David Dunbar Movies

Allegedly based on a Rudyard Kipling novel, this draws most of its inspiration from the 1939 film made of Kipling's narrative poem Gunga Din. Stewart Granger, Robert Newton and Cyril Cusack play three boisterous English soldiers stationed on the Northern India frontier. Walter Pidgeon and David Niven are the threesome's superior officers, who are aggravated by the soldiers' drunken exploits but who appreciate how valuable they are to the regiment. The soldiers three become heroes once more when they thwart a native uprising. Producer Pandro S. Berman, coincidentally, had been in charge of production at RKO when Gunga Din was filmed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Milkman is a low-key variation of a theme explored in such slapstick festivals as The Fuller Brush Man and The Yellow Cab Man. Donald O'Connor plays Roger Bradley, who hopes to become a top-flight milkman to please his father (Henry O'Neill), the owner of the milk company. Jimmy Durante co-stars as Breezy Albright, the older milkman who teaches Roger the ropes. After several comic set pieces, the plot rears its ugly head in the form of John Carter (Jess Barker), the nephew of rival milk-company proprietress Mrs. Carter (Elizabeth Risdon). Carter has gotten mixed up with a nasty bunch of gamblers, led by Mike Morrel (William Conrad). This leads to an exciting, albeit chucklesome finale wherein Roger, Breezy and ingenue Chris Abbott (Piper Laurie) combine forces to rout the bad guys. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this film noir drama, Bill Saunders (Burt Lancaster) is a former Prisoner of War living in England whose experiences have left him emotionally unstable and prone to violence. One night, while drinking in a pub, he gets into an argument with the owner which quickly escalates into a brutal fist fight; Bill kills the publican and flees with the police giving chase. Bill is given shelter by Jane Wharton (Joan Fontaine), a kind-hearted nurse who believes Bill when he tells her that the killing was an accident and that he's innocent of any wrongdoing. Bill soon gets in a fight with a policeman and ends up in jail, but Jane, who has fallen in love with Bill, still has faith in him, and upon his release she finds him a job driving a truck delivering drugs for the clinic where she works. Career criminal Harry Carter (Robert Newton), who witnessed Bill's murder of the pub owner, now sees a perfect opportunity for blackmail, and he forces Bill to tip him off for his next major drug shipment, which can then be routed to the black market at a high profit. Bill has little choice but to agree, but when Jane ends up tagging along when Bill is to make the delivery in question, he refuses to jeopardize her and makes the delivery to the clinic without incident. This quickly earns Harry's wrath, and they soon find themselves at the mercy of a very dangerous man. Miklos Rozsa composed the film's highly effective score. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In the 1830s, despite the development of the steamboat at the outset of the 19th century, all trans-Atlantic travel was still done by sailing ships. David Gillespie (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is first mate on one of the fastest of such ships, commanded by Captain Oliver (George Bancroft), but he is sickened and wary of the loss of life of sailing men caused by the limitations of sail. He meets John Shaw (Will Fyffe), a Liverpool-based machinist who insists that he has a design for an engine and a ship that will allow safe trans-Atlantic travel by steam power, and the two go into partnership -- but Gillespie must contend with the resistance of Shaw's headstrong and skeptical daughter, Mary (Margaret Lockwood), as well as the resistance of bankers and other shipbuilders to the new ideas he represents. All of this pleases Mary, who, despite her love of her father and attraction to Gillespie, regards herself as practical-minded and wants her father safely back working for his old employer on a steady salary, instead of pursuing what she regards as impossible goals. Gillespie gets the backing and Shaw builds his engine, but his ship is burned in an accidental fire, and all looks lost until a sympathetic backer proposes fitting the engine to an existing vessel, and suddenly Shaw is a real threat to the shipping establishment. They try to stop him in the courts, and when that fails, the race is on from Liverpool to New York, between Shaw's steam-powered ship and Gillespie's sail-driven former ship, with Mary aboard to look out for her father and Gillespie, and the future of ocean travel in the balance. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

The Great Impersonation is based on the E. Phillips Oppenheim espionage novel of the same name, previously filmed in 1921. During WW I, drunken, dissolute British nobleman Everard Dominey (Edmund Lowe) wanders into the African jungle, where he meets his exact double, German spy Von Ragenstein (also Edmund Lowe). The scene shifts back to England, where, apparently, Von Ragenstein has assumed Dominey's identity after the latter is reported killed. The actual identity of the protagonist is kept secret until the very end. Either way, it's a story of redemption: If he's really Von Ragenstein, he may very well be persuaded to cast his lot with the British; if he's really Dominey, he might just sober up and assume his proper place in society. The film is brightened by the presence of two former Bride of Frankenstein co-stars: Valerie Hobson, then only a teenager, delivers one of her best performances as Dominey's distraught wife, while Dwight Frye goes through his usual "Renfield" paces as a roving lunatic. Both the 1935 Great Impersonation and the 1945 remake with Ralph Bellamy and Evelyn Ankers were later included in Universal's "Shock Theater" TV package, even though both films are more suspenseful than shocking. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his pre-Charlie Chan days, Warner Oland returned as Dr. Fu Manchu for this sequel to The Mysterious Doctor Fu Manchu (1939). Supposedly the victim of a suicide at the end of the first film, Fu Manchu has actually injected himself with a toxin that will make him only appear dead. Escaping through a trap door in his coffin, Fu Manchu travels to England to seek revenge on the two men he holds responsible for the deaths of his wife and child: Dr. Jack Petrie (Neil Hamilton) and Inspector Nayland Smith (O.P. Heggie). A murderous game of cat and mouse ensues. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

