Tom Fadden Movies

In this western, a rancher's search for his brother's killer is interrupted by a wicked banker and his gang who are trying to take away his ranch. Naturally it was they who killed his brother. Mayhem ensues, but justice prevails in the end. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Though it comes on much too strong at times, Murder, He Says fully justifies its present "cult" status. Professional pollster Pete Marshall (Fred MacMurray) gets more than he bargained for when he heads to hillbilly country to investigate the disappearances of several of his colleagues. Poor Pete stumbles across the Fleagle family, who have a quaint habit of murdering anyone they consider to be a nuisance. Whip-wielding Mamie (Marjorie Main), her deceptively meek husband Mr. Johnson (Porter Hall) and her hulking, lamebrained twin sons (both played by Peter Whitney) are searching for $70,000 hidden by Bonnie Parker-like desperado Bonnie Fleagle, and they don't intend to be disturbed by any outsiders like Pete. Having previously poisoned their troublesome grandma (Mabel Paige) with a curious substance that causes its victims to glow in the dark, Mamie and her brood try to dispatch Pete in the same manner, leading to an uproarious slapstick setpiece involving an elaborate "Lazy Susan" table. Complicating matters is the arrival of two different women (Helen Walker, Barbara Pepper) claiming to be the long-lost Bonnie Fleagle. Jean Heather costars as Elany Fleegle, the only sympathetic (but no less crack-brained) member of the killer brood. Its comedy content aside, Murder, He Says would be memorable for its eye-popping split-screen photography, thoroughly convincing the audience that Peter Whitney is indeed two different people. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

14-year-old Skip Homeier repeats his stage role as an unreconstructed Hitler Jugend in the film version of the James Gow/Arnaud D'Usseau stage play Tomorrow the World. A German orphan, Homeier is taken into the home of his American uncle (Fredric March), a gently liberal university professor. Though the son of an anti-Nazi, little robot-like Skip has become a parrot for the Third Reich, denouncing his late father as a traitor and being as nasty as possible to the professor's Jewish fiancee (Betty Field). Homeier accepts democracy only when the professor forgets his fuzzy-headedness and applies a little "physical culture." The moral really shouldn't be "Love America or We'll Break Every Bone in Your Body," but given the times in which it was made, Tomorrow the World can be forgiven its excesses. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Paramount's "Henry Aldrich" series came to a quiet conclusion with 1944's Henry Aldrich's Little Secret. The titular secret is a baby, the son of woebegone Helen Martin (Ann Doran). Because her husband is in jail, Helen has been adjudged an unfit mother by the local welfare board, headed by the father of our hero Henry Aldrich (Jimmy Lydon). Taking pity on Helen, Henry hides the baby in his own home while Helen leaves town to prove her husband's innocence. The finale finds Henry lampooning Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with a comic-pathetic filibuster on behalf of poor Helen. Way at the bottom of the cast list is Noel Neill, TV's future Lois Lane. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

For their first film in a year, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello played it safe with a medley of old burlesque routines and slapstick setpieces -- and never mind a coherent plot. The boys play Eddie and Albert, a pair of plumbers hired to fix the pipes of a fancy society mansion. While a masquerade party takes place on the first floor, our heroes wreak havoc in the bathroom on the second floor. The angry owners (Thurston Hall, Netta Packer) shoot off a letter of complaint to the plumbers which gets mixed up with an invitation for a fancy weekend party. Thus it is that Eddie and Albert, accompanied by their female cab-driving pal Elsie (Marion Hutton), show up dressed to the nines at a posh country estate. While the boys get mixed up in further comic complications, Elsie carries on a romance with wealthy and handsome Peter (Kirby Grant). Things come to a head when a valuable painting is stolen, prompting Eddie and Albert to chase after the thieves by commandeering a fire engine! Released in most areas simply as In Society, this slapped-together comedy proved beyond all doubt that Abbott and Costello's appeal had not slipped during their screen absence. Highlights include a variation on the burlesque chestnut "Floogel Street" (here renamed "The Susquehanna Hat Company"), a wild and crazy fox hunt, and the climactic fire-engine pursuit, which was lifted virtually in toto from W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Fall In was the fourth of Hal Roach's 1940s comedies revolving around the misadventures of Doubleday, an army recruit blessed--or cursed--with a photographic memory. This time, Doubleday (William Tracy) and his pal Sgt. Ames (Joe Sawyer) crash a fancy fund-raising dinner. They redeem themselves by capturing a Nazi spy, who poses as a super-patriot named Arnold Benedict (!) A zany sequence at a gambling table and a wild climactic free-for-all highlight this above-average entry. A Hal Roach "Streamliner" designed for the lower half of double bills, Fall In clocked in at a swift 48 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The fact that star Errol Flynn had been recently embroiled in a real-life rape trial only served to increase the box-office "pull" of Warner Bros. Northern Pursuit. Flynn is cast as Canadian mountie Steve Wagner, assigned to track down and capture downed Nazi pilot Hugo von Keller (Helmut Dantine) in the snowier Hudson Bay regions. Once Wagner and fellow mountie Jim Austin (John Ridgely) catch up with Von Keller, they pretend to be on his side, hoping that he'll reveal his espionage plans. Taken in, Von Keller leads the mounties towards a secret Nazi hideaway, where the Germans have hidden a huge bombing plane, to be used against North America. The fact that Wagner is posing as a Nazi sympathizer hardly endears him to Von Keller's hostage Laura McBain (Julie Bishop), but when the truth is revealed she professes her love for him. In the light of Flynn's recent legal problems, one line in Northern Pursuit invariably brought down the house in 1943: After assuring Laura that she's the only woman he's ever loved, Wagner/Flynn turns to the camera and quips "What am I saying?" ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Sundown Jim was the second of two 20th Century-Fox westerns starring football champ John Kimbrough. The story takes place in mountain country, providing a wintry backdrop for the standard western plot devices. Kimbrough is cast as US marshal Sundown Jim Majors, whose main purpose in life is to bring a deadly frontier feud to a peaceful end. This requires him to clean out the local criminal element, which he does with grim-visaged determination. Clocking in at a mere 53 minutes, Sundown Jim is as professionally assembled as its predecessor, Lone Star Ranger, but Fox's effort to make a film star out of John Kimbrough was foredoomed by his utter lack of acting ability. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of the most often revived of Abbott & Costello's early-1940s films, Pardon My Sarong casts Bud and Lou as Chicago bus drivers Algy Shaw and Wellington Pflug. At the behest of millionaire playboy Tommy Layton (Robert Paige), Algy and Wellington hijack their own bus and speed off to California so that Tommy won't be late for an important yachting race. Our heroes are hotly pursued by bus-company troubleshooter Kendall (William Demarest), while Tommy's trail is dogged by rival yacht-owner Joan Marshall (Virginia Bruce). Eluding Kendall when they inadvertently drive their bus into the ocean, Algy and Wellington are rescued by Tommy and Joan, who through a plot wrinkle have been forced to share the same yacht. After several days of drifting aimlessly across the Pacific, the yacht ends up on a remote South Sea Island, where Algy and Wellington flirt capriciously with the local native girls. Through a fluke, Wellington is served up as a sacrifice victim and ordered to enter a sacred volcanic mountain-which happens to be the hideout for jewel thief Varnoff (Lionel Atwill) and his gang. The story wraps up with a zany Sennett-like chase, with Wellington attempting to rescue the kidnapped Joan from Varnoff's speedboat. Filled to overflowing with hilarious sight gags, cross-talk routines and throwaway lines, Pardon My Sarong scores on two levels: as a devastating send-up of Dorothy Lamour jungle epics and as a first-rate vehicle for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. One one quibble: the film certainly could have done without the scene in which Bud invites Lou to commit suicide! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dashiel Hammett's The Glass Key, a tale of big-city political corruption, was first filmed in 1935, with Edward Arnold as a duplicitous political boss and George Raft as his loyal lieutenant. This 1942 remake improves on the original, especially in replacing the stolid Raft with the charismatic Alan Ladd. Brian Donlevy essays the role of the boss, who is determined to back reform candidate Moroni Olsen, despite Ladd's gut feeling that this move is a mistake. Ladd knows that Donlevy is doing a political about-face merely to get in solid with Olsen's pretty daughter Veronica Lake. It is Ladd who is left to clean up the mess when crime lord Joseph Calleila murders Olsen's wastrel son Richard Denning and pins the rap on Donlevy. As Ladd struggles to clear Donlevy's name, he falls in love with Lake--when he's not being pummeled about by Calleila's psychopathic henchman William Bendix. Far less complex than the Dashiel Hammett original (and far less damning of the American political system), The Glass Key further increased the box-office pull of Paramount's new team of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Each of Bob Hope's "My Favorite" films (My Favorite Blonde, My Favorite Brunette, My Favorite Spy) was, by accident or design, a parody of a dead-serious movie genre. 1942's My Favorite Blonde, for example, was a takeoff of Alfred Hitchcock in general and Hitchcock's 39 Steps in particular. Two-bit vaudeville entertainer Hope gets mixed up with gorgeous blonde British-spy Madeline Carroll. The "maguffin" (Hitchcock's nickname for "gimmick") which ties the two stars together is a ring which contains the microfilmed plans for a revolutionary new bomber. Hope and Carroll are forced to take it on the lam when Hope is framed for murder by Nazi-agents Gale Sondergaard, George Zucco et. al. Highlights include Hope eluding capture by impersonating a famed psychologist (watch for Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer as Hope's most contentious "patient"). Madeline Carroll also got several opportunities to shine comedically, especially when she lapsed into cloying baby talk while posing as Hope's wife. Bob Hope was hesitant to work with My Favorite Blonde director Sidney Lanfield, having heard of Lanfield's reputation as an on-set dictator. However, the two got along so swimmingly that they would collaborate on such future top-notch Hope farces as Let's Face It (1943) and The Lemon Drop Kid (1951). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Harold Bell Wright's bestselling novel The Shepherd of the Hills had been previously filmed in 1919 and 1928 before Paramount offered the first talkie version in 1941. In one of his least typical roles, John Wayne plays a young Ozark backwoodsman forsworn to kill his father, who years earlier abandoned his mother. Against this personal crisis is played the larger drama of outsiders who threaten to push Wayne's friends and family off their land. Fate plays a hand when a mysterious stranger wanders into the community. Not at all the action picture one would expect from star John Wayne and director Henry Hathaway, Shepherd of the Hills takes its own sweet time, unfolding its story in a leisurely pace befitting its slow-moving characters. The film's rich Technicolor photography adds to the restfully rustic ambience of this unusual entertainment.. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi