Josef Mischel Movies

One of the more popular movie-review paperbacks sums up Paramount's Isn't it Romantic? with a terse "No." There's actually more to the film than that, but not much. Set in Indiana in the 1890s, the story revolves around an diehard Confederate soldier named Major Euclid Cameron (Rolan Culver), who refuses to acknowledge that the South lost the Civil War. Cameron also regards himself as an aristocrat who will never sully his hands with work, which is why he and his family are flat broke. It is up to the Major's three pretty daughters-Candy (Veronica Lake), Susie (Mona Freeman) and Rose (Mary Hatcher)-to make ends meet financially, even if it means marrying for money rather than love. Pearl Bailey transcends the stereotypical role of the Cameron's housekeeper Abigail with her soulful renditions of such forgettable tunes as "I Shoulda Quit When I Was Ahead" (a bit of advice that could have profited the film's producers!) ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This initial entry in Monogram's Bowery Boys series is also the second remake of the 1933 film He Couldn't Take It (the original script was by no less than Dore Schary, billed for reasons best known to himself as Jeb Schary). Leo Gorcey stars as Slip Mahoney, a pugnacious type whose volatile temper loses him one job after another. Slip's sister Mary (Pamela Blake), secretary to construction executive Sayers (John Eldredge), persuades her boss to use his influence to get Slip a job as a process server. After successfully repossessing a car belonging to nightclub thrush Jeannette (Claudia Drake), Slip and his fellow "skip tracer" Sach Jones (Huntz Hall) endeavor to serve a subpoena to homicidal gangster Patsy Clark (Mike Mazurki). Though the boys get quite a going over from the "playful" Patsy, they not only successfully complete their mission, but also prove that the supposedly respectable Sayers is a criminal mastermind. Essentially a vehicle for Leo Gorcey, Live Wires pushes the rest of the Bowery Boys (Bobby Jordan, Billy Benedict et. al.) into the background; it wasn't until the second series entry In Fast Company that the former "East Side Kids" truly became a team again. Bernard Gorcey, who later played sweet-shop owner Louie Dumbrowski, is seen herein as a small-time gambler. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this WW II drama, American POWs aboard a Japanese ship revolt when they learn that their vessel is to used as a decoy for an American submarine. The rebellion is quite bloody and 30 women and children die before the Yankees break into the radio room and announce their presence to the oncoming submarine. Shots are fired, but at last the Americans beat the Japanese and are rescued. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

One of the few failures for RKO Radio's resident "prestige programmer" producer Val Lewton, Mademoiselle Fifi is based on two Guy De Maupassant tales, with emphasis on Boule de Suif. The story takes place during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, though it is clearly an allegorical representation of the German mindset of WW2. "Mademoiselle Fifi" is the derisive nickname of a brutal Prussian officer (Kurt Krueger) who rules the roost in a tiny French village. When a stagecoach rides into the village, the passengers are detained by the Prussian tyrant, who threatens to kill them all at any given moment. Desperately, the passengers demand that one of their own, a laundress of dubious morals named Elizabeth (Simone Simon), surrender herself sexually to the Prussian to secure their freedom. Previously the object of scorn and ridicule from her fellow passengers, Elizabeth is bitterly amused by their change of heart, but she's too loyal to France to refuse their request. How she completes her "mission" and eliminates "Mademoiselle Fifi" in the process is the film's dramatic core. Though superbly directed by Robert Wise, Mademoiselle Fifi is laid low by its pretentiousness-not to mention the uneveness of the performances, none more uneven than Jason Robards Sr., who at one point declaims in his flat midwestern tones "We must not forget that we're all Frenchmen!" ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi