Recently Rated Movies: Michael Gough and the Ice Cream for Crow

Find the Blackmailer (1943)
Dir.: D. Ross Lederman
TC4P Rating: 6/9

"Why, the nerve o' that tuh-mat-uh!"

Sure, watching "classic" classic film is often pretty great, though you sometimes find a dud among the films generally considered the greatest of all time. But "B" pictures are where the fun of classic film is really at, but you sometimes have to squirm your way through a lot of dross to find the real... well, "gems" may not be the word, but when you find a good one, they sparkle like any bonafide diamond. Of course, when you are hanging around such low-class digs, that gem may just be made of out paste instead.

As brisk (just 55 minutes long) as it is fun, Find the Blackmailer is a speedy little detective yarn featuring Jerome Cowan as D.L. Trees (his secretary is named Pandora Pines, so you get the gist of what is going on here), a private eye so far below public scrutiny that he gets the job in this picture just because nobody knows he is a detective. When a mayoral candidate (Gene Lockhart) gets involved deep with some gangsters, it is up to Trees to figure out the exceedingly convoluted mystery (involving the search for a talking crow) and save the day.

Find the Blackmailer is just a simple potboiler, but the performances are all engaging (I especially like Lockhart, but I like him in almost everything). The film is a wonderful showcase for Cowan, who played a lot of second bananas in his four-decade film career, including his supporting role in John Huston's The Maltese Falcon, two years before this picture, where he played the tragic part of Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer, who gets bumped off by Brigid O'Shaughnessy. But Cowan is the man here, an unlikely tough guy who is able to think his way out of rough spots, and is able to smart talk his way into uneasy alliances when he needs to do so.

And of course, some of that smart talk is what slowly endeared this movie to me, with lines like ""Beat it, before I throw a moth in your muffler!" Yeah, that kind of stuff gets me right here, as does all the silliness with the talking crow, which itself might be a not so subtle ribbing of The Maltese Falcon. There are worse films that have been nominated for Best Picture awards, so why not skip all of that high-falutin' garbage and just settle for a fun "B" pic? 

[Find the Blackmailer is available in the Warner Archive set, Warner Bros. Horror/Mystery Double Features, along with 5 other films. If you like "B" pictures, this is a must have set, especially for Sh! The Octopus.]


Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)
Dir.: R. Winer / Barry Mahon "Thumbelina" portion
TC4P Rating: 2/9

This one is currently frightening audiences -- and generating big laughs -- by being shown in trailers all over the country as part of a Rifftrax program being promoted in theatres right now. Unfortunately for me, seeing a truly bad movie as part of Mystery Science Theater 3000 or its offshoot riffing shows does not count as my having seen the actual film. And so I had to knock off a major blank spot on my film-watching resume by sitting down to watch a full version of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.

I said "watch a full version" rather than "watch the full version," because there are actually two different takes of this film. The Santa portion of the film is actually nothing but a wraparound segment that introduces a film within the film, a separately filmed fairy tale that could either be the story of Thumbelina or Jack and the Beanstalk (both filmed by exploitation director Barry Mahon), depending on which release you were unlucky enough to have caught. The films within the film are both longer than the combined before and after Santa segments, thereby rendering the title characters to also-ran status in their own movie.

As for the quality of the film, that varies between segments. The Santa portion looks like it was filmed outside someone's Florida beach house. After first hearing some completely talentless kids dressed at elves attempt to sing (and fail) about why Santa Claus hasn't returned to the North Pole, we see Santa use his mind control powers to enlist several local kids (some of the same ones playing the elves) to help him get his sleigh out from the beach sand holding it down. The kids get various animals to try and pull the sleigh free -- a gorilla, a warty pig, a sheep, and a cow -- but all to no avail. Why Santa doesn't get his fat ass out of the sleigh when the gorilla is pulling it will tell you all that you need to know. For some strange reason, we are shown shots of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn fiddling about on a raft in the water (with Ol' Man River on the soundtrack). As the kids give up hope, Santa tells them the story of Thumbelina.

The Thumbelina film not only has a different director, but is far better filmed than the Santa part. However, this is not praise, just a notice that the Santa scenes are some of the worst filmmaking that has ever been released theatrically, while the Thumbelina story is just a generic attempt at low-budget children's filmmaking. (It does raise my rating of the overall film just a tad since it so much better than the Santa wraparound.) We watch a pretty girl walk around the defunct Pirates World theme park in Dania, Florida, and she happens upon a series of diorama telling the story of Han Christian Andersen's Thumbelina. She imagines herself into the story, and then we get over an hour of slow-moving drama involving the birth of Thumbelina and her impending marriage to Mr. Mole. The songs are better than the ones in the Santa part of the film (and clearly a better songwriter too) though still not all that good. For the animals in the story, they have chosen to go with full head masks rather than makeup on the actors, and so all of the voices seem disembodied. It's dull but its better than what came before, and what will come at the end.

Returning to Santa, after the story, the kids depart for reasons unknown to the profusely sweating old elf, and thankfully he waits until they are gone to strip from his coat and belt down to his red t-shirt. When they return, all two dozen of them are hanging onto a red jalopy being driven by a poor guy trapped inside the silliest white rabbit costume that has every existed. It is the Ice Cream Bunny to the rescue, in a scene that only goes for the last ten minutes of the film, but seems to amble on for about three hours. And then these horrid urchins sing again... they... sing... again. (I'm sorry, but this film made me look up the definition of singing in the dictionary, because surely, this can't be what is meant.)

The whole affair really makes you start to hate the commercialization of Christmas even more, because without an audience out there willing to watch anything to do with the holiday, this movie doesn't get made. Maybe what we should have been teaching our children first all along was good taste. Manners, letters, numbers, potty training... that can all come later.

Oh, and singing. We should teach them to sing well too. That's something my ears learned from Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.


Black Zoo (1963)
Dir.: Herman Cohen
TC4P Rating: 5/9

Michael Gough. If there is one name that must be placed amongst the pantheon of the World's Hammiest Actors, Michale Gough must surely have a plaque there. You might know him best as Alfred the Butler in the four Burton/Schumacher Batman films, but Gough had acted for a very long time before that. For the purposes of this quickie, let's concentrate on a very small period in that career. In the late '50s and early '60s, he tore the horror world up in a trio of films for producer (and sometimes director) Herman Cohen, and where he really made the raised eyebrow and out-of-place tone of voice an art form.

My favorite of the three films has always been Horrors of the Black Museum, the first and best of the set, a Grand Guignol piece that I first saw as an older teenager and have never been able to get out of my system. (And it is one of the films to which I was tipped off by Stephen King's seminal non-fiction work, Danse Macabre.) The least of the trio is Cohen's giant gorilla epic, Konga, which while being highly derivative of better (and some worse) films, pushes the crazy factor just enough to make it interesting. Through both pictures, Gough controls your gaze for every second, his indignant face ready to burst (sometimes inappropriately) in every scene at the slightest provocation or perceived slight. And when things really start to not go his way, watch out!

But until this week, I had not seen the last film in the three Cohen/Gough team-ups, Black Zoo from 1963. After a beautiful girl is killed by a loose tiger on the street, we meet Michael Conrad (Gough), a British expat who runs a private zoo in Los Angeles called Conrad's Animal Kingdom. Even with Gough running about, all seems on the up and up at Animal Kingdom. Conrad leads tour groups to meet his lions, tigers, apes, and bears, and his wife runs a chimpanzee act that thrills audiences. Conrad himself seems to have an odd rapport with his predatory creatures, and he is seen to play his organ for his big cats while they fall asleep loose in his own home.

Jerome Cowan, whom you might remember from the first review regarding Find the Blackmailer above, shows up as someone attempting to swindle Conrad out of his immense property, and you can imagine how that works out. Anyone who crosses Conrad starts to disappear, and the police become increasingly suspicious, especially when the evidence at the crime scenes seems to point to animals as the killers. 

