THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS

US, 1940, 64 minutes, black and white.
Victor Jory, Jo Ann Sayers, Russell Hayden, Morris Ankrum, Noah Beery Jr, J.Farrell Mac Donald, Tom Tyler, Esther Estrella.
Directed by Lesley Selander.

During the making of this film, word came to the set that Zane Gray had died. He had been a prolific author of novels many of them filmed during the 1920s and 1930s.

Regular director of Grey films at this time, Lesley Selander, directs here. There is an interesting cast of supporting actors of the period but it offers Victor Jory the chance of a lead, an alcoholic, a sympathetic fighter for Mexican causes, even getting the girl but doing it while he was drunk. The girl, elegant from the city, is played by Jo Ann Sayers made only 15 films but lived to 90s until 2011. Russell Hayden appeared in the number of these films, Morris Ankrum often a villain, J. Farrell Mac Donald usually respectable as a policeman or land owner, Noah Beery Jr doing a Mexican impersonation, ultra-loyal and finally giving his life in devotion to the hero.

This is not the most interesting of Grey films – and was filmed originally in 1930. The central character is an ambiguous hero. The leading lady initially haughty but very quickly adapting herself to the west, buying a ranch, supporting her brother who had been ill in Boston and had come to the West for a change and had found energy, hard work and a wife.

There is a subtheme of illicit traffic in arms to Mexico, a businessman, his complicity with the sheriff and his associate. This leads to some shootouts – and the Mexican sacrificing himself at the end.

In the first 10 minutes there is an early performance by Alan Ladd.

CHARLIE CHAN AT THE WAX MUSEUM

US, 1941, 63 minutes, Black-and-white.
Sydney Toler, Sen Yung, C. Henry Gordon, Marc Lawrence, Joan Valerie, Marguerite Chapman.
Directed by Lynn Shores.

The setting for this Charlie Chan mystery is a bit more exotic than usual, not only a wax museum, but a wax museum about crime, even including a statue of Charlie Chan himself.

The film opens in court with a callous criminal, played by Marc Lawrence (who was to play criminals for the next 40 years or more), condemned to execution but escaping from the court, hiding out in the Museum, the proprietor an expert in plastic surgery and preparing to alter his face. There is a complication about other criminals and executions, the theory that a notorious criminal had escaped the gallows, was still alive, and the target of the man condemned.

The device to get Charlie Chan to the wax museum is for the manager of the Museum to propose a radio broadcast between Chan and a German expert. Chan’s son Jimmy is also at hand. There are complications before the broadcast, setting up the caretaker to pull a switch at the time that Chan is to be killed, the special chair being set aside for him. Jimmy is also investigating around the Museum and discovering basements and trapdoors.

There is a reporter on the job encouraging Chan to go to the broadcast. There is also the boss at the radio station. As it happens, the German professor sits in Chan’s chair and is killed. There is all kind of action and activity throughout the Museum, secret passages, dungeons, statues… It is also complicated by the wife of the falsely executed man coming with her lawyer to wreak vengeance.

It turns out to be the radio manager who is the disguised villain!

Good Charlie Chan entertainment.



CHARLIE CHAN FILMS

Charlie Chan was the creation of novelist Earl Deer Biggers, creator of the popular novel Seven Keys to Baldpate (adapted for the stage in the early 20th century and the plot of many films of the same name and variations). Biggers saw the beginning of the popularity of the films of Charlie Chan in the silent era but died at the age of 48 in 1933, just as the series with Warner Land was becoming more popular.

20th Century Fox was responsible for the early Charlie Chan films with Warner Oland and gave them more prestigious production values than many of the short supporting features of the time. After Oland’s death, Fox sold the franchise to Monogram Pictures with Sidney Toler in the central role. They were less impactful than the early films. There were some films later in the 1940s with Roland Winters in the central role.

The films generally ran for about 71 minutes, and similarities in plots, often a warning to Charlie Chan to leave a location, his staying when murders are committed, displaying his expertise in thinking through situations and clues. He generally collaborates with the local police who, sometimes seem, characters, but ultimately are on side.

Warner Oland was a Swedish actor who came with his family to the United States when he was a child. Some have commented that for his Chinese appearance he merely had to adjust his eyebrows and moustache to pass for Chinese – even in China where he was spoken to in Chinese. And the name, Charlie Chan, became a common place for reference to a Chinese. In retrospect there may have been some racial stereotype in his presentation but he is always respectful, honouring Chinese ancestors and traditions. Charlie Chan came from Honolulu.

Quite a number of the film is Keye Luke appeared as his son, very American, brash in intervening, make mistakes, full of American slang (and in Charlie Chan in Paris mangling French). Luke had an extensive career in Hollywood, his last film was in 1990 been Woody Allen’s Alice and the second Gremlins film.

Quite a number of character actors in Hollywood had roles in the Charlie Chan films, and there was a range of directors.

Oland had a portly figure and the screenplay makes reference to this. His diction is precise and much of the screenplay is in wise sayings, aphorisms, which are especially enhanced by the omission of “the� and “a� in delivery which makes them sound more telling and exotic.

There was a Charlie Chan film the late 1970s, Charlie Chan and the Dragon Queen with Peter Ustinov in the central role.

CASTLE IN THE DESERT

US, 1942, 62 minutes, Black-and-white.
Sydney Toler, Arlene Whelan, Richard Derr, Douglass Dumbrille, Henry Daniell, Edmund Mac Donald, Sen Yung, Ethel Griffies, Steven Geray.
Directed by Harry Lachmann.

This is quite an enjoyable Charlie Chan adventure from the early 1940s, an acknowledgement of World War II with Chan’s son, Jimmy, talking about military training.

The situation involves murder in an elaborate Castle out in the Mojave Desert. There are some poisonings in the house of an eccentric scholar who keeps half of his face masked. He is married to a descendant of the Borgia family and her brother was tried in court for a poisoning but, allegedly, died in the Spanish Civil War.

Charlie Chan receives a letter from the wife inviting him to come to investigate. The townspeople nearby want nothing to do with the Castle but, eventually, a taxi driver agrees to take him. Later, Jimmy will try to get to the Castle along with an entertainingly sinister woman who takes her guidance from the stars (and whom the screenplay puts in the right all the time).

It seems the wife did not write the letter, the scholar’s doctor and his lawyer and his wife are present, an investigator turns up, a history expert is also present – plenty of suspects. Henry Daniell, always sinister no matter what role he took, turns up as a sculptor and claims to be a detective undercover.

Lots of complications although the previous poisonings are explained as fake improvisations in a scheme to get custody of the rich man’s fortune and sending his wife to a mental institution. However, the lawyer is actually murdered, all kinds of investigations and dangers, Jimmy spending his time in a suit of armour, visits to a dungeon re-creating the world of Cesare Borgia.

It was the sculptor was really the long lost brother in disguise who did it!

The film was directed by Harry Lachmann who directed Warner Oland in Charlie Chan at the Circus and directed for Chan films with Sydney Toler from 1940 to 1942.

THE OVERNIGHT

US, 2015, 79 minutes, Colour.
Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman, Judith Godreche.
Directed by Patrick Brice.

While two little boys do have a sleepover during this film, the overnight is that for their parents.

This is a brief film which focuses on sexuality. Some who have commented on the IMDb say that the film was unpredictable. However, audiences who have seen many adult or erotic dramas will not find it unpredictable at all.

Adam Scott, executive producer of the film and having a lead role after his being a strong supporting cast member in so many films, comes with his wife, Taylor Schilling, from Seattle to Los Angeles with their young son. He is the home parent. She goes to work. He is rather reticent while she urges him to make friends.

At the park one afternoon when he and his son want to go home, his wife turns up, and the little boy makes friends with another boy playing there. His father, Jason Schwartzman, approaches, makes conversation, invites the couple to his house to meet his wife and have a pizza night.

This is California and there are intimations that, probably, Schwartzman and his wife, are swingers – as we have seen in so many films. This is the direction in which the film goes.

The evening starts very genially, with a meal, admiration of the house, putting the youngsters to bed. There is some drinking, some drugtaking. Schwartzman’s wife, Judith Godreche is French and they look at some commercials she made for breast enhancement. Schwartzman is an artist and takes Scott to the basement to look at his colourful but dubious paintings, makes him pose for suggestive photos, the film becoming ever more suggestive even as the two women begin to speak intimately.

One of the key elements of the film is penis envy, quite a focus of discussion, of visuals, and of Scott’s character coming to terms with himself and feeling a certain liberation.

The hesitation character is Scott’s wife, voicing a certain amount of reserve, some suspicion, especially when she shares some excessive behaviour on the part of Schwartzman’s wife.

And, the film does move towards what might have been anticipated, discussion about sharing spouses, as well as aspects of same-sex attraction.

The film ends with an amount of American reticence, the couples meeting in the park later, not wanting to pursue the sexual adventures they had participated in, Schwartzman and his wife finding new meaning in their marriage, the other couple feeling that they had been enlightened and liberated in some way.

So, depending on expectations, the film is familiar material or surprisingly questioning material.

GOON: LAST OF THE ENFORCERS

US/Canada, 2017, 101 minutes, Colour.
Seann William Scott, Alison Pill, Mark- Andre Grondin, Liev Schreiber, Wyatt Russell, Kim Coates, Elisha Cuthbert, Jay Baruchel, Callum Keith Rennie.
Directed by Jay Baruchel.

This is a sequel to a popular comedy in 2011, Goon, featuring much of the same cast Is Here.

These films are about ice hockey, moves and manipulations in the game, dressing room politics, but, the revelation that this kind of ice hockey (remembering Paul Newman in Slapshot) is something of a blood sport, action stopping, players going head-to-head, fist smashing, resulting in bloody messes. So, if an audience enjoys this kind of thing (and, during the matches, there are plenty who do), there is quite a lot which will meet expectations.

Otherwise…

Seann William Scott, famous for his role as Stiffler in the American Pie series, is a bit more restrained in this film, involved in fights, but wanting to play hockey, becoming the captain of the team, yet brutally bashed by a rival played by Wyatt Russell (who happens to be the son of the owner of Scott’s team who later brings him into his own team and makes him captain). However, Scott is now married to Alison Pill who is pregnant, wants to support her husband, but is always anxious about the fights and injuries.

He takes a job selling insurance but wants to get back into the play after some physiotherapy. He trains with an older player, played by Liev Schreiber, becomes involved again, naturally fights Wyatt Russell – but is also present at the birth of his child.

One for the fans only.

COLLIDE

UK/Germany, 2016, 109 minutes, Colour.
Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Marwan Kenzari.
Directed by Eran Mc Creevy.

There are plenty of physical collisions in this film, romantic collisions, moral collisions.

Not easy to recommend this film at all – except, perhaps, for petrol heads who enjoy looking at a range of vehicles speeding along German autobahns, involved in drug smuggling, smashing.

The film focuses on two young adults in Germany, one, Nicholas Hoult, trying to find some place in life, involved with drug dealers and friends, pulling out, then circumstances drawing him in again, doing double deals with his friend, thwarting the bosses, so that he can be with his girlfriend, Felicity Jones, another American wandering Europe.

The big surprise of the film is to find Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins in the cast. Kingsley portrays quite a sleazy and sinister criminal. Hopkins, on the other hand, is the wealthy and arrogant drug boss. (It would be interesting to hear their views on their acceptance of these roles, their performances and the film itself.)

The film is going to be called Autobahn but Collide seems to fit the bill – for a film form vehicle and crash enthusiasts and those curious to see the cast.

Director Eran Mc Creevy had made two well-considered British thrillers, Shifty and Welcome to the Punch.

GOOD KIDS

US, 2016, 86 minutes, Colour.
Nicholas Braun, Zoey Deutch, Mateo Arias, Israel Broussard, Ashley Judd, Demian Bechir, Julia Garner.
Directed by Chris Mc Coy.

Well, not exactly.

This is one of those films about teenagers, finishing high school, intending to go to college. They live on a promontory with wealthy neighbours and mansions. However, at the opening of the film, they lament that they have never been invited to parties in these mansions.

One is a tennis coach, wanting sexual experiences, finding that some of the middle-aged mothers are willing to have private lessons – including, surprisingly, Ashley Judd as one of the promiscuous women. The only girl in the group is a research assistant, attracted to her fellow-worker. Another is a chef, also wanting some sexual stimulation. The fourth teaches children martial arts and is more interested in drugs. They decide that they will spend the summer fulfilling their desires.

When the instructor is invited to a party and can bring anyone he wants, the film moves into portraying all the moves of the four. The IMD blurb indicates they want to reframe their lives – but, in these cases, not necessarily for the better.

As with most American films in this vein, it opens with the rather permissive attitudes but there is a challenge to personal and moral stances by the end.

Not exactly a film to spend time with.

THE FLIP SIDE

Australia, 2018, 91 minutes, Colour.
Eddie Izzard, Emily Taheny, Luke McKenzie?, Vanessa Guide, Tina Bursill, Tiriel Mora, Hugh Sheridan.
Directed by Marion Pilowsky.

This is billed as a romantic comedy, a feel-good movie. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

This is a South Australian film, proudly made. There are many sequences in Adelaide itself but the screenplay takes the leading characters out into the Barossa Valley, to Handorf, to the Vineyards, out into the desert and the range of South Australian scenery. One presumes the South Australian tourist bureau will not be unhappy with the promotion (even if they might have some difficulties with the film and its screenplay, especially a lot of derogatory remarks made by a French character, especially about wines, names and French propriety of names.)

Emily Taheny is a strong screen presence, well-known to ABC television viewers from her skits and spoofs in Shaun Micalef’s Mad as Hell. In many ways, she holds this film together. But, while her character might have seemed consistent on paper, it doesn’t seem quite so consistent on screen. And this is true of each of the central characters.

Emily is Veronica James, Ronnie to all her friends (but not to the French character, Sophie, played waspishly by Vanessa Guide and referred to by Ronnie has a “French Bitch�, rather an understatement given the dominatingly catty behaviour. Ronnie was in love with a visiting British actor, conceited and fickle, played with a certain self-absorbed charm and lack of charm by Eddie Izzard, the audience wondering why he came to Australia to make this film. He had promised to take Ronnie to England but went back home without her. There is a telling sequence where he is back in Adelaide promoting a new film, doing a Q and A, playing to the audience but self-focused.

Five years later she is in a partnership with a high school science teacher and would-be novelist, Jeff. Again, he is played with some contradictions by Luke McKenzie?, most of the time a real gawk, unintentionally flirting with the French woman and she leading him on, but finally something of a man of principle. The actor pretends to take an interest in the novel he has written, talking of making a film but, of course, is not read the manuscript to Jeff’s ultimate dismay.

A comment often made about actors not particularly connecting in their performances is that there is little chemistry between them. Not much chemistry here despite some effort by Emily Taheny and Luke McKenzie?.

And, some audiences will have problems with the humour – often strained at best. The trip to the Barossa Valley and beyond, a car crash when it hits a kangaroo, a local garage manager with an over-coarse mouth delaying in fixing the car, a scene where a boomerang is thrown – and actually comes back with injuries.

There is a subplot concerning Ronnie’s mother who was in a home for the aged, Ronnie running up bills at the restaurant she has established, unable to pay for her mother’s care, her mother a mixture of common sense and incipient senility.

Perhaps the film is too flip.

CHARLIE CHAN IN RIO

US, 1941, 61 minutes, Black-and-white.
Sidney Toler, Mary Beth Hughes, Cobina Wright, Ted North, Victor Jory, Harold Huber, Send Young, Richard Derr, Jacqueline Dalya, Kay Linaker.
Directed by Harry Lachmann.

By the time this film was released, the Charlie Chan films had had 10 years of existence, first with Warner Oland, almost the archetypal Charlie Chan, but succeeded for another 10 years and far more films by Sidney Toler.

The film is set in Rio though filmed in Hollywood – with Latin American music, dancing of the samba to give Brazilian flavour. There is even a song composed by Mack David and Harry Warren.

Charlie Chan is already in Rio at the beginning of the film, along with his second son, Jimmy, enthusing about the samba. Chan is about to arrest a singer on a charge of murder in Honolulu. After her show at the Cabaret she visits an alleged mind reader who records her while she is in a trance and confesses the murder. She has been planning to elope with her fiance, returns home to pack and is then found dead in her room.

Charlie Chan then becomes involved in the investigation, assisted by the local chief, played by Harold Huber (who played police chiefs of varying nationalities in others of the Charlie Chan films). Needless to say, Jimmy has instant theories which are disproved, becomes involved in the case, is attracted to the Chinese maid.

There is quite a line-up of suspects, two jealous women, husband, the mind reader, the butler. It was the butler who stole the jewels but did not do the murder, and he is then murdered.

The film hinges on the case of the death in Hawaii with the revelation that the murdered man who resisted the singer and was killed, had a wife who was prepared to avenge his death, becoming the maid-companion of the singer and killing her.

Situation established. Murder solved. And always enjoyable with Charlie Chan and the intrusions of Jimmy. Of interest, Victor Jory plays the alleged mind reader.



CHARLIE CHAN FILMS

Charlie Chan was the creation of novelist Earl Deer Biggers, creator of the popular novel Seven Keys to Baldpate (adapted for the stage in the early 20th century and the plot of many films of the same name and variations). Biggers saw the beginning of the popularity of the films of Charlie Chan in the silent era but died at the age of 48 in 1933, just as the series with Warner Land was becoming more popular.

20th Century Fox was responsible for the early Charlie Chan films with Warner Oland and gave them more prestigious production values than many of the short supporting features of the time. After Oland’s death, Fox sold the franchise to Monogram Pictures with Sidney Toler in the central role. They were less impactful than the early films. There were some films later in the 1940s with Roland Winters in the central role.

The films generally ran for about 71 minutes, and similarities in plots, often a warning to Charlie Chan to leave a location, his staying when murders are committed, displaying his expertise in thinking through situations and clues. He generally collaborates with the local police who, sometimes seem, characters, but ultimately are on side.

Warner Oland was a Swedish actor who came with his family to the United States when he was a child. Some have commented that for his Chinese appearance he merely had to adjust his eyebrows and moustache to pass for Chinese – even in China where he was spoken to in Chinese. And the name, Charlie Chan, became a common place for reference to a Chinese. In retrospect there may have been some racial stereotype in his presentation but he is always respectful, honouring Chinese ancestors and traditions. Charlie Chan came from Honolulu.

Quite a number of the film is Keye Luke appeared as his son, very American, brash in intervening, make mistakes, full of American slang (and in Charlie Chan in Paris mangling French). Luke had an extensive career in Hollywood, his last film was in 1990 been Woody Allen’s Alice and the second Gremlins film.

Quite a number of character actors in Hollywood had roles in the Charlie Chan films, and there was a range of directors.

Oland had a portly figure and the screenplay makes reference to this. His diction is precise and much of the screenplay is in wise sayings, aphorisms, which are especially enhanced by the omission of “the� and “a� in delivery which makes them sound more telling and exotic.

There was a Charlie Chan film the late 1970s, Charlie Chan and the Dragon Queen with Peter Ustinov in the central role.

HERITAGE OF THE DESERT

US, 1939, 73 minutes, Black-and-white.
Donald Woods, Evelyn Venable, Russell Hayden, Robert Barrett, Sidney Toler, C.Henry Gordon, Willard Robertson, Paul Guilfoyle, Paul Fix.
Directed by Lesley Selander.

This is a Zane Gray story, the prolific writer of westerns in the 1930s, many of which were filmed. In fact this story was filmed in 1932 under the same title, an initial star vehicle for Randolph Scott.

The settings are familiar but interesting nonetheless. Donald Woods, perhaps a bit too charming as a city slicker and less convincing as a hero of the West, leaves Chicago after studying geology to investigate the family company which is now bankrupt. There is an attempt on his life on the way.

The villain of the piece, played by C.Henry Gordon, has been controlling the company and making demands on the cattle ranchers roundabout, not hesitating in killing the sons of a prominent leader, played by Robert Barrett. The hero survives the attempt on his life, is looked after by the ranchers, falls in love with the daughter, Evelyn Venable, who is the object of desire of one of the farmhands who is in league with the villain.

The film is particularly interesting to see Sidney Toler in a western rule, the shrewd bold ranch hand, quite prominent in this story on the ranch, training the hero to shoot, intervening in the action. This film was made at the time that he was beginning his long series as Charlie Chan.

There is the inevitable buildup to a confrontation, the hero meeting the villain who had made the attempt on his life and shooting him, the heroine persuaded by Sidney Toler to elope at the time of her wedding, her being captured by the villain and taken to his hideout, leading to a pursuit by the hero and Toler and then by the whole wedding party.

A variation on the stories of the range wars.