Carl Faulkner Movies
- 1963
The unlikely duo of Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason star in this military comedy-drama. Gleason is Master Sergeant Max Slaughter, a corpulent man perfectly content with his solitary life in the Army, where his room and board are paid for and free sodas are his for the taking. His comrade, the more ambitious Sergeant Eustis Clay (McQueen), looks forward to leaving the service and making a big success of himself in business. Nevertheless, Eustis worships the ground that the kindly Max walks on and introduces him to a pretty teenager, Bobby Jo Pepperdine (Tuesday Weld). This sets off the ire of Bobby Jo's would-be suitor Sergeant Fred Lenahan (Lew Gallo), a tough military policeman who's already got a bone to pick with Eustis, leading to a tragic turn of events for Eustis and Max. The script for Soldier in the Rain (1963) was co-written by Blake Edwards. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jackie Gleason, Steve McQueen, (more)
- 1959
- G
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There was neither a heroine nor a villain in Jules Verne's 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, but scenarist Charles Brackett evidently knew what he was doing by adding both to the 1959 film version. The picture proved to be a significant success in an otherwise disappointing year for 20th Century Fox. James Mason stars as amusingly absent-minded professor Oliver Lindenbrook, whose first step on a fabulous journey is prompted by a lump of lava brought to him by his student Alec McEwen (Pat Boone -- and, yes, he gets to sing). Melting down the curiously composed lump, Lindenbrook discovers a hastily scrawled message from long-lost explorer Arne Saknussem, with directions for reaching the earth's core. Accompanied by Carla (Arlene Dahl), widow of a famed geologist, and Icelandic guide Hans (Peter Ronson), Lindenbrook and Alec head down, down below. They are closely followed by the villainous Count Saknussem (Thayer David), descendant of the lost explorer who wrote the directions; the count hopes to use Lindenbrook's discoveries for his own personal and political gain (we know he's really bad when he eats Han's lovable pet goose). What follows is a festival of superb special effects, fabulous subterranean sets, and gigantized reptiles posing as dinosaurs, all brilliantly accompanied by Bernard Herrmann's ominous musical score. Journey to the Center of the Earth would later be adapted into a Saturday-morning cartoon series, again produced by 20th Century Fox. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pat Boone, James Mason, (more)
- 1955
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Based on the autobiographical novel by Han Suyin, Love is a Many Splendored Thing was evocatively location-filmed in Hong Kong. Jennifer Jones plays Ms. Suyin, a Eurasian doctor and the widow of a Chinese general. She falls in love with American news correspondent Mark Elliot (William Holden), who unfortunately cannot obtain a divorce from his present wife. This, together with the disapproval of Dr. Suyin's tradition-bound relatives and Hong Kong's strict racial laws, forces the couple to carry on their romance in a clandestine fashion. The romance ends in tragedy, but with renewed hope for a happier future. The one lasting legacy of Love is a Many Splendored Thing is its Oscar-winning title song, written by Paul Fain and Sammy Webster; Oscars also went to Alfred Newman's musical score and Charles LeMaire's costume design. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Holden, Jennifer Jones, (more)
- 1949
Widely regarded as a "model" B-movie thriller, The Window stars Bobby Driscoll as a young boy prone to fibs. Thus, no one believes him when he claims to have seen a murder in a neighboring apartment. No one, that is, except the killers (Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman). Realizing he won't get any help from his parents (Barbara Hale and Arthur Kennedy) or the law, the boy must figure out a way to save himself from being shut up permanently by the murderers. The film's hair-rising and oft-imitated climax, which takes place in a rotting abandoned tenement, has lost none of its edge over the past five decades. A much-needed hit for financially strapped RKO Radio Pictures, The Window was remade in 1960 as The Boy Cried Murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barbara Hale, Bobby Driscoll, (more)
This drama was one of the first major-studio efforts to confront anti-Semitism (beating the Oscar-winning Gentleman's Agreement by several months), and it features a standout performance from Robert Ryan as a bigoted soldier on the run. Monty Montogomery (Ryan) is a violent and unstable soldier who, while out on a pass, goes on a drinking spree with three buddies, Floyd (Steve Brodie), Arthur (George A. Cooper), and Leroy (William Phipps). While boozing it up in a tavern, the four men meet Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene) and strumpet Ginny (Gloria Grahame), who invite the soldiers back to their apartment for a party. Monty, however, has a fierce hatred of Jews, and he later goes into a drunken rage in which he beats Joseph to death. Monty's friends can barely remember the incident through their liquor-shrouded memories, but they recall just enough to make themselves scarce when police detective Capt. Finlay (Robert Young) begins making the rounds looking for information on Joseph's murder. Sgt. Kelly (Robert Mitchum), a soldier who knows the four men, begins to suspect that something is up, and he works with his wife and Finlay to help ferret out the killer in his ranks, while Monty kills Floyd when he becomes convinced that he's going to talk to the authorities. While director Edward Dmytryk showed real bravery in bringing this story to the screen, it had greater repercussions than he might have expected; the film's controversial themes led to Dmytryk's denunciation by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy-era investigations of the 1950s. Luckily, unlike other filmmakers who suffered similar accusations by HUAC, Dmytryk continued to work steadily through the '50s and '60s. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, (more)
- 1947
A WWII Coast Guard veteran, Lt. Scott Burnett (Robert Ryan), is plagued by nightmares of his combat days. One day, he meets a woman, Peggy Butler (Joan Bennett), walking on a beach, picking up pieces of wood. Butler is married to a grumpy, blind painter, Ted Butler (Charles Bickford). Despite his affections for his fiancée Eve (Nan Leslie), whose father is a boat builder, Scott falls in love with Peggy and soon breaks off the engagement. Peggy reveals that she blinded her husband years earlier by throwing a glass at him during an ugly spat, ruining his career and her own ambitions to be an upper-class socialite. Scott fears that Ted is suspicious that he is having an affair with Peggy and becomes so paranoid that he begins to believe that Ted is faking his blindness -- and sets out to prove it. This was the fifth and final American film by the great French writer-director Jean Renoir. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Bennett, Robert Ryan, (more)
- 1946
Deadline at Dawn represented not only the sole film directorial effort of Broadway's Harold Clurman, but also the only cinematic collaboration between Clurman and his former Group Theatre associate, screenwriter Clifford Odets. While on shore leave in New York, sailor Alex (Bill Williams) is slipped a doped-up drink by B-girl Edna (Lola Lane). When he awakens, Alex discovers that she has been murdered. Though he believes that he's the killer, our hero is talked into locating the actual miscreant by philosophical cab driver gus (Paul Lukas) and nightclub dancer June (Susan Hayward). Adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich, Deadline at Dawn leans towards pretentiousness at times, but is redeemed by the no-nonsense performance by Susan Hayward. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Susan Hayward, Paul Lukas, (more)
With Tim Holt still in military service and Robert Mitchum promoted to "A" pictures, RKO Radio attempted to create a new B-western star in the form of James Warren, who starred in three sagebrushers over a three-year period. Warren's second RKO effort was Sunset Pass, a remake of an oft-filmed Zane Grey story. The star is cast as Rocky, a railway express officer assigned to break up a train-robbery gang operating on the Arizona border. John Laurenz plays Rocky's Spanish-Irish sidekick Chito Rafferty, a role later assigned to Richard Martin in the Tim Holt series. One of the film's two heroines is played by Jane Greer, who unlike James Warren was destined for bigger things at RKO. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Warren, Nan Leslie, (more)
- 1946
Barbara Hale landed her first A-picture starring role in the engaging romantic comedy Lady Luck. Hale is cast as Mary Audrey, the descendant of a long line of professional gamblers. Haughtily turning up her nose at the "family business," Mary spends most of her time keeping her poker-happy grandfather William (Frank Morgan) from losing his shirt. In spite of herself, Mary falls in love with another gambler, Larry Scott (Robert Young), but only after he promises to reform. Naturally he doesn't, compelling Mary to leave him on their honeymoon, thereby setting the stage for all the comic complications to follow. By film's end, Mary herself has caught the gambling bug, forcing Grandpa William and husband Larry to straighten her out! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Young, Barbara Hale, (more)
- 1946
- NR
Art critic and forgery expert George Steele (Pat O'Brien) is apprehended by the police as he desperately tries to break into the Manhattan Museum in the opening scene of Crack-Up, a noir mystery directed by Irving Reis. Steele does not understand his own bizarre actions, but explains that he was in a train wreck and had to get back to the museum. Questioned by Lt. Cochrane (Wallace Ford), who tells him there have been no train wrecks in months, Steele relates, in flashback, the events leading up to the incident. Earlier in the day the head of the museum had suspended him for alienating wealthy patrons by criticizing "art snobs" in a lecture. He then received a phone call informing him that his mother was sick, and caught the train to the hospital, but never got there. Though suspicious of Steele, Cochrane is persuaded by the shadowy Mr. Traybin (Herbert Marshall) to release him so he can follow Steele. The next day Steele retraces his steps and discovers that someone had set him up to be discredited, though he knows neither who nor why. Following the murder of a friend who was trying to help him, he discovers that forgeries of some very famous paintings are at the heart of the matter, but getting to the culprit is a more difficult task. ~ Steve Press, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pat O'Brien, Claire Trevor, (more)
