In short: The Comancheros (1961)

After arresting professional gambler – and man with an awesome name – Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman) for killing a man in a duel in Louisiana, Texas Ranger Jake Cutter (John Wayne) repeatedly finds himself pushed into teaming up with the guy. Especially once the Ranger he gets the mission to break up a very particular gang of arms dealers known as Comancheros that rile up (and arm) the Comanches. The usual stuff about growing respect and understanding happens, of course.

This John Wayne (and Stuart Whitman) vehicle is the final movie directed by Michael Curtiz, director of many a great movie and some that annoyed me considerably (and may still be great movies if you’re not me) and it is very much a mixed bag. It’s certainly  one of those Westerns that doesn’t play very well today ideologically, its crappy treatment of Native Americans having a certain whiff of conviction instead of being a mere genre trope, which doesn’t really surprise given its star’s real life politics.

Structurally, it’s a bit of a mess, often playing more as a series of scenes connected by very tenuous strands than a proper narrative or a character piece. On the positive side, at least half of those single scenes are very strong indeed, particularly whenever the film posits Wayne - at this stage of his career still not a great actor but one who had gotten very comfortable with the possibilities afforded by his considerable screen presence - as a guy who is actually hiding quite a bit of wisdom about matters of the human heart he has won through hard experience under his tough guy exterior. There’s some good Western action too, though the Indian attacks tend to the overly generic, and Curtiz doesn’t always seem to have the staging as well in hand as he could.

The film is also spending too little time on its most interesting character, Pilar Graile (Ina Balin), the daughter of the Comanchero leader as well as the instant love of Whitman’s life and the problems of being an independent (clearly raised Libertarian, poor kid) woman falling in love but wanting to keep control of her life. Balin is great with what the film gives her, really making much of the fact the script isn’t portraying her character as a shrew nor as an idiot once she’s properly in love. I really want a remake that’s all about her.

Three Films Make A Post: The Best Loved Bandit Of All Time!

On the Rocks (2020): This is another one of those films where I seem to have seen a very different movie than most other people. After comparisons with classic screwball comedies, praises for its New York-ness and with Rashida Jones and Bill Murray in front of the camera and Sofia Coppola behind it, I was pumped for a bit of light yet fun entertainment. What I actually got was a rich people’s problems film where poor people only exist as waiters, waitresses and drivers to serve as a background for some of the least interesting marital and daddy issues imaginable. Most of the film may take place in New York, but it’s certainly no part of New York anyone but the upper class twats inhabiting it would ever want to see. It’s all just very dull to look at, and that dullness runs through most of the film – it’s slow, the emotional stakes for this viewer are very low, and when it comes to light charm, humour and hidden depths, you won’t want to throw out your Nora Ephron movies.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938): So let’s get back eight decades into the past to find something more lively. Michael Curtiz’s Hollywood version of elements of British folklore is of course one of the best swashbucklers every made, and a film that still plays rather wonderfully. Sure, as always, there are elements very much of its time especially when it comes to characterisation, and I’m always flabbergasted by the Richard the Lionheart love (a guy who clearly didn’t give a crap about the country he was supposed to rule, what with him always gallivanting off to a crusade or two, or finding other business to be away on), but otherwise, this is a flawless movie, from Errol Flynn’s ability to play a smug bastard but still make him charming and likeable, over the eye-popping colour palette, to an astonishing amount of clever and playful little touches and ideas in the script. There’s never a dull moment here, that’s for sure.

The Green Room aka La chambre verte (1978): I have to admit that I’ve never been a particular admirer of Henry James, not even of his visits in the realms of the supernatural and the borderline weird, but the man’s body of work certainly has resulted in quite a few great movies. Case in point is this one, where François Truffaut mixes James’s story “The Altar of the Dead” with elements of a couple of other short stories that apparently connected with the director’s own haunted thoughts about the people in his life he lost. The result is an emotionally and intellectually complex meditation on what we owe the dead, how the memory of the dead can dramatically overshadow the ability to live life itself.

So it is very much a ghost story, though one without any ghosts but the ones the protagonist, as well played by Truffaut in his last stint as an actor, creates through his inability to let go of the love as well as his grudges against the dead. I don’t really want to pretend it’s a horror film in anything but the broadest sense, yet it does at the very least tell of a haunted man and incorporates some finely wrought gothic imagery. Beside being brilliant.

