Chuck Hamilton Movies

The seventh volume in a collection culled from the 1963-1965 science fiction anthology series focuses on a surveillance system, popular throughout the globe, which is actually the product of alien technology. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

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

After James Stewart's financial windfall attending his "percentage of profits" deal on Winchester 73, Errol Flynn decided to cash in by making his own deal with Universal Pictures, accepting a moderate fee up front and a huge chunk of the gross for Against All Flags. Set in the 16th century, the film casts Flynn as a British naval officer unjustly condemned for desertion. He escapes punishment and joins Anthony Quinn's pirate band, wherein he and Quinn vie for the attentions of glamorous female buccaneer Maureen O'Hara. Flynn incurs O'Hara's wrath when he rescues a lovely middle-eastern princess (Alice Kelley) from slave traders, but O'Hara still comes to Flynn's aid when he is left to die by Quinn. Flynn and O'Hara team up to thwart Quinn's evil schemes, whereupon it is revealed that Flynn's "disgrace" was a ruse, concocted by the British government to stem pirate activities in Madagascar. Though suffering several injuries during shooting, Errol Flynn was back in his old fighting form in Against All Flags, requiring a double only in a few scattered longshots. The film was poorly remade in 1967 as The King's Pirate, with Doug McClure inadequately filling Errol Flynn's seven-league boots. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Auteur theorists may have trouble discerning the "signature" of director Phil Karlson in the Columbia costume adventure Mask of the Avenger. John Derek stars as Capt. Renatu Dimorna, the son of an Italian aristocrat, who vows revenge after his father is murdered during the European political upheaval of 1848. To this end, Dimorna becomes a dashing Robin Hood type, swashbuckling his way throughout Italy. His principal rival is a traitorous military leader (Anthony Quinn), who is also Dimorna's rival for the affections of a beautiful woman (Jody Lawrance). Production values are quite good in Mask of the Avenger, belying the picture's modest budget. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Humphrey Bogart plays Martin Ferguson, a prosecutor about to put Albert Mendoza (Everett Sloane), the head of a murder-for-hire ring, on trial. But the night before the trial, his key witness, Joe Rico (Ted de Corsia), dies in a fall out of the window of the room in which he's been guarded, part of an abortive escape attempt to keep from testifying. His case in shambles, Ferguson and detective Captain Nelson (Roy Roberts) try to piece the entire four-year investigation back together from square one, trying to find something that might give them another way to prosecute Mendoza. The main body of the movie is told in flashback, starting when a small-time hood named Duke Malloy (Michael Tolan, then billed as Lawrence Tolan) walks into a police station to turn himself in for killing his girlfriend -- and says that someone made him kill her. He babbles to the bewildered detectives about "hits" and "contracts" and men nicknamed Philadelphia, Big Babe, and Smiley. The body isn't found, but they arrest Malloy, who hangs himself in his cell. That dead end leads, almost by accident, to Philadelphia Tom Zaca (Jack Lambert), an asylum inmate who has to be put under sedation at the mention of Malloy's name. They find another suspect's body burning in his building's incinerator, and then Big Babe Lazick (Zero Mostel), a two-bit hood, hiding in a church in mortal fear of his life. He begins weaving a tale of a murder-by-contract ring and its head operator, Joe Rico, of a murder contract that Duke Malloy never filled on a girl who had to change her name, of mistaken identity and the murder of the girl's cab-driver father, and the connection between that and a murder that they both witnessed eight years earlier. In the midst of all of those interlocking stories (spread across ten years), there's something Ferguson missed -- when he had Rico to testify -- that he has to sort out from the reams of testimony and evidence, and he has to figure it out before Mendoza does, or lose the last witness he has. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Hot on the heels of such Red Skelton slapstick comedies as The Fuller Brush Man and The Yellow Cab Man came The Fuller Brush Girl, starring Lucille Ball in a fascinating dry run for her wacky "Lucy Ricardo" TV character. Unable to hold a job because of her tendency to get into trouble, Sally Elliot (Ball) hires on at the Fuller Brush company as a door-to-door cosmetics salesman. After several misadventures involving obnoxious children and snooty matrons, Sally finds herself in the middle of a murder scheme. With reluctant boyfriend Humphrey (Eddie Albert) in tow, Sally gets mixed up in one hilariously life-threatening situation after another, culminating in a prolonged chase sequence on board a tramp steamer. Highlights include Ball's outrageous striptease scene (to the tune of Rita Hayworth's "Put the Blame on Mame") and a choice cameo by Red Skelton as an all-too-cooperative customer. Most of the sight gags in Fuller Brush Girl were cooked up by former cartoon director Frank Tashlin, who'd also contributed to Fuller Brush Man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though Humphrey Bogart is the official star of Knock on Any Door, the film is essentially a showcase for Columbia's newest young male discovery John Derek. The first production of Bogart's Santana company, the film casts Bogart as attorney Andrew Morton. A product of the slums, Morton is persuaded to take the case of underprivileged teenager Nick Romano (Derek), who has been arrested on a murder charge. Through flashbacks, Morton demonstrates that Romano is more a victim of society than a natural-born killer. Though this defense strategy does not have the desired result on the jury thanks to the badgering of DA Kernan (George Macready), Morton does manage to arouse sympathy for the plight of those trapped by birth and circumstance in a dead-end existence. As Nick Romano, John Derek would never be better, nor would ever again play a character who struck so responsive a chord with the audience. Nick's oft-repeated credo--"Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse"--became the clarion call for a generation of disenfranchised youth. Director Nicholas Ray would later expand on themes touched upon in Knock on a Any Door in his juvenile delinquent "chef d'oeuvre" Rebel without a Cause. Viewers are advised to watch for future TV personalities Cara Williams and Si Melton in uncredited minor roles. Knock on Any Door spawned a belated sequel in 1960, Let No Man Write My Epitaph. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A reformed gangster, accustomed to a life of danger, finds himself dealing with a new and different threat in this adventure thriller. Johnny Allegro (George Raft) is a former mobster who has gone over to the other side and now works for the U.S. Treasury Department as an undercover agent. Allegro is asked to help get the goods on Morgan Vallin (George MacReady), a polished counterfeiter who is involved in a right-wing plot to bring down the American government by flooding the U.S. economy with bogus currency. Allegro makes his way to the island that's Vallin's base of operations, with Glenda Chapman (Nina Foch) in tow, and he convinces Vallin that he's a fugitive from American justice. Vallin takes Allegro and Glenda in, but he soon discovers Johnny's true identity, and Allegro learns that Vallin has a bizarre hobby -- he likes to hunt, but he feels that humans are a more interesting quarry than animals. Vallin gives his guests a head start, then sets out to capture them, hoping to fell Johnny and Glenda with silver-tipped arrows, while the two agents hope that their associate Schultzy (Will Geer) will arrive in time to save them. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this courtroom drama, a French girl stands trial for murder. Flashbacks tell the grim story of how, during the Great War she got involved with a wealthy soldier and married him. He disappeared after the war. She then came to the U.S. There she finds him married to another woman. To cover himself, he tries to get her deported. In the ensuing argument, she accidently kills him. She is found guilty, but when they learn that she is expecting, the widow helps her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