This silent Western starring also-ran cowboy Bill Cody was one of only a handful of films independently produced by future Hollywood agent Myron Selznick, the brother of David O. Selznick. Selznick's other producer credits included the costume drama Rupert of Hentzau (1923) and an ill-timed version of the stage hit Topsy and Eva starring the Duncan Sisters. What attracted Selznick to this commonplace Western about a cowboy searching for the man who killed his father for his gold mine is anybody's guess. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Having scored big-time box office with his first Biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), Cecil B. DeMille hoped to top this success with his 1927 The King of Kings. Inasmuch as he was now dealing with the life of Christ, DeMille had to be careful to serve up equal amounts of showmanship and reverence. The first creative challenge: how to "introduce" Christ in a tasteful manner? The answer: as a blind child is cured through Jesus' intervention, DeMille cuts to the child's point-of-view, slowly fading in on the kindly countenance of H.B. Warner as the Son of Man. Still, DeMille remained DeMille, especially in his handling of the character of Mary Magdalene (Jacqueline Logan). No longer a tattered streetwalker, Mary Magdalene is now a glamorous courtesan, replete with legions of gorgeous slave girls (one of whom is "bubble dancer" Sally Rand) and dressed in revealing Hollywood-style gowns. In fact, the film opens on this character, as she ruminates over the defection of her favorite customer, Judas Iscariot (Joseph Schildkraut), who is spending far too much time with Jesus of Nazareth. Upon visiting Jesus herself, she immediately repents, casting off all her prior sins. Once again, the efficacy of the Cecil B. DeMille formula is proven: redemption has no dramatic value unless the film shows viewers why the sinner needs to be redeemed. Once he's gotten his box-office considerations out of the way, DeMille adheres faithfully to the particulars of Jesus' life, betrayal, trial, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. (Again, however, the director improves a bit upon his source material: the storm that follows the Crucifixion is of the same spectacular dimensions as the parting of the Red Sea in Ten Commandments, while the Resurrection is filmed in vibrant Technicolor). To back up the authenticity of his images, DeMille -- with an assist from scenarist Jeannie Macpherson -- utilizes Scriptural quotes in his subtitles. And to avoid any untoward publicity while filming, DeMille required all of his actors to sign legal documents preventing them from indulging in any sort of "sinful" activity; this meant that poor old H.B. Warner had to steer clear of alcoholic beverages for nearly a year, though he more than made up for lost time after his contract ran out. Prepared to mercilessly lambaste The King of Kings, DeMille's critics were disarmed by his reverent, tasteful approach to the subject. Years after the film's release, a specially prepared 60-minute version of the 18-reel King of Kings was making the rounds of religious groups, church basements, and Easter-weekend telecasts. The film was remade in 1961 by producer Samuel Bronston and director Nicholas Ray, with Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In 1906 Sweden, Captain Lars Larson (Knute Erickson) goes on a sea voyage, leaving his wife (Marcella Daly) behind expecting their first child. Unbeknownst to him while he is at sea, a bitter rival kidnaps her and makes it look as though she left him willingly. When he returns and discovers their home abandoned, he all but goes mad with bitterness and rage, destroying their home. In the years that follow, Larson becomes a sadistic, drunken reprobate of the sea, working for smugglers carrying all kinds of illegal cargo, including drugs -- and human cargo. A cruel, bitter man with a mean streak a mile wide, he has only one soft spot that he knows of, for animals, possibly because his dog remained faithful and stayed, rather than leaving with his wife. Cut to 1925 and the United States Navy's history-making flight from San Francisco to Hawaii -- Larson is still carrying his illicit cargoes, and has a new request from the Chinese smuggler Wing, for a white girl. These two sequences of events manage to intersect, as Larson's ship puts down on a desert island where a young white woman (Virginia Fry) lives with a much older hermit, at just about the same time that the navy flight is forced to set down at sea adjacent to the same island. Matters come to a head when Wing sets his sights on the girl; Larson discovers at just about the same time that she is his daughter, born 19 years earlier when her mother was rescued from the ship where she was being held by the sympathetic first mate, who has become the grim, seemingly disheveled hermit. Larson recovers enough of his right mind that he will do anything to protect the girl, even sacrificing himself -- but can he and the navy men stop Wing and his band of cutthroats? ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Having starred in several William Steiner Production melodramas, former serial ace Charles Hutchison went behind the camera to produce this low-budget crime drama. Hutchison cast his wife, Edith Thornton, in the starring role as Norma Keith, a nice little secretary who falls for handsome but ruthless lawyer Bruce Elliot (Lou Tellegen). The scoundrel notices neither her nor her many sacrifices and instead marries Rita Thane, a mercenary blond vamp (Betty Francisco). When his new wife is accidentally killed, Bruce is convicted on circumstantial evidence of murdering her. Her love for Bruce undiminished, Norma goes in search of the truth, finding evidence to clear the lawyer in a waterfront dive, winning his true affection along the way. Leading man Lou Tellegen was the ex-husband of opera diva Geraldine Farrar, and his career was rather dramatically on the wane by 1925. Tellegen was always more an adornment than an actor, and the title of his autobiography, Women Have Been Kind, may have explained his rise to stardom. He committed suicide in 1934. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Serious-looking, silent-screen cowboy Bob Custer co-starred with a very young, brunette Jean Arthur in this middling oater produced by the B-Western mill FBO. While romancing the millinery store owner (Arthur), Custer finds himself falsely accused of murdering his boss and is soon fleeing from a vicious lynch mob. Prolific screenwriter George Hively concocted this not-too-taxing story, which, not unexpectedly, climaxed in a scene where Custer captures the real killer (the typically ruthless Buck Moulton). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide