Michael Moore Movies
In this odd crime film, Scotland Yard begins searching for the one-armed killer behind a series of gruesome murders. The story begins in Burma during WW II with the capture and torture of a British captain and his two men. The soldiers refuse to give the Burmese information, and their interrogators chop off their right hands. The captain relents and tells them all they want to know; thereby, preserving his own hand. The story leaps ahead into the present where a series of murders involving amputations have occurred. The Yard detectives trace the killings to the former captain. He is pursued by the police. He flees across some railroad tracks, falls and has his hand cut off by a passing train. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1957
Kay Callard plays Joan Foster, the title role, in the British quickie Undercover Girl. She works in a nightclub that serves as the front for a dope ring. When a reporter is murdered, Joan agrees to help the reporter's brother (Paul Carter) bust up the criminal gang. Naturally, this means putting her own life on the line, but you knew that when you saw the title. If nothing else, Undercover Girl affords ample opportunities to show off attractively undressed chorus girls. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1957
In this drama, unknowing thieves, headed by Tafler, a drug dealer, steal a pen with very special properties. Unbeknownst to them, the pen is wired to explode when Big Ben chimes. Tragedy ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Based on the novel and play by Joseph Hayes, which in turn was inspired by an actual event, The Desperate Hours is the prototypical "family-trapped-by-criminals" drama. Escaped convicts Humphrey Bogart, Robert Middleton and Dewey Martin, seeking an appropriate hideout until they can make contact with their money supply, deliberately choose the suburban home of Fredric March and his family. The cold-blooded Bogart wants no trouble with the police, and he knows he can cower a family with children into cooperating with him. The convict orders March, his wife Martha Scott, and their children Richard Eyer and Mary Murphy, to go about their normal activities so as not to arouse suspicion. Young Eyer, upset that March won't lift a hand against Bogart, assumes that his father is a coward. The authorities are alerted when March, at Bogart's behest, draws money for the convict's getaway from the bank. Pushed to the breaking point, March begins subtly turning the tables on the convicts. Bogart's character in Desperate Hours was originally written for a much younger man, which explains why Paul Newman was able to play the part in the original Broadway production. The film was slated to co-star Bogart with his old pal Spencer Tracy, but this plan fell through when the two actors couldn't agree on who would get top billing. Desperate Hours was remade in 1991 with Mickey Rourke in the Bogart role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, Fredric March, (more)
- 1953
Filmed in Cinecolor, Sabre Jet concentrates as much on a group of jet pilots' wives as on the pilots themselves. As their husbands fly combat missions over Korea, the wives remain behind in Tokyo, waiting, hoping and dreading. The most prominent of the female contingent is Jane Carter (Coleen Gray), the journalist wife of flyboy Gil Manton (Robert Stack). At first resenting her husband's life-threatening work, Jane comes to realize the importance of dedication and sacrifice during wartime. Julie Bishop delivers a strong performance as the wife of downed pilot (Richard Arlen). Sabre Jet is something of a precursor to the 1961 film X-15. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Stack, Coleen Gray, (more)
- 1953
Bing Crosby heads this heart-tugging post war drama of a grieving widower who is duped into forming an unbreakable bond with the French orphan he believes is his long-lost son. Crosby lost his beloved when the Nazis killed her for participating in the French resistance. Much later, Crosby is told that his son, who bears striking resemblance to his wife, is in a Paris orphanage. Despite the head nun's insistence that 8-year-old Fourcade is his boy, Crosby is skeptical and so tries to test the lad. When the boy fails the test, Crosby confronts the duplicitous sister who 'fesses up to her scheme and determination to see that her charges get good homes and happy lives. Though Crosby has come to love little Fourcade, he cannot get over his grief until he receives wise counsel from a very good friend. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bing Crosby, Claude Dauphin, (more)
The scene is a German POW camp, sometime during the mid-1940s. Stalag 17, exclusively populated by American sergeants, is overseen by sadistic commandant Oberst Von Schernbach (Otto Preminger) and the deceptively avuncular sergeant Schultz (Sig Ruman). The inmates spend their waking hours circumventing the boredom of prison life; at night, they attempt to arrange escapes. When two of the escapees, Johnson and Manfredi, are shot down like dogs by the Nazi guards, Stalag 17's resident wiseguy Sefton (William Holden) callously collects the bets he'd placed concerning the fugitives' success. No doubt about it: there's a security leak in the barracks, and everybody suspects the enterprising Sefton -- who manages to obtain all the creature comforts he wants -- of being a Nazi infiltrator. Things get particularly dicey when Lt. Dunbar (Don Taylor), temporarily billetted in Stalag 17 before being transferred to an officer's camp, tells his new bunkmates that he was responsible for the destruction of a German ammunition train. Sure enough, this information is leaked to the Commandant, and Dunbar is subjected to a brutal interrogation. Certain by now that Sefton is the "mole", the other inmates beat him to a pulp. But Sefton soon learns who the real spy is, and reveals that information on the night of Dunbar's planned escape. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Stalag 17 is as much comedy as wartime melodrama, with most of the laughs provided by Robert Strauss as the Betty Grable-obsessed "Animal" and Harvey Lembeck as Stosh's best buddy Harry. Other standouts in the all-male cast include Richard Erdman as prisoner spokesman Hoffy, Neville Brand as the scruffy Duke, Peter Graves as blonde-haired, blue-eyed "all American boy" Price, Gil Stratton as Sefton's sidekick Cookie (who also narrates the film) and Robinson Stone as the catatonic, shell-shocked Joey. Writer/producer/director Billy Wilder and coscenarist Edmund Blum remained faithful to the plot and mood the Donald Bevan/Edmund Trzcinski stage play Stalag 17, while changing virtually every line of dialogue-all to the better, as it turned out (Trzcinski, who like Bevan based the play on his own experiences as a POW, appears in the film as the ingenuous prisoner who "really believes" his wife's story about the baby abandoned on her doorstep). William Holden won an Academy Award for his hard-bitten portrayal of Sefton, which despite a hokey "I'm really a swell guy after all" gesture near the end of the film still retains its bite today. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Holden, Don Taylor, (more)
- 1953
Paramount's William Pine- William Thomas production unit came up with another moneyspinner in Jamaica Run. Ray Milland plays Patrick Fairlie, a schooner master who is inveigled into salvaging a wrecked ship. Somewhere in the wreckage is a century-old bill of sale, which will prove that a huge estate is indeed the property of landowner Ena Dacey (Arlene Dahl) and her tosspot mother (Carroll McComas) and brother (Wendell Corey). Certain parties want to get their meathooks into the property, thus Fairlie is in danger of losing his life should he begin exploring the scuttled ship. Filmed on location, Jamaica Run makes excellent use of the Technicolor process. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ray Milland, Arlene Dahl, (more)
- 1953
The action in this loose adaptation of a popular 1925 silent tells the galloping (and largely untrue) tale if the formation of the U.S. rapid transcontinental mail system with a focus on the adventures of Buffalo Bill Cody (Charlton Heston) and Wild Bill Hickock (Forrest Tucker). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlton Heston, Rhonda Fleming, (more)
- 1952
The city of the title is Los Alamos, where nuclear physicist Gene Barry lives and works. Terrorists kidnap Barry's son and demand that the physicist turn over the H-bomb formula. It's cat-and-mouse for a while, but when the FBI gets on the case, the criminals haven't got a chance. Outdated almost before its release, The Atomic City is still effective on a purely melodramatic level. There's a particularly tense climax played out along the mountain mesas surrounding Los Alamos. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Barry, Lydia Clarke, (more)
- 1951
An excellent cast brings distinction to the pedestrian goings-on in Silver City. Per its title, the film is set in silver-mining country, with hopeful prospectors and greedy claim-jumpers abounding. The villain of the piece is miserly R. R. Jarboe (Barry Fitzgerald), who holds the lease on the silver lode worked by heroine Candace Surrency (Yvonne DeCarlo) and her father Dutch (Edgar Buchanan). Meanwhile, mining expert Larkin Moffatt (Edmond O'Brien) is prevented from finding work by the vengeful Charles Storrs (Richard Arlen), who happens to be Candace's boyfriend. Murder rears its ugly head, resulting in all sorts of skullduggery, culminating in true melodramatic fashion in an old sawmill. The "bad girl" in Silver City is played by Laura Elliot, who later changed her name to Kasey Rogers and essayed the benign role of Mrs. Larry Tate on TV's Bewitched. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edmond O'Brien, Yvonne De Carlo, (more)
- 1951
This crime drama follows the struggles of a reporter who finds himself accused of murder after he makes a bet and breaks into a house. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1950
This drama chronicles the attempts of a young man from Dublin to buy his girl friend a number of expensive gifts. Because he cannot afford them, he resorts to burglary. Later he discovers that she is using the money he brings to pay off an extortionist. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1943
This patriotic WW II-era bit of anti-Japanese propaganda centers on a white Texas college student who becomes such good friends with Japanese students on campus that he goes to their country after he is wrongfully accused of being a traitor. All this happened before the U.S. declared war on Japan. After the war begins, the fellow willingly makes pro-Japanese radio broadcasts. Fortunately, the fellow turns out to be a red-blooded American boy through and through and thanks to him, the Japanese are rendered helpless by the end of the film. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Quine, Noah Beery, Jr., (more)