Once again, the result is a very derivative film, but what sets it apart from others of its ilk is its lead role featuring the nearly always sinister Gough. It is hard to watch this film in this age when all one can think about is the working conditions for the animals (except for the gorilla, which is not only a guy in a suit, but possibly the same suit from Konga). Even with some cool names showing up in the cast -- Elisha Cook Jr., Jeanne Cooper, Marianna Hill (yum!), Virginia Grey, and Edward Platt -- Gough is the whole show here. Like the other Cohen films, the main reason to watch is to see him puff and pout and plot his way out of and into situations. And he does it in the grandest way possible.

Yes, his hamminess is the big draw, but he was also an actor with a broad range -- appearing in Ealing comedies, Hammer and Amicus horror, Disney historical epics, and even winning a Tony Award for Best Actor in 1979. Gough, in any role, is always worthwhile, even when you really hate where they went with Alfred in the last two Batman films. Then again, I really hate where they went with every character in the last two Batman films, so I suppose that I should cut him some slack. He was just doing his job like any other working stiff actor.

Recently Rated Movies: Catching Up with Christopher Lee (the actor, not my brother…) Pt. 7

After a solid month of Halloween-oriented posts, it is time to return to the regular departments on The Cinema 4 Pylon. This time, we have three more wildly diverse films featuring the late, great Christopher Lee, as I attempt to see as many titles in his filmography as possible. 

Sherlock Holmes and the Incident at Victoria Falls (1992)

Dir: Bill Corcoran

TC4P Rating: 5

Over 25 years after his first effort to portray the famed Sherlock Holmes on screen was basically squandered by a German movie studio, Christopher Lee got a second (and third) shot at wearing the deerstalker cap in a pair of films that played as television movies and then went straight to video. The first film, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady, reintroduces Lee as the detective and Patrick Macnee as his Watson, both in their older years. Macnee was also getting another shot at his role after previously playing the good doctor in Sherlock Holmes in New York, opposite a fairly miscast Roger Moore.

In the second film in this pair, Holmes and Watson take to the Dark Continent under the orders of King Edward (Joss Ackland) to secure the Star of Africa diamond. On this adventure, they will end up cavorting with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt (a pretty good Claude Akins). The film makes an attempt at incorporating a storyline involving the making of the footage that Roosevelt shot on his journeys through Africa in the early days of cinema. Naturally, the diamond gets stolen, and as bodies start piling up, Holmes and Watson need to come to the rescue (with just a little bit of help of ol' Teddy himself).

While Lee and Macnee are pretty decent in their roles as the aging heroes, and Incident at Victoria Falls is nowhere near as bad as Lee's first Holmes attempt (1962's Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, discussed briefly here), the direction by Bill Corcoran is fairly by the book and a little dull, and it is not surprising to learn that the series of films was stopped after this one. It's a shame they didn't attempt a regular TV series instead, with briefer episodes, so we might have gotten a little bit more of this combo and let them stretch into the roles a little bit. It's a shame we never got a good Holmes film with Lee in his prime, as he may have been terrific in the original stories. Sadly, we will never know for sure.

Mask of Murder (1985)
Dir: Arne Mattsson
TC4P Rating: 4

"Psychiatrists have already taken a good look at him, and they can't make up their minds whether his problem is in his head or his balls." - Chief Superintendent Jonathan Rich (Christopher Lee)

Some creep wearing a sack with holes cut in it and a lipstick mouth commits a series of grisly straight razor murders of female victims one day, but is soon trapped by the police, led by Christopher Lee and Rod Taylor. Holed up on a snowy farm, the killer injures Lee, but is shot to pieces and dies. And with his death goes the string of murders. Or does it? 

Mask of Murder is directed by Swedish film veteran Arne Mattsson, and was filmed in Uppsala, Sweden rather than the "small town in Canada - Nelson" it purports to be via a brief subtitle at the beginning of the film. If you are unaware (or don't care), Uppsala is the hometown of film giant Ingmar Bergman, though there is absolutely no relationship between his justly revered oeuvre and this cheap, savage film to have been made there. (A trivial note, and nothing more.)

