Malvin Wald

This documentary presents biblical and non-biblical information about the birth of Christianity, and the mystery behind Jesus Christ. The four different versions of the gospels are recreated in dramatizations of Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. The video also investigates the shroud of Turin, which is said to be the burial cloth of Jesus, found after His resurrection. ~ Cecilia Cygnar, All Movie Guide

George Montgomery directs, stars, and co-scripts this routine, somewhat dated wartime drama set in the Philippines during World War II. Capt. John Larsen (Montgomery) has to go behind enemy lines at the beginning of the war to rescue a general from Japanese captivity. Instead of breezing through the assignment, Larsen discovers that the general has died, and it is almost impossible to get back to his rendezvous point. Filipino guerrillas help him out, but then he is handicapped by an injured woman in need of medical attention. The "steel claw" of the title is a hook that the one-handed Larsen fastens onto himself, a prosthetic straight out of Peter Pan. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this adventurous yarn, a group of former Army buddies have a reunion in New Orleans and decide to go looking for buried treasure. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Bing Crosby scores in a rare unsympathetic role in the MGM domestic drama Man on Fire. Crosby plays well-to-do businessman Earl Carleton, recently divorced from his wife Gwen (Mary Fickett). Bitter over the breakeup, Carleton doggedly maintains custody of his son Ted (Malcolm Broderick), refusing his ex-wife visitation rights and even kidnapping the boy when the courts rule against him. As Gwen's new husband Bryan Seward (Richard Eastham) sagely observes, however, Carleton is basically a nice guy who is trying in vain to convince himself that he's an unforgiving louse. It takes the combined efforts of young Ted, Carleton's new lady friend Nina (Inger Stevens, in her film debut) and sensitive Judge Randolph (Anne Seymour) to bring out Carleton's best side. Though Bing Crosby does no singing in Man on Fire, the title tune is perfomed over the main credits by the Ames Brothers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

On the Loose was produced by the Filmakers Organization, consisting of producer Collier Young and director Ida Lupino (Mrs. Young at the time). Joan Evans stars as Jill Bradley, a teenager with an undeserved reputation as a "bad girl." No one -- not even her parents Melvyn Douglas and Lynn Bari -- will give Jill the benefit of the doubt. Only when the girl attempts suicide are her selfish parents awakened to her plight. Intriguingly, On the Loose was scripted by the husband-and-wife team of Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert, who happened to be the real-life parents of star Joan Evans. Though most Filmakers productions were directed by Ida Lupino, On the Loose was helmed by screenwriter Charles Lederer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eliot Ness may have gotten lots of publicity (especially long after the fact) for breaking the Capone mob, but as Joseph H. Lewis' The Undercover Man reminds us, it was the accountants and the numbers-crunchers that brought down Capone and his mob. Frank Warren (Glenn Ford) started out as an accountant, but now serves as an investigator for the Treasury Department. His job has frequently required him to go undercover, masquerading as a criminal to get the goods on the top-level tax-law violators that his unit targets. But now his assignment is to gather evidence on the operations of the nation's number-one crime boss and get proof of the income that he and his lieutenants are not declaring, and this proves not only frustrating but dangerous. Potential stoolies are murdered and witnesses intimidated, and when one otherwise "respectable" lawyer (Barry Kelley) starts mentioning Warren's wife (Nina Foch) in casual conversation, he takes the hint. He's ready to quit until the mother (Esther Minciotti) of a witness-turned-victim tells him about what life was like in Italy under the Black Hand, and why she came to America to raise her sons. Warren and his men (James Whitmore, David Wolfe) make one last attempt to get the proof they need, tracing signatures and handwriting to get evidence implicating a small man in the operation, using it to turn him and going for bigger fish. Finally, even the shyster lawyer who has been dogging Warren every step of the way ends up in the sights of the feds, and the mob turns its attention to getting rid of this new "liability" and taking care of Warren as well. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Behind the locked doors of a mental institution resides crooked politico Judge Drake (Herbert Heyes), free from prosecution so long as he pretends to be crazy. To get the goods on Drake, private detective Ross Stewart (Richard Carlson) has himself committed to the asylum as a patient. Meanwhile, reporter Kathy Lawrence (Lucille Bremer), posing as Stewart's wife, acts as his liaison to the outside world. But when Drake figures out what's going on, he pulls strings to have Stewart meet with an "accident" during his stay at the institution. Ralf Harolde, who memorably portrayed a seedy psychiatrist in Murder My Sweet, contributes another excellent performance in Behind Locked Doors as a sympathetic attendant with Something To Hide. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Young model Jean Dexter is knocked unconscious and drowned in her own bathtub in her Manhattan apartment, and a lot of jewelry that she supposedly owned is missing. The Naked City is actually about six days in the life of New York City that coincide with the murder and the subsequent investigation by Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and Detective James Halloran (Don Taylor). The account of their work, and the workings of the New York City police department, is interspersed with brief vignettes about the life of the city around them, and, especially, the reaction of residents to the murder and the newspaper reports of the progress of the case. Muldoon and Halloran first must determine why she was killed, which may (or may not) have to do with how a woman with a minimal income came by the jewelry -- was it a love affair gone bad (and if so, with whom?), or something more complex and sinister? Retracing the final 18 months of the victim's life, their investigation reaches out to a mysterious "Philip Henderson" with whom she was supposedly linked romantically, and to Frank Niles (Howard Duff), who's a little too fast-and-loose with the truth when he doesn't have to be to make Muldoon comfortable; to make things more complicated, Muldoon determines that there were at least two men involved with the actual commission of the murder. The victim turns out to have led a wild life, filled with men and parties, and was tied up with several sordid figures. Their investigation carries them into the highest and lowest ends of New York's social strata to find the killer, and it turns out there are a lot of interlocking reasons why at least three men might've wanted her dead. In the process, we get glimpses of the private lives of the detectives, which was something new in movies at this time; in the midst of all of this activity, the writers set up a fascinating contrast, in adjacent scenes, between Halloran, his wife, and their young son looking toward the future, with the parents of the dead woman, looking back with bitter regret and recriminations -- no movie ever presented in more subtle fashion the contrast between the zeitgeist of the 1930s and that of the postwar era. The final chase on the Williamsburg Bridge is one of the classic pieces of suspense cinema, as the armed and desperate killer races up the walkway past children playing and adults strolling, while detectives close in on foot from behind and patrol cars come up from ahead, with crowded subways rolling past, and then into the superstructure of the bridge for a stand-off and shootout. Sharp-eyed viewers will spot future character leads Paul Ford, James Gregory, John Marley, Kathleen Freeman, and Arthur O'Connell as well as familiar faces Tom Pedi, John Randolph, Molly Picon, and Walter Burke in the supporting cast. Cinematographer William Daniels and editor Paul Weatherwax won Oscars for their work, but awards might just as easily have been presented to director Jules Dassin, writers Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald, composers Miklos Rozsa and Frank Skinner, and, most notably, to producer/narrator Mark Hellinger, who intoned the closing monologue, which opens with one of the most famous tag lines in movie history: "There are eight million stories in the Naked City." ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

With a title like Jive Junction, this just has to be a wartime musical. In one of his few top-billed roles, teenaged actor Dickie Moore plays Peter, a student in a hidebound music conservatory. Rebelling against his old-fogey teachers, Peter organizes an all-girl swing band. When his father dies in the war, Peter overcomes his grief in true Mickey Rooney fashion, converting an old barn into "Jive Junction," a convivial gathering place for lonely servicemen. Much of the footage in Jive Junction is given over to newcomer Gerra Young, a pleasant and attractive singer who unfortunately never clicked in films. This standard B musical was directed by-of all people-cult favorite Edgar G. Ulmer! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For the benefit of those who came in late, the John Robert Powers modelling agency was at one time the most famous and powerful enterprise of its kind in New York City. Acknowledging this prominence is the 1942 musical comedy The Powers Girl, with Anne Shirley and Carole Landis starring as sisters Ellen and Kay Evans, who aspire to become high-profile models. Photographer Jimmy Hendricks (George Murphy) takes a fancy to the girls, making a top model out of Kay (Landis) -- but falling deeply and truly in love with Ellen (Shirley). At base, the film is an excuse to show off as many lovely, undraped "Powers Girls" as possible (including future Republic serial heroine Linda Stirling) and to showcase such musical talent as Dennis Day and Benny Goodman's Orchestra. And from time to time, John Robert Powers himself shows up in the person of Alan Mowbray. The Powers Girl was released in Great Britain as Hello Beautiful. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide