Arthur Franz Movies
Armed with extensive radio and stage credits, Arthur Franz made his first film appearance in 1948's Jungle Patrol. Franz has been prominently featured in a number of "fantastic" films: he played one-third of the title role in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), and had leads in Flight to Mars (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953), and The Atomic Submarine (1960). He has also thrived in military characterizations in films like Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Submarine Command (1951), and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His finest screen portrayal was as the psychopathic "hero" of Stanley Kramer's The Sniper (1952). Arthur Franz flourished as a character actor into the 1980s, retiring from films after appearing in That Championship Season (1982). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1962
Schoolteacher and maritime historian Philip Andrews (Jeremy Slate) incurs the wratch of shipping-company owner Ben Farraday (Herbert Rudley) when he insists that Evelyn Farraday (Joan Patrick), Philip's fiancee and Ben's niece, deserved a portion of the company's profits. It inevitably follows that Ben is murdered and Philip is charged with the crime. Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) must wade through a morass of corporate intrigue and sibling rivalry to save his client and expose the real killer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1960
Mayor Henderson (Arthur Franz) is up for an appointment to the state crime commission, but he is danger of being sabotaged by his overambitious wife Mona (Patricia Huston), who has been purloining city plans and passing them along to crooked real estate agent Tom Stratton (Edward Platt). Now Stratton is blackmailing Mona, hoping to enrich himself at Henderson's expense. When Mona is murdered, however, Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins) bypasses both Henderson and Stratton and arrests Susan Connolly (played by future Oscar winner Louise Fletcher) for the crime. Thank heaven that Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) is on hand to expose the real killer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1960
Suffering a nervous breakdown brought on by the tragic death of her baby, famous actress Elena Stacy (Margaret Phillips) is released after a long and therapeutic sanitarium stay. Believing that work is the best therapy, Elena tries to forget the past and returns to her stage career. But no matter where she goes, no matter what play she appears in, Elena is haunted by the cries of a child...her child? The actor playing a scene from "Othello" is Murvyn Vye, a prolific movie villain and the original Jigger Craigin in the 1945 Broadway production "Carousel." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1959
Seasoned serial director Spencer Gordon Bennett helmed this story of a one-eyed, octopoidal space alien, wreaking havoc upon atomic subs at the North Pole. The monster is determined to take over the world, though it seems ill equipped for that purpose. Heroes Arthur Franz, Dick Foran, and Brett Halsey head underwater to neutralize the alien's submerged flying saucer. The cast is peopled with such veterans as Tom Conway, Bob Steele, Victor Varconi, Selmer Jackson, and Jack Mulhall. Movie buffs may wish to take note of the exterior scenes in Atomic Submarine; several of them are played out in front of the easily recognizable studios of Allied Artists, formerly Monogram and later the home of LA's PBS channel 28. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arthur Franz, Dick Foran, (more)
- 1959
Richard Vanaman (Arthur Franz) was secure in the belief that he was up for a promotion at the investment firm where he works. Alas, someone seems determined to sabotage him--and worse, he is targeted by a blackmailer. But this is not the end of Vanaman's woes: when Sylvia Welles (Joyce Meadows) is murdered, he is arrested for the crime--and now Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) must somehow make sense of the whole sordid affair. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1959
The hardships faced by a widow and her eight-year-old son on a rugged Canadian ranch provide the basis of this gripping outdoor adventure. She lost her husband to a forest fire. To help her run the ranch, she hires a handy man. A handsome, but taciturn fellow who has known much tragedy, he works hard for her. The woman's son though resents him, and when he learns that his mother is planning to marry him to quell ugly rumors in town, the youth is most unhappy. After the wedding, the step-father treats the boy harshly, not out of cruelty, but because he wants to prepare the boy to survive the tough life ahead. This creates friction and frustration. Sometimes the handyman beats both the wife and the child. On the day the wife learns she is pregnant, the boy and his step-father get into a violent fight. Afterward the husband goes to the local saloon and ends up jailed for brawling. A month later he is released. When he gets home he finds his wife has moved his things to the barn. A natural disaster changes the family's lives and relationships and after much turmoil, honesty and pain gives them a chance to heal and start afresh. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Susan Hayward, Stephen Boyd, (more)
- 1958
The X-117 satellite is launched to explore an area of deep space more than 200 miles above Earth, which is bounded by what is called "the flame barrier," a deadly zone of heat and radiation that can destroy any object that comes in contact with it. The satellite reaches orbit, but nine days after launch the X-117 suddenly disappears, and is presumed to have been destroyed. Six months later, in a remote part of Mexico, Carol Dahlmann (Kathleen Crowley) arrives to search for her husband, a scientist who believed the X-117 had survived and crashed in the jungle, and who led an expedition in search for the satellite -- he has been missing ever since. She hires two brothers, Dave (Arthur Franz) and Matt Hollister (Robert Brown), to accompany her into one of the most remote parts of the jungle on her search. They find all kinds of ominous signs on their journey, including animals that have died off without explanation, Indians who are in mortal fear of a "fire god," and dying men who turn up with horrible burns on their bodies. And when they finally reach Dahlmann's camp and locate the satellite, they find with it an impending threat to the safety of the entire world. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1958
Perry (Raymond Burr) would rather not get involved when he finds out that his childhood friend Eileen Harrison (Anne Sargent) plans to divorce her overworked husband Danny (Arthur Franz), a schoolteacher who moonlights as a restaurant worker to pay for his baby daughter's operation. But Perry is more than willing to handle Danny's defense when the poor man is charged with murdering his old acquaintance Frank Curran (Stacy Harris), after a rather unpleasant disturbance at the greasy spoon where Danny works. "Maytag repairman" Jesse White is appropriately abrasive as Danny's nighttime boss. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1958
In this sci-fi film, a college professor must deal with the cataclysmic consequences that ensue when a transmogrifying dragonfly bites a prehistoric fish from Madagascar. Soon after the bite, the strange fish becomes gigantic and begins passing on its new ability to morph all it comes in contact with back into their primal forms. When it bites a dog, the dog becomes a wolf. When some fish slime ends up in the professor's pipe, the professor put it to his lips, and he turns into a rampaging Neanderthal with a very large stone-axe that he freely wields around the terrified college campus. Bloody mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arthur Franz, Joanna Moore, (more)
Though several concessions to the censors and the box-office were made in adapting Irwin Shaw's bestseller The Young Lions to the screen, the end result is generally effective and satisfying. Set during World War 2, the film concentrates on three individuals, one German, two American. Marlon Brando plays an idealistic German whose early fascination with Nazism leads to doubt and disillusionment. American entertainer Dean Martin, on the verge of the Big Time, does his best to dodge the draft but ends up in uniform all the same. And American Jew Montgomery Clift, so sensitive that he's practically breakable, must come to grips with anti-Semitism, not only from the Germans but also from his fellow soldiers. Romance enters the picture in the form of Hope Lange as Clift's gentile girlfrind, Barbara Rush as the socialite who shames Martin into joining up, and May Britt as Brando's vis-a-vis. Screenwriter Edward Anhalt was obliged to shoehorn in a boot-camp sequence indicating that the Brass disapproved of the bigoted behavior of Clift's topkick Lee van Cleef (as if racism was a mere aberration during the 1940s), and to "slightly" alter the ending of the book, in which the embittered but still patriotic Brando character, shouting "Welcome to Germany!," machine-guns the Martin and Clift characters (in the film, it is Brando who bites the dust, symbolically dying for Hitler's sins). Maximillian Schell offers a starmaking turn as Brando's cynical comrade, while an uncredited John Banner, "Sergeant Schultz" on Hogan's Heroes, shows up as a pompous burgomeister who feigns ignorance of the hellish concentration camp in his community. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, (more)
- 1957
In this crime thriller a young woman marries a wealthy vintner. Soon afterward, she falls in love with a handsome rodeo rider whom she sees every time her husband is away. One night, her mother-in-law spots a burglar outside the house and reports it to the police. The conniving wife sees a window of opportunity and plots the death of her husband, hoping to blame it on the burglar. Unfortunately, she accidentally murders her husband's friend. Fortunately, she is able to con her husband into taking the rap with the promise that he will be acquitted. During the trial, she lies and he is put away. Later she gets hers when her mother-in-law is poisoned and she is convicted of the crime. The irony of it all is that the wife is innocent of that crime. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rod Steiger, Diana Dors, (more)
Future "first couple" Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis made their only joint film appearance in Hellcats of the Navy. Ronnie plays Casey Abbott, commander of a WW2 submarine, while Nancy portrays navy nurse Helen Blair, Abbott's off-and-on girlfriend. During a delicate mission in which his sub is ordered to retrieve a revolutionary new Japanese mine, Abbott is forced to leave frogman Wes Barton (Harry Lauter) behind to save the rest of his crew. But Abbott's second-in-command Don Landon (Eduard Franz) is convincing that Abbott's sacrifice of Barton was due to the fact that the dead man had been amorously pursuing Helen. The rest of the film is spent proving Abbott right and Barton wrong. Based on a book by former USN vice-admiral Charles A. Lockwood (played in the film by Maurice Manson) and retired USAF colonel Hans Christian Adamson, Hellcats of the Navy is a much better film than Reagan's detractors would have one believe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ronald Reagan, Nancy Davis, (more)
- 1957
In this routine possession potboiler, Peggie Castle plays a suburban housewife being slowly driven mad by the intrusive, restless spirit of her husband's first wife, whose soul has been tainted by her participation in a Satanic cult headed by high priest Father Renall (Otto Reichow). The woman's husband (Arthur Franz) and his sister (Marsha Hunt) decide to infiltrate the cult in order to put an end to its murderous practices, but it is only through the intervention of a former cultist (Marianne Stewart) that they are able to overthrow the evil master's reign of terror once and for all. The tepid screenplay by Catherine Turney is an adaptaion of her novel The Other One. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peggie Castle, Arthur Franz, (more)
- 1957
Actor Cornel Wilde branched out into directing with The Devil's Hairpin--reserving the starring role for himself. Wilde plays a motor racing champion who ruins his career through his reprehensible behavior on and off the track. Thrown off the racing circuit in disgrace after crippling his brother in an accident, Wilde tries to make a comeback, and to compensate for his past recklessness. Jean Wallace, who was Mrs. Cornel Wilde at the time, plays the girl who supervises Wilde's redemption. The Devil's Hairpin set the standard for Cornel Wilde's later directorial efforts: Pedestrian dialogue sequences, first-rate action highlights. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cornel Wilde, Jean Wallace, (more)
- 1956
- NR
Crusading publisher Austin Spenser (Sidney Blackmer) wants to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence. Spencer talks his prospective son-in-law Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews) into participating in a hoax, the better to expose the alleged ineptitude of conviction-happy DA (Philip Bourneuf). Tom will plant clues indicating that he is the murderer of a nightclub dancer, then stand trial for murder; just as the jury reaches its inevitable guilty verdict, Spencer will step forth to reveal the set-up and humiliate the DA. Somewhat surprisingly, Tom eagerly agrees to this subterfuge. Unfortunately, an unforeseen event renders their perfectly formed scheme useless. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was the last American film of director Fritz Lang. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, (more)
- 1956
The "hipster" dialogue bandied about in The Wild Party is reason enough to sit through this curious time capsule. Anthony Quinn stars as an embittered ex-athlete who seeks an escape from his dead-end existence. Unfortunately, Quinn opts for a life of crime when he ties up with unemployed pianist Nehemiah Persoff, petty thief Jay Robinson and mixed-up girl Kathryn Grant. The trio impulsively kidnap naval officer Arthur Franz and his fiancee Carol Ohmart, hoping to shake down Franz for a huge sum of money. Not unexpectedly, the whole scheme blows up in the schemers' faces. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Quinn, Carol Ohmart, (more)
- 1956
Filmed on location in the Colorado Rockies, Running Target, per its title, is a feature-length chase. When a group of convicts break out of jail, sheriff Arthur Franz vows to bring the fugitives in without gunfire or bloodshed. Unfortunately, some of the members of Franz' posse don't see things his way: bartender Richard Reeves, for example, is a staunch advocate of the "shoot first and ask questions later" brand of justice. And then there's Doris Dowling, who joins the posse ostensibly because her gas station has been held up by the convicts -- but who is secretly in love with one of the escapees. Running Target represented one of the earliest credited efforts of top cinematographer Conrad Hall, who also collaborated on the script. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Doris Dowling, Arthur Franz, (more)
- 1955
This suspense film revolves around the crime of child abduction. The parents of the missing child undertake a feverish search for their son. The police are contacted, and a ransom letter is received. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1955
When a news editor reports a kidnapping of a child, the boy's life is threatened. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1955
Hot on the heels of Warner Bros.' New York Confidential came Columbia's New Orleans Uncensored. Lensed in semi-documentary fashion by future horror maven William Castle, the film stars Arthur Franz as New Orleans dockworker Dan Corbett. Attempting to remain honest, Corbett runs afoul of crime kingpin Zero Saxon (Michael Ansara), who controls the dockworkers union and runs a smuggling operation on the side. When his best friend is killed by Saxon's goons, Corbett agrees to cooperate with the authorities in bringing the racketeer to justice. As a means of "balancing" the picture, several real-life New Orleans civic leaders and union heads--all with purportedly clean records--appear as themselves. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arthur Franz, Beverly Garland, (more)
- 1955
Battle Taxi is set during the height of the Korean War. Sterling Hayden plays an officer of the Helicopter Air Rescue Service, whose job it is to save wounded or stranded soldiers from hostile territory. Arthur Franz costars as a lieutenant assigned to the copter service, who at first resents his position but eventually realizes his importance in the scheme of things. The film sticks to basics, eschewing any and all romantic subplots -- in fact, there isn't a single female character in the picture! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sterling Hayden, Arthur Franz, (more)
- 1954
Like its predecessor Duffy of San Quentin, The Steel Cage is made up of episodes from a never-telecast TV series based on the career of progressive prison warden Clinton T. Duffy. Paul Kelly plays Duffy, while his wife is portrayed by Maureen O'Sullivan. Divided into three separate playlets, the film begins with the semi-comic story of an ill-tempered chef (Walter Slezak) who is railroaded into San Quentin by a gourmet prisoner. The second story concerns a tense hostage situation fomented by would-be escapees John Ireland and Lawrence Tierney. The closing story deals with an incarcerated painter (Kenneth Tobey), whose belief in God is renewed by an idealistic young priest (Arthur Franz). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Kelly, Maureen O'Sullivan, (more)
- 1954
The film Bad For Each Other, together with stars Charlton Heston and Lizabeth Scott and director Irving Rapper, were originally assembled into a package by producer Hal Wallis for Paramount. Shortly thereafter, however, Wallis found it expedient to sell the whole package to Columbia, though the film still has the "look" of a Paramount "A"-picture. Heston plays poor-but-proud Army doctor Tom Owen, who through the influence of Pittsburgh socialite Helen Curtis (Lizabeth Scott) builds up a posh society practice. Though he's happy with the money and prestige, Dr. Owen is at heart a man of the people, and he'd much prefer tending to the families of the local steel miners. During a moment of extreme crisis, Owen is forced to choose immediately between the life offered him by Helen and the course he knows he should be following. Dianne Foster plays Joan Lasher, the girl Owen left behind when he began pursuing the ice-princess. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlton Heston, Lizabeth Scott, (more)
Robert Francis is at the center of the story as Willis Keith, a newly-minted ensign assigned to the destroyer/minesweeper U.S.S. Caine during World War II. Soon after his arrival, the ship gets a new captain, Lt. Comdr. Philip Francis Queeg Humphrey Bogart, a tough, no-nonsense veteran officer who tries to turns the crew into proper sailors and the Caine into a tight ship, engendering resentment from some of the men and several of his officers. A veteran of difficult years of service for too long, Queeg has insecurities about himself, his command, and his career that begin to manifest themselves as spells of temper over small details that cause him to make mistakes. Lt.Keefer (Fred MacMurray), the glib-tongued communications officer, begins making suggestions to the ship's sincere but overburdened first officer, Lt. Steve Maryk (Van Johnson), that Queeg may have mental problems. Maryk initially rejects these suggestions, and tries to support the captain, but conditions deteriorate to the point where Maryk is forced to relieve Queeg of command, and is charged -- along with Keith, who supported him -- with mutiny. Enter Lt. Barney Greenwald (Jose Ferrer), a lawyer in civilian life, who reluctantly agrees to help them, mostly out of sympathy for the impossible predicament in which Maryk has found himself trapped. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Humphrey Bogart, José Ferrer, (more)
- 1953
In this war drama, set during the Korean War, an Air Force nurse gets involved in a love triangle on the front lines. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Leslie, Forrest Tucker, (more)