The series of murders pick up again not long after, and the film goes to no real great lengths at all to hide who is behind them. I will leave that to the viewer to discover, but when you watch the film, there can be no other choice. In the meantime, we get a lot of relationship/adultery drama between Taylor and Valerie Perrine, who plays his wife. Perrine has the best role in the film, and while I am not really a fan of hers, I did enjoy her in this one. She and Lee seem to be the only ones really engaged in their roles.

Mask of Murder has some gory parts (and not really all that well turned) and it also features the requisite '80s softcore nudity and strip club scenes. The winter backdrop of the town is a nice change from most films of this type, and lends an extra layer of atmosphere, even if the actors need to wear an extra layer or two of clothing. The vibe in the murder scenes is a bit eerie, and from the opening sequence of murders we can tell this is not going to go the normal slasher movie route. But that doesn't mean it goes anywhere really remarkable either. It looks like a horror film, but actually gets bogged down in the sort of territory that you would have seen Andrew Stevens directing and starring in at the beginning of the '90s. (There is even cheesy synthesizer music playing over the love scenes.) If only Shannon Tweed would show up to make it all look a little nicer.


The Keeper (1976)
Dir: T.Y. Drake
TC4P Rating: 4

"Now, whatever you do, don't let him hypnotize you!"

The Keeper is by far the most interesting film of the three I am including in this post, and that is by a long shot. Let me warn you at the outset, it's not good -- in fact, it's the worst film of the three -- but also the most interesting and least dull of the lot.

Written and directed by T.Y. Drake (who used to perform on The Andy Williams Show as a Good Time Singer), this low-budget Canadian effort stars Christopher Lee as The Keeper, a mysterious figure who runs a mental institution in what we are told is British Columbia in 1947. There are half-hearted attempts to convince us that the film takes place 29 years before it was filmed: jazz on the soundtrack, a tough guy detective in a trenchcoat (believe it or not, the dick's name really is Dick, as in Richard "Dick" Driver), fast-paced tough guy talk, period cars, and most hilarious of all, a totally out-of-place shoeshine boy working on a mostly barren, leaf-strewn avenue who dispenses helpful advice (this kid seems to shine shoes all hours). But none of it works at all to take us out of whatever present we are in when we watch it.

Dick Driver is trying to get to the bottom of a mystery involving the wealthy patients being "kept" in the Keeper's asylum. "I'm only a custodial physician. Patients here call me the Keeper," insists the crippled, older man Lee portrays, but there is clearly something else at play here. His obsession with hypnotherapy may provide a clue, since he seems to be able to trick any visitors to the institution into being hypnotized before they leave. When visitors leave the institution, they seem to bite the dust, leaving large inheritances directly to their relatives inside the Keeper's institution.

And so we get wild, psychedelic scenes of never-ending spirals, flashing lights, and images of attacking dogs, spinning watches, and subliminal spiders, as the Keeper tries to control his subjects to his truly undisguised nefarious ends. Practically everyone in the film undergoes hypnosis at some point, and with everybody under his influence, it would take a major misstep for the Keeper to be brought down. Hmmm... I wonder what it will be?

We also get the bumbling interference of a police inspector, who besides getting tripped up by some mild slapstick, also gets hypnotized into thinking he is a choo-choo train, which is the most over-the-top sequence in the film (at least until the final shot of Lee at film's end). Though the actor (his name is unimportant) looks more like Harold Peary, who played the Great Gildersleeve, the police inspector kept reminding me of classic porn star John Leslie throughout the film. It was probably the weird mustache he wears that did it, as it is similar to the one that Leslie wore in a number of films. It's strange that I made this connection, because my mind created another link to '70s porn when I heard the private eye's name was Dick Driver. I could not help thinking that with a slight change in location, this script, inane as it is, could have been used in a Johnny Wadd film.

Now there's a job offer Christopher Lee probably would not have accepted in his very prolific decade of the 1970s.