Ernie S. Adams Movies

Though set in 1865, The Son of Monte Cristo is a thinly disguised indictment against 20th century dictatorships. Louis Hayward plays the title character, Edmond Dantes Jr., who while posing as an epicene dandy works tirelessly to topple the regime of fascistic Balkan despot Count Gurko (George Sanders). Under cover of night, Hayward dons mask and cape as "The Torch", a Zorro-like dogooder rallying the peasantry to rise up against Gurko and his ilk. As a bonus, he rescues the lovely Grand Duchess Zona (Joan Bennett) from an arranged marriage with the usurping Count. Produced by Edward Small as a followup to his 1939 version of Man in the Iron Mask, The Son of Monte Cristo benefits from a carefully chosen supporting cast, including Clayton "Lone Ranger" Moore and Ralph "Dick Tracy" Byrd. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Fresh from his Broadway triumph as "The Stage Manager" in Our Town, veteran actor-playwright Frank Craven heads the cast of Columbia's The Richest Man in Town. Craven is cast as wealthy banker Abb Crothers, who has carried on a lifelong feud with newpaper publisher Pete Martin (Edgar Buchanan). After a particularly vitriolic exchange of words, Martin gets even by publishing Crothers' obituary somewhat ahead of schedule. The repercussions of this capricious act eventually cause the miserly Crothers to reassess his priorities in life. A romantic subplot concerns Martin's daughter Mary (Eileen O'Hearn) and glib touring-show promoter Tom Manning (Roger Pryor). Though Frank Craven is officially the star, Richest Man in Town was intended in part as a showcase for Edgar Buchanan, who'd skyrocketed to prominence on the strength of his villainy in Columbia's Arizona. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The fifth film version of Jack London's The Sea Wolf stars Edward G. Robinson as "premature fascist" Wolf Larsen. The captain of the scavenger ship Ghost, Larsen is a heartless tyrant who can tolerate no sign of weakness in anyone. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" is Larsen's philosophy (borrowed from the character of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost), and accordingly he reigns over his hellish vessel in true satanic fashion. Idealistic writer Humphrey Van Weyden (Alexander Knox) and fugitive from justice Ruth Webster (Ida Lupino) are picked up by the Ghost when their ferryboat capsizes. Realizing that their chances of getting off the boat alive are nil, Van Weyden and Ruth conspire with embittered cabin boy Leach (John Garfield) to escape. They drift in a small open boat for days, only to return to the Ghost, which has apparently been scuttled by the mutinous crew. Larsen has gone blind, but refuses to allow his crew to learn this fact, forcing Van Weyden at gunpoint to perpetuate the illusion that Larsen can still see. Ultimately, the Ghost sinks beneath the waves, carrying Larsen and Van Weyden to their doom ("This is the end of Superman!" cries Van Weyden as the ocean envelops him); Ruth and Leach manage to save themselves, rowing toward the safety of a nearby island -- and hopefully escaping to a new life. The 1941 Sea Wolf would not be the last cinematic adaptation of London's novel; multiple versions have since been produced for both film and television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this western, a mining engineer vengefully seeks out the claim jumpers that murdered his brother. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart Broadway hit The Man Who Came to Dinner was inspired by the authors' mutual friend, waspish critic/author Alexander Woollcott. Generously bearded ex-Yale professor Monty Woolley, no mean curmudgeon himself, plays the Woollcott character, here rechristened Sheridan Whiteside. While on a lecture tour in Ohio, Whiteside slips on the ice outside his hosts' home; until his broken leg heals, the hosts (Grant Mitchell and Billie Burke) are forced to put up (and put up with) the imperious Whiteside. This means enduring an unending stream of Whiteside's whims, caprices and vitriolic bon mots, as well as his long-distance phone calls, eccentric guests and a variety of critters, ranging from penguins to octopi. Like the real Woollcott, Whiteside insists upon stage-managing the lives of everyone around him. He is particularly keen on discouraging a romance between his faithful secretary Maggie Cutler (top-billed Bette Davis) and local newspaper editor Bert Jefferson (Richard Travis). Once he realizes he's gone too far in this respect, Whiteside is forced to reunite the lovers. That's only one aspect of a three-ring-circus plotline that accommodates a Lizzie Bordenish axe murderess, takeoffs of Woollcott intimates Harpo Marx, Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence, and a general practitioner who's willing to let his patients suffer for a chance to pitch his interminable memoirs to Whiteside. Featured in the cast are Jimmy Durante as "Banjo" (the Harpo clone), Reginald Gardiner as the Noel Coward-like Beverly Carlton, Anne Sheridan as the predatory Gertrude Lawrence counterpart Lorraine Sheldon, and Mary Wickes as the long-suffering Nurse Preen ("You have the touch of a love-starved cobra!") The script, by the Epstein brothers, manages to retain most of the play's best lines and situations, even while expanding Bette Davis' role to justify her start status; it's a shame, though, that we are robbed of Sheridan Whiteside's imperishable opening line, "I may vomit!" ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An average Tim Holt oater from RKO, Riding the Wind is set in the New Mexico desert where the ranchers are at the mercy of nasty Henry Dodge (Eddie Dew), the owner of the Dodge Land and Water Company. Ranchers Clay Stewart (Holt) and Burt Macleod (Earle Hodgins) at first hire lawyer Jackson (Larry Steers) to take care of things legally but the case is stalled in court. In the meantime, the hot-tempered MacLeod suggests dynamiting Dodge's dam, whereas Stewart proposes that the ranchers dig wells and install windmills designed by Ezra Westfall (Charles Phipps). Dodge and his men seek to sabotage these endeavors but Clay and his sidekicks Smokey (Ray Whitley) and Whopper (Lee "Lasses" White) get the last laugh. With Dodge in jail for bribing a judge, Clay, Eza and Ezra's pretty daughter Joan (Mary Douglas) ride on to build more windmills. Heroine Mary Douglas was in reality veteran B-Western leading lady Joan Barclay, a pretty redhead who had begun her career with yet another moniker, Geraine Grear). Miss Barclay was only "Mary Douglas" in this one film. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

This 12-chapter Universal serial is one of several that Universal made featuring the Dead End Kids (also known as The East Side Kids and The Bowery Boys). In this entry, the Dead End Kids go after a Nazi gang that operates a ship called the "Sea Raider" that has been sinking Allied shipping. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide

In the third of his four Wild Bill Saunders Westerns, Bill Elliott, "the Peaceable Man," is assigned by Governor Dawson (Don Beddoe) to put a stop to the reign of terror, including cold-blooded murder, perpetrated by Powder Kilgore (Raphael Bennett). When the state legislature refuses to fund a legitimate rangers organization, Wild Bill instead enlists a group of tough convicts, whom he promises freedom if they help capture Kilgore and his chief lieutenant, Lightning Barlow (Francis Walker). Unfortunately, one of the convicts, Shifty (Ernie Adams), lives up to his name by betraying his comrades in arms to Kilgore but after a furious gun battle at the gang's shootout, Wild Bill manages to bring peace to the area. Nevertheless, when asked to captain the newly founded rangers organization, the hero instead promotes his new friend, former convict Honest John (Al Hill), and heads off to new adventures. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Set in the years leading up to the Civil War and its outbreak, Dark Command tells a fictionalized version of the story of William Clarke Quantrill, the schoolteacher-turned-renegade, whose raids -- ostensibly on behalf of the Confederacy -- turned Kansas into a charnel house. John Wayne plays Bob Setton, a young Texan who arrives in Lawrence, KS, in 1859 on his way west, partnered with George "Gabby" Hayes. He meets Marie McCloud (Claire Trevor) and her younger brother, Fletch (Roy Rogers), and takes a liking to them, especially Marie. His only competition for her is William Cantrell (Walter Pidgeon), the local schoolteacher, who has big ambitions in life. He is nominated for town marshal and seems a shoo-in, especially as his only rival is Bob Setton, who admits he knows nothing about the law and can't even read, but Setton wins with his honest, unpretentious speech. At the time, Kansas is riven by strife, as settlers from the North opposed to slavery and those from the South supporting it pour into the territory, and Setton has his hands full. His most difficult personal moment comes when he must arrest Fletch for shooting an anti-slavery farmer (Trevor Bardette) to death. Cantrell leads a campaign of terror against the jury, however, which finds the young man not guilty just as the Civil War breaks out. In the months that follow, Setton and his posse go after the raiders who are stealing and destroying huge amounts of property in Kansas on behalf of the Confederacy. He suspects Cantrell is their leader, but can't prove it, and has to tread carefully. As the raids worsen, and the war drags on -- even Marie's pro-Confederacy banker father is murdered during a run on his bank -- their conflict comes to a violent end as Cantrell launches an attack on Lawrence, vowing to destroy the town, with only Bob Setton and Cantrell's own mother (Marjorie Main) standing in his way. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this drama, set in Paris, a devout communist is slowly seduced into becoming a capitalist by a persuasively pretty young woman. The tale begins as the young man shoots at a banker and then flees the police. He runs into the woman's apartment, and for some reason, she decides to let him stay. She then tells him that she is the banker's ex-wife, and they begin to converse; she is fascinated by communist philosophies and in turn shares her views on capitalism with him. He comes to like them and so abandons his other ideologies for the bourgeois life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A semi-sequel to the 1933 Universal horror masterwork The Invisible Man, The Invisible Man Returns stars Vincent Price in the title role. Condemned for a murder he did not commit, Price begs doctor John Sutton to inject him with the invisibility serum invented by Claude Rains in the first film. Sutton does so, even though he warns Price that the serum will very likely drive him insane. Sir Cedric Hardwicke co-stars as the genuine murderer, a colliery owner who framed Price. Though his behavior veers dangerously close to homicidal, Price is able to mete out retribution to Hardwicke without stooping to murder. As he gradually weakens, Price is recaptured and rushed to the hospital, where his life is saved by an emergency blood transfusion. Price's face is revealed to us for the first time as he vows his undying love to leading lady Nan Grey. Taking a less playful approach to the grim goings-on than director James Whale had in The Invisible Man, The Invisible Man Returns is a grim little morality play, containing vestiges of The Count of Monte Cristo and distinguished by an odd preoccupation with the mechanics and minutiae of death (a characteristic trait in the screenplays of Curt Siodmak). The film helped to solidify the cinematic reputation of Vincent Price, though it would be years before he'd specialize in horror on a full-time basis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Man with Nine Lives (released in England as Behind the Door) is the second of Columbia's unofficial "Mad Doctor" series starring Boris Karloff. This time, Boris is obsessed with the notion that he can come up with a cure for cancer. To do this, it is necessary for Karloff to freeze his patients, then use a revolutionary new serum on the bodies while they're in a state of suspended animation. Alas, Karloff is accidentally locked up with his deep-frozen subjects. When thawed out years later, he and the patients are alive and healthy. But when Karloff learns that his formula has been destroyed, he lapses into lunacy and uses his storage-locker comrades as unwilling guinea pigs in an effort to recreate the serum. Man with Nine Lives can be considered a real (ouch!) chiller. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide