W. Lee Wilder Movies
The brother of director Billy Wilder, Austrian-born W. Lee Wilder has worked in a distinctly lower-budget, less-visible manner. After abandoning an industrial career in Europe, Wilder came to New York as the head of William Wilder Productions, and produced The Great Flamarion (1945), directed by Anthony Mann and starring Erich Von Stroheim in a drama about betrayal under the big top. Wilder received his first directing credit in 1946 as director of Republic's The Glass Alibi, a crime drama about a confidence man who marries a terminally ill woman to secure an alibi, only to learn that she is recovering. Two years later, he produced and directed the thriller Vicious Circle (1948), a drama about Jewish farmers in Hungary being framed for murder. But his best film--and his best known movie, at least among horror movie buffs--is easily Killers from Space (1953), a bizarre and compelling science-fiction thriller about an attempted alien invasion of Earth using giant insects and lizards whose low-budget shooting techniques, staccato editing, and cheap special effects combine into a spellbinding whole. From the later '50s onward, Wilder worked in low-budget independent movies such as the British made The Man Without a Body (1957), starring Robert Hutton and George Coulouris--about an attempt to revive the disembodied head of Nostradamus--and Bluebeard's 10 Honeymoons (1960), with George Sanders. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide- 1968
Producer/director W. Lee Wilder, the prolific (and somewhat less talented) brother of filmmaker Billy Wilder, was responsible for the 1968 melodrama The Omegans. Artist Lucien Pan is insanely jelous of his wife Ingrid Pitt. While participating in a Malayan expedition, Pan suspects that Ingrid is carrying on with jungle guide Keith Larsen. He plots the murder of both wife and guide, hoping to make it look like an accident. To this end, Pan talks Ingrid and Larsen into posing for a portrait-right next to a radioactive jungle river. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1960
W. Lee Wilder, the lesser-known brother of Billy Wilder, directed this unexceptional story based on the actual history of French serial killer Henri Landru. The killer (played by George Sanders) has been changed here from an ordinary, inconsequential man to a suave antique dealer with a passion for Odette (Corinne Calvet), a nightclub singer whose only interest in him is monetary. The plot places Odette's need for money at the basis of Landru's maniacal killing spree but as the duped, female victims are dispatched one after another, the horror of it all never quite coalesces into gripping suspense. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George Sanders, Corinne Calvet, (more)
- 1958
W. Lee Wilder, the somewhat less prestigious producer-director brother of Billy Wilder, went to Holland to film his 1958 opus Spy in the Sky. Steve Brodie plays Cabot, a U.S. intelligence agent who heads to Vienna (actually Amsterdam) in search of a missing rocket scientist. Cabot's quest is jeopardized by the machinations of a communist spy ring, headed by a Colonel Benedict (George Coulouris). The Reds hope to coerce the scientist to build a spy satellite, the better to keep tabs on the Decadent Democracies. A spy in the sky? What a ridiculous notion! What self-respecting nation would stoop to outer-space espionage? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steve Brodie, Sandra Francis, (more)
- 1957
In this horror movie, a scientist resuscitates the head of 16th-century seer Nostradamus by transplanting it onto the body of a man suffering from a brain tumor for the benefit of an avaricious financier who wants the prophet to give him the power of prediction in business. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Hutton, George Coulouris, (more)
- 1956
Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug and The Tell-Tale Heart were updated and woven together into a single narrative in the ultra-cheap adventure yarn Manfish. John Bromfield, Lon Chaney Jr. and Victor Jory head the cast as three fortune hunters, combing the West Indies in search of buried treasure. The heavy of the piece is Jory, who murders Bromfield, weighs down the body and throws it overboard, with consequences not unlike those suffered by Poe's Tell-Tale Heart protagonist. Poor, simple-minded Chaney ends up coming out the winner, if only by default. The feminine angle is handled by Barbara Nichols (bad, brassy blonde) and Tessa Pendergast (good, dark-skinned native lass). Because of a handful of West Indian song interludes, Manfish was rerealeased as Calypso, in hopes of cashing in on the then-popular musical craze. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Bromfield, Lon Chaney, Jr., (more)
- 1956
