track down Ulmer's The Naked Dawn!

 

The Panther's Claw (1942), William Beaudine.

Everett P Digberry is a 90 lb milquetoast, wig-maker by profession, and a victim of extortion.  Or is he?  Corny little whodunit that is so cheaply slapped together that it had me laughing just like actor Sidney Blackmer (playing Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt), who bubbles up with inappropriate giggles at the oddest moments.  So this Digberry lives in some kind of hotel apartment that consists of just a kitchen and a hallway?  What were his whale of a wife and five daughters doing out of town anyway?  Did cops in the 40s not need warrants?  Remember, they "scientifically established" certain facts in this one!

Boy Scout Troop does what?

Hollywood and Vine (1945), Alexis Thurn-Taxis.

 

Toooo much waltzing dog. 

Bluebeard (1944), Edgar G Ulmer.

For some reason, I always thought Bluebeard was a pirate.  Wrong!  You know, when a prospective date tells you "you ask too many questions," and when he confesses he has "things to hide" he's probably not the man for you.  The Carradine family definitely has a cool gene.  But otherwise a sad, slapdash, badly told story with bad lighting.  

The Devil Bat (1940), Jean Yarbrough.

Reporter Kills Devil Bat! Oh and PS, Americanism and Girls!

Great thriller B! Bela Lugosi is kindly "village doctor" whose scientific research gets ripped off by local moneyed family; he seeks revenge by electrocuting bats until they feel like chewing on the jugulars of his oppressors. Bela Lugosi is such a dapper guy, always in that sharp fedora and full suit. This one is pretty solid. I appreciated all the little touches: the great question-mark tie worn by the Chicago newspaperman, the strange family portraits in Lugosi's hallway. The chilling screech heard when the bats descend on their prey is fantastic! I haven't had so much fun since The Tingler!

$5000? I can't believe these jerks!

Baby Face Morgan (1942), Arthur Driefuss.

Hil-ar-i-ous! Simple short flick by wonderfully named "Producers Releasing Corporation." (It's like they lacked the dough to even think up a good name). When mob loses its beloved leader Mike Morgan, the brains behind the operation seeks out a small town rube to act as a front and unite the old gang. Edward Morgan, played by Richard Cromwell, sits behind NYC (oops - Central City!) office desk of shell company and sells racket-proof insurance to small businesses! Apparently a kleig light is visible in one of the shots - I didn't notice it probably because I kept laughing out loud.