Dick Tracy, Detective (originally just Dick Tracy) was the first of four RKO Radio B-pictures based on Chester Gould's classic comic strip. Though Ralph Byrd is most closely associated with the role of Tracy, the title character is played herein by Morgan Conway (Byrd would be seen as Tracy in the last two series entries). The jut-jawed detective takes on a vicious criminal named Splitface (Mike Mazurki), who upon escaping from jail vows to murder the jurors who found him guilty and their alternates. He manages to knock off three before the police force figures out what's happening. Galvanized into action, Dick Tracy and his partner Pat Patton (Lyle Latell) track Splitface to a deserted riverboat (a leftover set from the 1945 RKO feature Man Alive) where the villain is holding Tracy's girlfriend Tess Truehart (Anne Jeffreys) and adopted son Junior (Mickey Kuhn) captive. When asked about Dick Tracy Detective in 1990, Anne Jeffreys flatly denied she'd ever played Tess Trueheart until she caught up with the film on videotape. She'd completely forgotten the whole experience. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Morgan Conway, Anne Jeffreys, (more)
- 1941
A Clarence Buddington Kelland story was the source for the mildly farcical For Beauty's Sake. If he wants to inherit a fortune, bookish astronomy professor B. E. Dillsome (Ted North) must operate his aunt's beauty parlor for a two-year period. Business is very, very slow, prompting Dillsome's girlfriend Dime Pringle (Marjorie Weaver) to bring in a hot-shot press agent Jonathan B. Sweet (Ned Sparks) to publicize the establishment. Before long, our benighted hero finds himself mixed up in a murder plot and a blackmail scheme. The raucous comedy relief of Joan Davis and the patented deadpan asides of Ned Sparks more than make up for the film's plot deficiencies. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ned Sparks, Marjorie Weaver, (more)
- 1940
- G
In their last film for Hal Roach, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play employees at the Sharp and Pierce Horn Factory, where the workers tend to go beserk at a rate of one per hour. Driven crazy by the cacophonous G-minor horn, poor Ollie begins to tear the factory apart, screaming "Horns to the left of me! Horns to the right of me! Horns, horns, HORNS!" Sent home to recuperate from his nervous breakdown, Ollie is told by his doctor (James Finlayson) that he is suffering from Hornophobia: "In fact, you're on the verge of Hornomania." Advised to take a restful ocean voyage, Ollie nixes the idea, noting that he hates the high sea. Stan suggests that the two of them rent a small boat and keep it tied up on the dock, so that Ollie can get all the fresh sea air he wants without ever leaving port. Alas, the boys' tiny boat is accidentally set adrift, with Stan, Ollie and escaped killer Nick Grainger (Rychard Cramer) on board. Ordered to prepare breakfast for the ill-tempered Nick, the boys hope to subdue their captor by making him a "synthetic meal": String for spaghetti, soap for cheese, sponge for meatball, lampwick for bacon, and so on. Unfortunately, Nick catches on to their scheme and forces Stan and Ollie to eat the ersatz meal themselves. The boys are finally saved from Nick's wrath when Stan remembers that the sound of trombone will transform Ollie into a fighting demon, but don't count on a completely happy ending when Laurel & Hardy are involved. Cowritten by former comedy great Harry Langdon, Saps at Sea looks more like two or three 2-reelers strung together than a coherent feature film; still, it contains some great gags, most of them taking place in Ollie's apartment, where the plumbing and electrical appliances have been bollixed up by cross-eyed janitor Ben Turpin. Though hardly a classic, Saps at Sea earned Laurel & Hardy some of their best-ever reviews, and would turn out to be their last totally worthwhile feature film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, (more)
- 1937
The Great Hospital Mystery is based on one of Mignon Eberhardt's "Nurse Sarah Keate" whodunits. Physically and temperamentally, Jane Darwell at least approximates the middle-aged Sarah (here renamed Miss Keats), but otherwise the film runs far afield from Eberhardt's original concept. As the night superintendent of a metropolitan hospital, Miss Keats does her best to handle the personal problems of her staff -- especially nurse Ann (Sally Blane), whose brother Tracy (George Walcott) is being victimized by mobsters. To save Tracy from assassination, Keats and Ann make it appear as though he has died in the hospital while a patient there. Their plan is compromised when another patient is murdered -- or is he? Joan Davis provides gratuitous comic relief as a klutzy "girl in white." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jane Darwell, Sig Rumann, (more)
