Category: Classic

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

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There’s been some iffy Best Picture winners in the history of the Academy Awards. Mrs. Miniver‘s win back in 1942 over Kings Row and The Magnificent Ambersons comes immediately to mind as does Forrest Gump‘s win over any other movie released in 1994, but 1952’s selection, The Greatest Show On Earth, is easily the worst movie to win the biggest award in the movie biz.

I don’t know if this was some sort of lifetime achievement thing for producer/director Cecil B. DeMille (he would direct only one more feature, 1956’s The Ten Commandments) or if the Academy voters were made up of lion tamers, trapeze artists, and clowns, but this movie was more like an infomercial for Ringling Brothers (the opening credits state it was made with Ringling’s cooperation) than an actual movie. At least Jimmy Stewart was smart enough never to appear out of his clown make up, lest he be recognized as having been involved at all. Continue reading “The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)” →

The Best of Everything (1959)

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Despite starring Joan Crawford, Stephen Boyd, and Hope Lange, The Best of Everything manages to spend most of its two hours on exciting stuff like Joan throwing files on people’s desk, making them work late, and watching Lange go from dumb girl who just took the secretary job until her boyfriend gets back from London, to power-hungry wench that doesn’t care about men anymore once she’s jilted, to gal who is sweet on Mike Rice (Boyd), to dumb girl who is going to break up her old boyfriend’s marriage and then realizes that he’s only using her.

She isn’t the only woman that this movie focuses on though. This is a soap opera which means that you have the lives of a bunch of lonely, pathetic women intertwining. And by intertwining, I mean that occasionally they show up for work together and every so often they’ll all be back at their apartment at the same time to mope around about the latest stunt whatever piece of trash they’re dating just pulled. Continue reading “The Best of Everything (1959)” →

A Stolen Life (1946)

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Stolen Life PosterYou know you’re in for some rough sailing when it’s the evil twin that goes over the side of the boat leaving the goody-goody twin to assume her identity. Spoiling your “twin tricks Glenn Ford” gimmick by having him get the better twin after already dumping her for her slightly sluttier sister doesn’t make much sense and limits the sort of screeching drama that a movie of this sort demands.

A slow moving film that never amounts to much and frequently languishes on the shoals of extraneous plot points, A Stolen Life seems to be scripted without any concept of what a Bette Davis movie involving dirty tricks and silly plot twists is all about. Continue reading “A Stolen Life (1946)” →

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

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Having ridden the success of their monster films for somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years, by 1948 Universal had gone through about all the permutations of monsters battling one another they could think of. In an effort to suck even more money out of these played out ideas, they decided to insert their monsters into a comedy starring Abbott and Costello. The first of what turned out to be an ongoing series of these horrorific comedies is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and it is by far and away the best and funniest of the series. Continue reading “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)” →

Bloody Pit of Horror (1965)

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Mickey Hargitay was a body builder who starred in Hercules vs. the Hydra, Delirium, and a couple of other Italian schlock flicks, but the most impressive item on his resume is that he was once the husband of Jayne Mansfield.

He puts all that vital experience to use in Bloody Pit Of Horror as a guy that runs around shirtless in red tights, torturing and killing the folks who just wanted to use his castle to do some cheesecake photo shoots for a horror anthology they were working on.

There is a distinctly awesome vibe going on in this film and it has something to do with the fact that the well-oiled Hargitay runs around in his way too snug tights, his little red hood, and his large black belt, all the while complaining about how everyone is “corrupting the harmony of my perfect body.” This is the sort of thing you rarely get in horror films, even Italian ones! Continue reading “Bloody Pit of Horror (1965)” →

Flamingo Road (1949)

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This movie got off to a good start with me because we’re told right away that Flamingo Road was the road in this town (Bolden) where all the really powerful people lived. I like a movie that explains its obscure title early on because otherwise I’ll spend my time watching the movie and wondering just what the dickens the title is supposed to mean.

Even better, a sleazy carnival is visiting the wrong side of the tracks in town and Lane (Joan Crawford of Possessed) is dressed up in one of these harem girl outfits and shimmying along to that “there’s a place in France where the naked ladies dance” song that most of us had committed to memory by the second week of first grade. Continue reading “Flamingo Road (1949)” →

Possessed (1947)

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PossessedPosterAs someone in the beginning stages of schizophrenia, the voices in my head kept telling me that I should check out this movie starring Joan Crawford as a woman who goes off her rocker because of her obsession with Van Heflin.

With his boyish good looks and roguish charm, Van probably should have come with a warning label, especially since he causes Crawford’s Louise to disintegrate beautifully from a healthy, emotionally needy nurse to a deranged rich dame who imagines things and suffers from enormous mood swings.

Van plays David Sutton and is one of those single guys that likes hanging out with women so long as they know that it isn’t anything too serious. He’s an engineer of some sort and is prone to saying stuff like “I know two plus two is always four” and expects Louise to understand why this means they’ll never be married. Continue reading “Possessed (1947)” →