Past Misdeeds: The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

Sportsman and collector Archer Coe (Robert Barrat) dies in what at first looks like suicide to investigating Detective Heath (Eugene Pallette) and District Attorney Markham (Robert McWade), but amateur detective Philo Vance (William Powell, shortly before Nick met Nora) soon sets the two straight, for what we have here is a rather complicated case of murder that just happens to be a real locked room mystery, too.

Finding suspects is quite easy in this case, for Coe must have been the most hated, and surely the least pleasant, man in town. Possible suspects are (and I might forget one or two here, given their sheer number): Archer’s brother Brisbane (Frank Conroy), the kind of guy who carries around a book called “Unsolved Murders” when suspect in a murder investigation; Archer’s niece Hilda Lake (Mary Astor), terrorized by her uncle’s oh so cruel holding of the purse strings as well as by the fact that he’s standing in the way of her marriage plans, and, the film suggests not particularly subtly, sex life; Sir Thomas MacDonald (Paul Cavanagh), the marriage plan embodied; Archer’s secretary Raymond Wrede (Ralph Morgan), also interested in marrying Hilda, though she doesn’t want to; Archer’s cook Liang (James Lee), a highly educated Chinese gentleman who helped Archer out in some shady antiques dealings and now finds himself not only relegated to his cook but also further betrayed; Eduardo Grassi (Jack La Rue), a near business partner of Archer’s who sees himself spurned after Archer finds out he has an affair with his girlfriend Doris Delafield (Helen Vinson); and something’s off about the butler Gamble (Arthur Hohl), too.

As if being spoiled for choice weren’t difficult enough for Vance, it’s also devilishly complicated to actually establish what happened the night of Archer’s death. After a while, there’s another corpse to deal with, and as many obfuscation attempts as there are suspects. Now wonder Nick Charles would start to drink so many martinis.

It is rather seductive to pretend that Philo Vance changed his name to Nick Charles after this particularly stressful case, started drinking too much, and married Myrna Loy. At least William Powell’s performance here, in his last and – as I’m told - best Philo Vance film, isn’t far off from type, just sober. Did someone by any chance write a meta-detective novel with this plot? Someone should.

Anyhow, Michael Curtiz’ The Kennel Murder Case has not only the reputation of being the best Powell-starring Van Dine adaptation, but also of being the best of the Philo Vance mysteries, which I find difficult to doubt, given how perfect an example of its style this is, with little room for improvement except for the film being an over-constructed “golden age” mystery. But complaining about that would be idiotic, my general dislike for that part of mystery history notwithstanding. Particularly when it turns out that, when they are executed this well, I don’t mind the tropes of the sub-genre at all.

This is one of the films where all elements come together so well, it can turn even someone not particularly fond of a (sub-)genre like me into a believer. The film’s virtues start with Robert N. Lee’s and Peter Milne’s excellently paced script that has a point-on rhythm so well realized, not only are various revelations here actually exciting even whole new film languages and mystery sub-genres later, even the comic relief sequences seem to belong in the movie instead of being their usual, squeezed-in selves. There are also some surprisingly pleasant elements to the film not very typical of its time, with a Chinese character, played by a Chinese American who doesn’t have to speak in pidgin or bizarre folksy metaphors, and who isn’t our detective’s main suspect just because of his race. In fact, there’s even a short bit where Vance reacts to Heath’s casual racism with a nice little eye-roll. Why, the film treats Liang like a human being not qualitatively different from anyone around him, and actually seems a bit sympathetic towards a man having to live quite below his abilities because of his skin colour. The film doesn’t make a big thing out of this, but it’s very pleasant to witness in a film of this age nonetheless; it beats me if this is part of Van Dine’s novel, too, though I very much doubt it, going by the man’s general hateful snobbery.

The script is full of these little touches that give its stock characters more life (as does the fine cast), and just make the - well-constructed yet contrived, as it should probably be in this sub-genre – plot quite a bit more interesting because it seems to involve people with actual social and personal relations; I found the mystery itself pretty satisfying and fun to watch unravelling too.


Curtiz’ direction is also something special, for most of the minor productions of big houses of the time were directed either with carelessness or with a by-the-book style that never seems to even aspire to provide an audience with something to look at beyond groups of people who might as well be assembled on a theatre stage. Curtiz approach here is much more dynamic, with many an expressive camera angle, movements that explore the film’s sets as physical spaces, and a clear and concise idea of how to make the most out of the actors’ performances, as well as how to deepen an inevitably dialogue-heavy story through the things the audience sees. That’s the sort of thing that gives a director like Curtiz, who at the time was just another hired studio gun, if one with quite a bit of experience already, his auteur reputation. Even though I’m not a fan of his horror films for Warner, and don’t even enjoy Casablanca all that much, it’s hard to disagree when confronted with as perfect a genre film as The Kennel Murder Case, and not just in the light of other highlights of the director’s filmography.

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

Warning: spoilers eighty decades in the making ahoy!

After a prologue that sees unfortunately named brilliant wax figure artist Ivan Igor’s (Lionel Atwell) life’s work destroyed because his money man (Edwin Maxwell) wants to cash in on some sweet, sweet, fire insurance money, we fast forward to New York, twelve years later.

After she has died under mysterious circumstances, the corpse of a female socialite is stolen from the morgue before anyone can get around to her autopsy. The police thinks her ex-boyfriend, Bland Male Lead #1 is responsible for her death and has hired someone to steal the body. Motor-mouthed, wise-cracking reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) disagrees, mostly because that stolen body is the eighth gone missing in the last few months. Fortunately, random chance – the script is not hip to bizarre concepts like journalists or police investigating something and following clues when it can get away with just putting them where the plot needs them by the hand of the script gods – soon suggests the newly opening wax museum of…Ivan Igor.

For Igor’s getting back into the wax business again. Because his hands and his legs have been badly damaged in the fire that destroyed his beloved wax figures, he has officially hired some deaf mute guy and Bland Male Lead #2 to be his hands. Well, and he’s also killing people and coating their bodies in wax, using a junkie (Arthur Edmund Carewe) as his off-site wax creation front. Oh, and wouldn’t you know it, Bland Male Lead #2’s girlfriend Charlotte (Fay Wray) just happens to be Florence’s roomie? But that’s not coincidence enough – she’s also a dead ringer for the masterpiece of Igor’s first museum, Marie Antoinette, so even if you’re from the 30s, you know where this is going.

Mystery of the Wax Museum brings parts of the main team behind Doctor X back together in the two-tone Technicolor horror business, namely brilliant director Michael Curtiz, Atwill, Wray, and some of the other actors. It also replaces the earlier film’s wise-cracking reporter with a female one, leading to the not exactly common sight of a pre-60s horror film with a female lead.

Of course, there’s two caveats to that. For one, despite being the film’s central non-villainous character, Florence’s agency is rather undercut by a script whose dependence on coincidence to get anything done borders on the absurd. So, while Florence certainly always is where things are happening, and does certainly show much more independent thought and action than any of the Bland Male Leads or Wray’s character who is only there to look pretty and scream in the last act – which I suspect is about all Wray was actually able to but I might be wrong – the script never actually does much with her. The second problem, at least to an audience in the 21st century, is that Florence is the most motor-mouthed wise-cracking reporter in a film landscape rather full of them, a character type one needs to be in a patient and tolerant mood to watch for more than five minutes. I found myself warming to Farrell’s performance, though, perhaps because her hyperactive craziness stands in such a marked contrast to the wax figure like blandness of everyone around her not named Igor.

For my tastes, the film also spends too many of its eighty minutes of runtime on showing us Florence finding out things the audience already knows, the film’s mystery elements and its horror parts never gelling very well. There’s also a subplot in which Igor takes revenge on the wax figure burning villain of his past but the film mostly hand waves through it in favour of showing us characters finding out things we already know.

In direct comparison, Mystery is still a much more coherent film than its predecessor Doctor X, but it tends to focus on exactly the wrong things and loses the free-form, lurid craziness that was that film’s forte without finding much worthwhile to replace it.

Of course, there are still many bits and pieces to like about Mystery of the Wax Museum. Curtiz – not unexpectedly – makes the best out of the awkward script, and creates a handful of scenes where the more expressionist of the sets and the colour technique create a creepy mood still effective after all these years. Atwill’s make-up is very good too, as is his over-the-top portrayal of the crazed artist, while Farrell goes all out in a genre that would take decades to give actresses many opportunities to do that, and Wray screams as is her wont. That’s certainly not enough to make the film what I’d call a classic but it is certainly enough to make it worth watching beyond its obvious historical interest.

Doctor X (1932)

A mysterious serial killer dubbed the Moon Killer goes around murdering people on full moon nights. His modus operandi is a bit complicated, seeing as it involves strangulation, the use of a very specific surgical instrument and a bit of cannibalism (hooray for pre-code movies!). The brain-dead cops investigating are completely out of their depth, until they realize the surgical instrument is only used in the medical school/research institute of Dr. Jerry Xavier (Lionel Atwill) who also just happens to be the local coroner.

They’re in luck too, for it is holiday time, so obviously, the deeds can only have been committed by one of the handful of teachers using vacation time for their studies (the idea a student or a random visitor might just have stolen one of the things goes unmentioned, of course, or that someone just might have brought one of the instruments from another country). The problem is that these teachers (as played by Preston Foster, John Wray, Harry Beresford and Arthur Edmund Carewe) are all hilariously creepy horror movie characters who all have backgrounds that might involve cannibalism. Then there’s that other tiny problem that our cops don’t actually interview potential suspects, as well as problem number three: Xavier really doesn’t want the bad publicity that’d come with a proper investigation (and what’s a few murders, right?), so he talks the police into giving him 48 hours to find out the truth himself.

For that purpose, Xavier does the obvious thing – packing up his handful of suspects, his daughter Joanne (Fay Wray), his creepy butler (George Rosener) and the obligatory comic relief maid (Leila Bennett), isolating them in an Old Dark House on an island, and testing his peers for craziness via the power of Mad Science(!) and murder re-enactments. There’s of course also the mandatory wise-cracking reporter (Lee Tracy) smuggling himself in, though this one is armed with joy buzzer, so watch out, evil! Obviously, more murders will happen too.

If one applies contemporary standards and tastes to the script for Michael Curtiz’ Doctor X, it’s pretty much impossible not to think of it as a misbegotten mess that violently squashes together unfunny comedy, pulp nonsense science, old dark house movie elements, and an obligatory romance until no narrative sense can have any chance. Even by the looser standards of 1932, quite a bit here could have been handled better.

However, it is exactly this utter disregard for coherence and taste that makes the film as fun to watch as it is. For once, a 30s horror movie actually holds to the promise of being a lurid tale that feels ripped right out of the pulps – and we’re not talking comparatively tasteful pulps like Argosy here but the sort of crime magazine that would mutate into the weird menace pulp soon enough. In fact, this rather suggests an alternative reality where the Hayes Code was never instated and where a movie could try to get close to become a moving shudder pulp (for better and worse). This one’s not quite there yet, but neither were the pulps. and the films that would have been exist only in the imagination but man, Curtiz’ film does come rather close to the ideal.

Making up for the load of comedy, Curtiz films the actual horror parts with surprising intensity, just pushing through the silliness of many of their set-ups to the soft core of horrific goodness. Seriously, the director gets quite a bit of mileage out of decidedly contrived situations, pushing through this viewer’s jaded distance by the sheer power of visual imagination and tight editing. If you’ve seen the wrong movies of this era of filmmaking, you might assume a certain static and theatrical look was the only possibility with the technical possibilities of the time but Curtiz’ film feels dynamic and lively throughout. It’s not a naturalistic looking film, obviously. Curtiz, particularly in the wonderful and completely bonkers third act, uses quite a few expressionist techniques that are only made to feel more unreal thanks to the beautiful yet strange - to modern eyes - two-tone Technicolor this was shot in.

All of this – as well as properly exalted acting and some choice SCIENCE(!) equipment – does turn the experience of watching this into something quite close to having a lurid dream.

On ExB: The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

I’m not generally very fond of the so-called Golden Age of Mystery (which, like the Golden Age of Science Fiction, must also be twelve), but when a film is as wonderful as Michael Curtiz’ The Kennel Murder Case, my grumpiness is replaced by admiration.

Consequently, this week’s column over at ExB gets quite enthusiastic about the film. Click on through if you can cope with the resulting lack of bitterness, despite being on the Internet.

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