John Garfield, in the best performance of his career, portrays Joe Morse, an ambitious attorney who has long since abandoned his scruples in favor of monetary reward. Morse now represents the interests of crime boss Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts), who plans to take over the numbers racket in New York. Morse has devised a way of doing this legally and above-board, with no violence: Tucker's people will bring about the collapse of the illegal numbers racket in the city, using a race track-betting scam that will bankrupt the small-time underworld numbers banks; an investigation will ensue, along with a call for a legal numbers operation in the form of a lottery, which Tucker will control through Morse's machinations. The whole plan hinges on Morse's estranged brother, Leo (Thomas Gomez), a small-time numbers banker who is to be shielded from the collapse, and who will serve as the "legitimate" front for Tucker. Leo is the flaw in the plan, however, because not only can't he stand the sight of Joe, but he is also too honest to participate in the plan -- he doesn't want his employees, all decent people just looking to earn a living, forced into the employ of real gangsters. Joe orchestrates a series of police raids that force Leo into his corner, and Joe's plan seems to be working out, but then the whole enterprise is threatened when a rival mob, run by Tucker's former Prohibition-era partner, Fico (Paul Fix), starts pressuring Leo, trying to get to Joe and Tucker. Fico and his men aren't any different from Tucker's mob, except that they're prepared to start shooting sooner to get what they want. Tucker decides to hang tough and expects everyone, including Leo, to do the same, even when Fico starts sending thugs around to frighten everyone. Soon Joe is beset by problems on three fronts -- he wants his brother out of Tucker's combination and safe; he is trying to romance Leo's bookkeeper (Beatrice Pearson), who is too nice a girl for who he is; and his own well-being is threatened by both Fico and Tucker, and a state investigator who has already tapped the phone of Joe's otherwise respectable partner. All of these threads are pulled together in the final section of the film, which is as violent and disturbing, yet poetic and graceful a resolution as any crime film of the 1940s ever delivered. Force of Evil was star-crossed almost from the start, as many of the people involved, including star John Garfield and director Abraham Polonsky (a writer making his debut behind the camera, with help from assistant director Don Weis in doing the camera set-ups and blocking), were suspect at the time for their leftist political views. Indeed, the company that made Force of Evil, Enterprise Productions, was also in trouble for the leftist leanings of its films in the midst of the Red Scare, and went out of business just as the movie was finished -- dropped by United Artists and picked up by MGM, of all studios, Force of Evil made it into theaters during Christmas week of 1948, not the ideal schedule for something as grim (albeit great) as this film was. As it turned out, it was Polonsky's last chance to direct for more than 20 years, and Garfield's last completely successful film. And a movie that should have been a triumph for all concerned ended up a cult favorite. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In the RKO swashbuckler Sinbad the Sailor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. nostalgically emulates his famous father. The first seven voyages of Sinbad have come and gone: now he is on an eighth mission, in search of the island where Alexander the Great allegedly hid his treasure. Participants in the proceedings are the incredibly gorgeous Maureen O'Hara as a feisty princess, Walter Slezak as a duplicitous green-skinned barber, George Tobias and Mike Mazurki as two of Sinbad's faithful seamen, and Anthony Quinn as the villain of villains, who meets a suitably fiery demise. If the plot seems well nigh impossible to follow at times, you can always wallow in the splendiferous Technicolor and the eye-popping stunt work of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (and, it must be admitted, his uncredited stunt double). Budgeted at nearly $3 million, Sinbad the Sailor was one of the few postwar RKO flicks to post a profit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Lucille Ball offers a seminal version of her Lucy Ricardo TV character in Her Husband's Affairs. Ball is cast as Margaret Weldon, the wife of advertising executive William Weldon (Franchot Tone). Though Weldon is successful, Margaret can't help but feel that he'd be more successful if she were to take an active part in his business affairs. The fun really begins when Margaret tries to help Weldon promote a crackpot inventor (Mikhail Rasumny) who's come up with a revolutionary new embalming fluid. As in the previous year's The Hucksters, Madison Avenue and Big Business are targetted for a great deal of derisive ribbing. If only Her Husband's Affairs were as funny as everyone involved seems to think it is. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide