Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

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Take Me Out to the Ball Game PosterThis is a film that I would recommend to all the people complaining that our professional athletes are overcompensated. Not because I think these people are jealous whiners and that they deserve to have to sit through this forgettable musical filled with unremarkable tunes, dance numbers that don’t ever catch fire, and a story about as thin as Frank Sinatra, though that wouldn’t be totally unwarranted punishment for them. But because this movie teaches us what happens when pro ballplayers don’t make enough money and have to find second jobs from shady gamblers.

Right from the beginning, the movie demonstrates how desirous it is for our sports heroes to not be forced into off season employment when we meet up with Gene Kelly and Old Blue Eyes as they perform their vaudeville routine that revolves around a lot of singing and dancing to the title song. Continue reading “Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)” →

Journey Beneath the Desert (1961)

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We’ve all admired director Edward G. Ulmer’s ability to make decent little movies like Detour and The Man From Planet X with nothing beyond a camera and a few actors. He had an uncanny ability to elicit an atmosphere and a look with these movies that belie their abbreviated shooting time and their even more abbreviated budget, so I was intrigued to see how his Journey Beneath the Desert would turn out. Could Ulmer finally be the guy to deliver on the promise of all those “lost races under the earth ruled by sexy broads” movies that inevitably disappointed? Continue reading “Journey Beneath the Desert (1961)” →

Deception (1946)

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Deception teaches us the hard way that the only thing worse than a film ending with a big cello concerto is a film that drones on with lots of talk ten minutes after the big cello concerto.

Watching Paul Henreid straddling a big violin as he makes all these “either I’m a musical genius or I’m in need of some serious fiber” faces while he plays some obnoxious dirge that composer/rival Claude Rains dreamed up in between bouts of surly self-pity at having lost the affections of Bette Davis, made me realize why you don’t see a lot of love triangle movies involving classical musicians these days. Continue reading “Deception (1946)” →

House of Usher (1960)

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Roger Corman‘s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher is a bore that left me with several questions. For instance, do the characters really stand around for the first forty minutes whining about some family destiny that dooms them all to death? Are there really only four actors in this movie not counting the extras in the dream sequence that Corman must have felt compelled to put in so that something remotely interesting could be highlighted in the movie’s trailer? Did Vincent Price really dye his hair blonde for the role of Roderick Usher? Continue reading “House of Usher (1960)” →

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)

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Having already run through this premise with Charles Laughton in 1933’s Island Of Lost Souls and a bunch of nobodies in 1959’s Terror Is a Man, I wasn’t too excited at the prospect of sitting through some goof in his ape man make-up running down Moreau’s laws whenever Moreau wandered into his cave with a bullwhip and a chip on his shoulder. Continue reading “The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)” →

Belles on Their Toes (1952)

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The Gilbreths, whose sole claim to fame is that they have never heard of birth control, stage an unwelcome return in this, the sequel to the insipid Cheaper By the Dozen and the results are more of the same: meandering stories that don’t hold your interest, moments designed to evoke laughs that succeed only in provoking yawns, and the complete downplaying of all but about two or three of the daughters. Continue reading “Belles on Their Toes (1952)” →