Harvey B. Dunn Movies
Harvey B. Dunn led a long and successful performing career as a radio announcer and stage, television, and movie character actor; although he appeared in small roles in a variety of mainstream films, he achieved a peculiar form of screen stardom and immortality in the larger parts that he portrayed in several notoriously bad (but fascinating) films directed by Edward D. Wood Jr. and Tom Graeff. A southerner by birth, Dunn's earliest professional engagements were as an announcer on WALB radio in Albany, GA, and WFLB in Fayetteville, NC. Later based in Chicago, his theatrical work included roles in The Front Page, The Late Christopher Bean (with Zazu Pitts), The Barker (with James Dunn), and Present Laughter (with Edward Everett Horton). He played in stock across the country and appeared as a dramatic actor on Colgate Theater on early television. In between was a lot of other work -- his own professional bio claimed experience in every area of theater "except medicine shows and grand opera." His earliest credited screen role was in MGM's 1951 Vengeance Valley, which was sort of that studio's answer to Universal's Winchester '73 released the prior year and he also had a small part in Billy Wilder's Sabrina in 1954. Starring roles beckoned Dunn, not from the likes of Wilder or anyone at MGM, but from director/producer Edward D. Wood Jr., who cast the avuncular actor as the police captain in Bride of the Monster (1956) -- Dunn gave what was probably the straightest performance in the film, with some odd little character touches that seemed natural and pleasing in their bizarre way (typical of a Wood script), such as his character's fascination with feeding his pet bird in the office. He also had a role in Wood's final film as a director, The Sinister Urge which was not widely distributed and in-between played the role of the genial grandfather in Tom Graeff's bizarre, low-budget sci-fi thriller Teenagers From Outer Space. He continued working in movies and on television into the early '60s in small parts, but never got the kind of screen time that Wood and Graeff had afforded this likable character actor, whose round face and genial manner recalled both Lloyd Corrigan and Hal Smith. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide- 1961
Even their fellow hoodlums are in mortal terror of the Purple Gang, a Detroit-based operation led by Eddie Fletcher (Steve Cochran). Now the Gang has come up with racket that surpasses all their previous achievements: namely, kidnapping other mobsters and holding them for ransom, knowing full well that their victims can't go to the police. But Fletcher sets the stage for his own inevitable downfall when his boys snatch Jan Tornek (played by a pre-Hogan's Heroes) Werner Klemperer), a minor functionary of the Capone gang who is presently under surveillance by Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) and the Untouchables. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1960
A series of pornography-related murders has Lt. Carson (Kenne Duncan) frustrated, not only because the killer remains at large but also because the smut peddlers are distributing their disgusting products to high school kids at ice cream shops. They raid illicit photography studios, but it's not enough; Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine) runs the racket from a comfortable distance, and she's funded by "the syndicate." With a steady stream of naive hopefuls arriving in Hollywood with stars in their eyes, casting is no problem and the desperate, shamed girls aren't quick to blow the whistle. The director of these dirty films, Johnny Ryde (Carl Anthony), warns Gloria that her henchman Dirk Williams (Dino Fantini) is seriously unhinged. He's the one responsible for all the sex crimes, which he commits after long, loving exposure to their pornographic pictures. Eventually Dirk gets sloppy and the cops find his fingerprints on some very sleazy evidence, which leads Gloria's mobster backers to demand his execution. The whole dirty scheme goes awry, though, and the police are finally able to purge the community of the smut gang. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
This off-the-wall, low-budget sci-fi film was written, produced, directed, edited, photographed, and acted (one role) by Tom Graeff. The unlikely story concerns a spaceship that lands on Earth from somewhere a lot less accommodating. On board are the space aliens' grazing animals, the gorgons. These are huge, crab-like monsters that quickly balloon up to a gigantic size and then proceed to devour any humans in sight. Soon the space aliens are split between the loner who would rather forget the gorgons and just stay here, and his two evil opponents. The single good guy appears to be the only hope for saving the people of the earth from turning into a snack food. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Love, Dawn Anderson, (more)
- 1959
Based on a successful stage play, The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker loses in this adaptation to film by becoming more serious than an all-out farce. The setting is the end of the 1800s and the intrepid Pennypacker (Clifton Webb) runs a sausage company with two thriving plants in Philadelphia and Harrisburg. He shuttles back and forth between the cities and with equal aplomb, between two households. He maintains one wife (Dorothy McGuire) and eight children in one city, and another wife (Jill St. John) and nine children in the other. When one of the Mrs. Pennypackers finds out about his deception, the unruffled businessman sees no reason for her emotional reaction. Victorian inhibitions and rigidities are set against ultra-modern thinking, embodied in the people the bigamist admires -- like Darwin, the feminists (!), and free-thinkers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, (more)
- 1957
The 8-year-old "Ma and Pa Kettle Series" came to an end with The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm. In her last screen appearance, Marjorie Main is back as Ma Kettle, while Parker Fennelly replaces the defecting Percy Kilbride as Pa Kettle. This time, Ma and Pa try to smooth the path of romance for newlyweds Sally Flemming (Gloria Talbot) and Brad Johnson (John Smith). Despite her wealthy parents' objections, Sally intends to "rough it" with her back-to-the-soil husband by living on the Kettles' old, ramshackle farm. Ensuing comic complications include a set-to with a bunch of crooked loggers and a wild appearance at a rodeo. A worthwhile finale to this durable series, The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm was still making the second-run-theater rounds as late as 1960. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marjorie Main, Parker Fennelly, (more)
- 1956
The redoubtable John Carpenter strikes again with the ultra-low-budget I Killed Wild Bill Hickok. Carpenter serves as the film's producer and screenwriter, and also heads the cast, pseudonymously billed as John Forbes. Everybody knows that Wild Bill Hickok (here played by Tom Brown) was shot in the back while playing poker, but Carpenter/Forbes boldly forges ahead with a wholly fictional scenario, wherein Wild Bill meets his Waterloo in a High Noon-style gun battle with one "Johnny Rebel" (played, naturally, by Carpenter). Though the film's cast (Helen Westcott, Virginia Gibson, Denver Pyle) is more impressive than usual for a John Carpenter production, the film betrays its cheapness through its heavy reliance upon mismatched stock footage. Warming the director's chair is ace stuntman Richard Talmadge, who despite his vast experience isn't quite in the John Ford or Lesley Selander league. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Helen Westcott, Tom Brown, (more)
To most outside observers, Bride of the Monster probably seems like a ridiculously inept horror film, and in many ways it is just that. To connoisseurs of the work of director Edward D. Wood Jr., however, it is the biggest budgeted film in his entire output, made with the resources of a normal B-movie (as opposed to his usual totally emaciated finances) and the most easily accessible of his three horror films. Bela Lugosi, in his final complete performance, portrays Dr. Eric Vornoff, a renegade Eastern European scientist with a plan to create a race of atomic supermen, giants charged with radioactivity. The problem is that the hapless hunters and other passersby at Lake Marsh, where he has set up shop with his hulking, mute assistant Lobo (Tor Johnson), whom the pair waylay, keep dying when he straps them in and switches on his atomic ray machine (which is a not-at-all disguised photographic enlarger). A dozen victims later, reporter Janet Lawson (Loretta King) goes out to investigate the disappearances -- attributed to a monster -- and falls into Vornoff's hands, with her police detective fiance Dick Craig (Tony McCoy) hot on her trail, and a devious spy (George Becwar) from Vornoff's former nation also nosing his way around the swamp and the old house. Vornoff dresses Lawson in a wedding gown and plans to irradiate her but Lobo refuses to allow it, straps Vornoff into the machine, and turns him into a radioactive giant (and into stuntman Eddie Parker, totally unconvincing in his doubling for Lugosi). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, (more)
Billy Wilder directs the lighthearted romantic comedy Sabrina, based on the play by Samuel A. Taylor. Sabrina Fairchild (Audrey Hepburn) is the simple, naïve daughter of a chauffeur, Thomas Fairchild (John Williams). They live on an estate with the wealthy Oliver Larrabee (Walter Hampden) and his two sons: workaholic older brother Linus (Humphrey Bogart) and fun-loving younger brother David (William Holden). Sabrina adores the charming David, but he thinks of her as just a kid. Her father sends her away to Paris for chef school, where she meets Baron St. Fontanel (Marcel Dalio), and she returns a worldly, sophisticated woman. David immediately falls for her, but he is already engaged to marry heiress Elizabeth Tyson (Martha Hyer). Sabrina wants to break up the wedding in order to finally catch the man of her dreams, while Linus fights to keep the marriage on in the interest of family business and Mr. Tyson's (Francis X. Bushman) fortune. In order to keep Sabrina away from David, Linus pretends to court her himself. In doing so, they eventually realize their true feelings for each another. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, (more)
- 1954
Completed in 1953, Dragon's Gold was released by United Artists early the following year. John Archer (the father of present-day leading lady Anne Archer) stars as an insurance investigator, sent to China to locate a missing client. The official story is that the client stole $7 million from his employer, but Archer smells a rat. His olfactory senses are right on target: The supposed theft was actually a smokescreen, contrived by a Red Chinese general (Noel Cravath). Also intimately involved in the intrigue is Hillary Brooke, playing straight once more after several years' worth of TV work on The Abbott and Costello Show and My Little Margie. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Archer, Hillary Brooke, (more)
The old "Cain and Abel" plot device is redefined within Western terms in MGM's Vengeance Valley. Burt Lancaster stars as ranch-hand Owen Daybright, who has been raised as a son by rancher Arch Stroble (Ray Collins). Stroble's natural son Lee (Robert Walker) has always been envious of Owen, who in turn has spent most of his life pulling Lee out of trouble and keeping the boy's misdeeds a secret from the elder Stroble. When Lee fathers an illegitimate child, he tries to shift the responsibility on Owen, leading to a life-threatening confrontation with the vengeance-seeking brothers of the baby's mother (Sally Forrest). There's plenty more plot twists before virtue finally triumphs. Joanne Dru co-stars as Lee's long-suffering wife Jen, who harbors a secret yen for Owen. Since lapsing into public domain, Vengeance Valley has shown up with increasing frequency on cable television; it has also been made available in a narrated version for the visually impaired. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Lancaster, Robert Walker, (more)