A mentally ill young woman honestly believes that she is the reincarnated lover of Crown Prince Rudolph, a woman who died with the prince in a suicide pact in 1889. Over the course of her treatment, her psychiatrist falls in love with her, but then she gets caught up in a trance and withdraws. It is only when she gets involved with a crazed killer who looks just like the dead prince, that she returns to normalcy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1955
W. Lee Wilder, the prolific but markedly less talented brother of Billy Wilder, both produced and directed The Big Bluff. Handsome but unscrupulous John Bromfield comes into the life of beautiful and wealthy Martha Vickers. Knowing that she has only a year to live, Bromfield marries her, then settles back to wait for his inheritence. But then she begins showing signs of recovery, forcing the caddish Bromfield to radically alter his plans. The Big Bluff was scripted by Fred Freiberger, who later served as producer of Star Trek. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Bromfield, Martha Vickers, (more)
The Killers from Space in this low-budget sci-fier are a group of aliens bent on conquering the earth. To this end, they overtake the mind and body of atomic scientist Peter Graves, using the poor man as a combination spy and saboteur. When Graves realizes this, he tries to warn mankind, but no one believes him. Marching defiantly back to the aliens' Bronson Canyon headquarters, where the slimy villains are busily syphoning off electrical power from a nearby generator, Graves vows to stop the extraterrestrials at any cost...including his own life (or what there's left of it). The makeup used for the aliens is laughable, but the film works so long as it concentrates on Graves' plight. Produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, the brother of the more celebrated Billy Wilder, Killers from Space was distributed in the US by RKO Radio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Graves, James Seay, (more)
One of several sci-fi/fantasy efforts produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, the film's only drawback is the inconsistency of the Colorama color process. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Langton, Leslie Denison, (more)
Phantom from Space is a far better film than its lurid title and skintight budget would indicate. The scene is Santa Monica, where the community is plagued by what seems to be a serial killer. Thanks to a pre-credits sequence, the audience knows that the murderer is a visitor from outer space, who becomes invisible upon shedding his spacesuit. Government agent Hazen (Ted Cooper) teams with LAPD lieutenant Bowers (Harry Landers) to track down the extraterrestrial fugitive. It gradually develops that the space man is not a predator, merely a very frightened and defensive individual, but by the time this realization is made, it's too late for him. Efficiently directed by W. Lee Wilder (Billy's brother), Phantom from Space boasts some very impressive special effects for a film of its type, courtesy of special-effects technician Alex Welden and optical effects specialist Howard Anderson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ted Cooper, Rudolph Anders, (more)
- 1951
In this comedy-drama, Frank Keeler (Lloyd Bridges is an American G.I. stationed in Italy whose less-than-legal side business has earned him a small fortune. However, he is eventually caught, convicted, and imprisoned by authorities, but not before he can hide the money. After Keeler is released, he goes back to Italy to pick up his money, only to discover that someone also has already found it, sending Keeler on a manhunt to find the person who made off with his nest egg. Likely suspects include ex-girlfriend Elena (Lea Padovani), cemetery worker Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi) and transplanted mobster Jack Conway (William Tubbs. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lloyd Bridges, Lea Padovani, (more)
- 1950
W. Lee Wilder, the younger brother of Billy Wilder, was producer/director/co-writer of Once a Thief. June Havoc stars as Margie, a shoplifter who falls in love with smooth-talking Mitch (Cesar Romero). Margie's new beau reveals his true colors by stealing every penny she has, then turning her into the authorities. Upon her release from prison, Margie swears revenge. Though Mitch gets his just desserts, no one comes out a winner in this one. Though Once a Thief offers few surprises, the film does boast an impressive supporting cast (by "B"-picture standards, at least), including Marie McDonald, Lon Chaney Jr., Iris Adrian and Kathleen Freeman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cesar Romero, June Havoc, (more)
- 1948
The positive public response to such productions as Crossfire and Gentleman's Agreement led to a mini-cycle of postwar anti-prejudice films. One of these was The Vicious Circle, based on a true incident which had previously been dramatized in G. W. Pabst's The Trial. In the late-19th century, an anti-Semitic Hungarian baron (Reinhold Schunzel) foments a pogrom against his country's Jews when a 14-year-old servant girl commits suicide. Falsely accused of subjecting the girl to a ritualistic murder, five Jewish farmers are put on trial for murder. Defying the slings and arrows of public condemnation, defense attorney Karl Nemensch (Conrad Nagel) intends to prove the farmers' innocence -- and to expose anti-Semitism for the poisonous scourge that it truly is. The Vicious Circle was based on The Burning Bush, a play by Herald and Geza Herczeg. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Alexander, Sam Bernard, (more)
- 1947
Albert Dekker plays a crooked investment agent who embezzles a large sum from an estate, hoping to cover his crime by marrying the estate's heiress (Catherine Craig). The girl is already engaged, so Dekker arranges to have the fiance killed. The hit man's only means of identifying the victim-to-be is his picture in the society columns. But the girl changes her mind and agrees to marry Dekker--meaning that it is his picture that will appear in the columns, thereby condemning him to death. Desperately trying to contact the hit man, Dekker discovers that the man is dead...but the assassin's successor is still at large. A cheap but tidy "hoist on his own petard" melodrama, The Pretender was produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, brother of the more famous (and frankly more talented) Billy Wilder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ernie S. Adams, John Bagni, (more)
- 1947
Character actor Douglas Fowley earns a rare starring role in this oddball western comedy produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, the brother of star director Billy Wilder. Fowley plays Yankee Davis, a traveling salesman who takes it upon himself to solve the killing of a local marshal (Forrest Taylor). To get to the bottom of things, the ingenious huckster sends for ancient prospector Shaggy Hartley (Clem Bevans), who pretends to be his millionaire uncle, Throckmorton. Hoping that "Uncle Throckmorton" will settle down and enrich the community, the townsfolk are soon perfectly willing to squeal on each other. From one of the informers, Charlie (Ernie Adams), Yankee learns of a smuggling ring headed by -- well that is indeed the question. In the end, it is the dead marshal's young son Tommy (Tom Bernard) who solves the mystery and unmasks the true killer. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Douglas Fowley, Joan Woodbury, (more)
Nora Goodrich (Brenda Marshall) is a dedicated research scientist who is very close to a breakthrough in her field of anesthetics. She allows herself to be used as the subject of an experiment, and becomes the victim of sabotage by her jealous assistant (Hillary Brooke), who is her rival for the affections of the same man (William Gargan). Nora is scarred by the accident, but fate takes a hand when a vicious blackmailer (Ruth Ford), part of an extortion scam that was being worked on her, breaks in to her apartment. In the ensuing struggle, the lady grifter is killed and then mistaken for Nora, while the real Nora goes into hiding. Taking the identity of the dead woman, she realizes how she has been betrayed and maimed and plots an elaborate revenge, undergoing reconstructive surgery that changes her whole appearance. She then reintroduces herself into the lives of her former associates, in her new guise, and begins her revenge. Before her plans can be concluded, however, her masquerade backfires on her, when she finds herself accused by the police -- of the murder of Nora Goodrich. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1946
In this drama, a reporter marries a socialite with a bad ticker. The gold-digging reporter is well aware of her delicate condition, and he and his girlfriend conspire to kill her. He shoots her, but does not realize that she was dead from a heart attack before the bullet entered her body. He is later captured and convicted. The detective who caught him was well aware that the woman died of heart failure, but he decided to say nothing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Kelly, Douglas Fowley, (more)
This ambitious independent production was packaged by producer W. Lee Wilder, brother of Billy Wilder, and distributed by Republic. The title character, played with relish (and a bit of mustard) by Erich Von Stroheim, is an arrogant vaudeville artiste specializing in a trick-gunshot act. A dyed-in-the-wool misogynist, Flamarion at first pays little attention to his beautiful assistant Connie (Mary Beth Hughes)-just as well, since Connie is already married to Flamarion's other assistant, Al Wallace (Dan Duryea). Bored with marriage, Connie begins playing up to her boss, the result being the "accidental" death of Al during Flamarion's act. Having committed murder for Connie's sake, Flamarion fully expects to be sexually compensated-but he doesn't know the treacherous Connie as well as the late Al did. Future cult favorite Anthony Mann's direction is rather perfunctory, suggesting perhaps that he was somewhat intimidated in the presence of the flamboyant Von Stroheim. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mary Beth Hughes, Dan Duryea, (more)
