Allen Jung Movies

Peter Sellers plays a bumbling foreigner once again (but this time he's not from France) in this cult-favorite comedy. Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers) is an accident-prone actor from India who has come to California, hoping to make a name for himself in Hollywood movies. However, Bakshi quickly makes the wrong impression on producer C.S. Divot (Gavin MacLeod) and studio chief Fred Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley) when he accidentally blows up the set for his first film. Clutterbuck jots down Bakshi's name to remind himself to have the actor blacklisted, but he doesn't realize that he's put the name on the guest list for an upcoming party at his home. Bakshi sees the social event as an opportunity to get back in Clutterbuck's good graces, but from the moment he arrives, one thing after another goes wrong, with increasing effect; it doesn't help that he finds himself infatuated with Michele Monet (Claudine Longet), Divot's latest starlet discovery. Director Blake Edwards shot The Party with a minimal script to allow Peter Sellers and the other comic actors greater room for slapstick improvisation, which helps explain why many of the film's most memorable scenes feature little or no dialogue. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Two tourists, portrayed by the comic duo Marty Allen and Steve Rossi, are talked into working for the good guys to keep art thieves from stealing the Venus di Milo at the London World Fair. Minor entry in the comic spy category. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

In this wartime adventure, four courageous Seabees infiltrate a Japanese-controlled island to find a place to build an air-strip. A beautiful jungle lass helps them navigate the dense forest and blow up an enemy transmitter. The flight back to their boat is not without casualties. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A typical war time Republic Pictures serial, G-Men vs. the Black Dragon featured the combined efforts of three allied operatives -- Rex Bennett of the USA (Rod Cameron), Vivian Marsh of the British Secret Service (Constance Worth, an Australian) and Chang Sing (Roland Got) of the Chinese counter-espionage division -- who battle the Japanese Black Dragon Society. Headed by the maniacal Oyama Harushi (Nino Pipitone, Sr.), the notorious society conducted a campaign of terror and sabotage against America until stopped by the united heroes in the 15th and final chapter, "Democracy in Action." That the Japanese master spy was played by an Italian-American was only par for the course. Much of the footage from this serial -- including a spectacular exploding submarine -- was re-used many times over, notably in the 1951 serial Flying Disc Man from Mars. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Behind the Rising Sun is a rarity: a WW2 film with a handful of sympathetic Japanese characters. His eyes slanted by the RKO makeup department, Tom Neal plays Taro, the Americanized son of a Japanese diplomat (J. Carroll Naish). During the Sino-Japanese war, Taro's father insists that the boy leave the US and join the Japanese army. Indoctrinated in the "Banzai" mentality of the empirical government, Taro is transformed into an enemy of the West, going so far as to betray his best friend ly inebriated millionaire. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

More so than most wartime films, Mission to Moscow must be viewed within the context of its times. Requested by President Roosevelt to make a film supportive of America's Russian allies, Warner Bros. turned to the memoirs of Ambassador Joseph H. Davies, who spent several years prior to WWII in the Soviet Union. As played by Walter Huston, Davies is a pillar of incorruptable integrity, reporting the facts "as I saw them" (only in later years was Davies revealed to be something less than a paragon of virtue who was willing to alter opinions for political, personal and financial expedience). Sent to Moscow by FDR as a means of finding out if Russia is a potentially trustworthy ally in case of war, Davies and his family are given the royal treatment by the Commissars, who display the social, technological, agricultural and artistic advances made under the Stalin regime. Invariably, the Russian citizens are shown to be singing, smiling, freedom-loving rugged individuals-in contrast to the Nazis, who are depicted as humorless automatons. In its efforts to present the USSR in the best possible light, the film glosses over the notorious Purge Trials of 1937, presenting the trials as scrupulously fair and the defendants as unabashed traitors to the Soviet cause. At one point, Russia's annexation of Finland in 1939 is "justified" by Davies' explanation that the Soviets merely wanted to protect their tiny neighbor from Nazi domination! It is unfair to label Mission to Moscow as Communistic or even left-wing, since it was merely parroting the official party line vis-a-vis US/Soviet relations in 1943. Even so, screenwriter Howard Koch found it very difficult to get film work after the war because of his contributions to this "Pinko" project (conversely, Jack Warner pulled a Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of the matter by insisting that he was strongarmed into making the film). Seen objectively, Mission to Moscow is top-rank entertainment, superbly and excitingly assembled in the manner typical of Warners and director Michael Curtiz. The huge cast includes Gene Lockhart as Molotov, attorney Dudley Field Malone as Winston Churchill, Maynart Kippen as a benign, pipe-smoking Stalin, Charles Trowbridge as Secretary Cordell Hull, Leigh Whipper as Hailie Selassie, Georges Renavent as Anthony Eden and Alex Chirva as Pierre Laval, along with the more familiar faces of Ann Harding (as Mrs. Davies), George Tobias, Eleanor Parker, Moroni Olsen, Minor Watson, Jerome Cowan, Duncan Renaldo, Mike Mazurki, Frank Faylen, Edward van Sloan, Louis-Jean Heydt, Monte Blue, Robert Shayne and even Sid (sic) Charisse. Original prints of Mission to Moscow include a 6-minute prologue delivered by the real Joseph Davies. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Unable to convince their isolationist New York editor (Charles Dingle) that America must be alerted to the threat of encroaching Nazism, pugnacious war correspondents Johnny and Kirk Davis (Clark Gable and Robert Sterling) are relieved of their European assignments. Back in the USA, Johnny inagurates a rogueish flirtation with Paula Lane (Lana Turner), an aspiring reporter who has harbored a long-standing crush on Johnny. Even so, Paula enters into a romantic relationship with Kirk, prompting Johnny to break up the affair-for Kirk's own good, of course. Paula's hopes for a lasting romance with Johnny are crushed when he refuses to discourage her from accepting an assignment in IndoChina. Later on, both Johnny and Kirk are sent off to cover the war in the Far East, where they are reunited with Paula, now busily shepherding Chinese war orphans to safety. The action moves to Bataan, where Kirk is killed in service of his country, leaving Johnny to write a passionate tribute to his brother-and, by extention, everyone else who has lain down his or her life for the cause of Democracy. During production of Somewhere I'll Find You, Clark Gable's actress-wife Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash while participating in a war-loan drive; the impact of the tragedy is painfully obvious in Gable's performance, which becomes abruptly less playful and more somber in the final reels. New MGM recruits Van Johnson and Keenan Wynn make impressive appearances in uncredited roles. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

China Girl charts the exploits of two-fisted newsreel photographer Johnny Williams (George Montgomery), stationed in Burma and China in the early stage of WW II. Captured by the Japanese, he escapes from a concentration camp with the aid of beautiful, enigmatic "China Girl" Miss Young (Gene Tierney). The two arduously make their way back to friendly lines so that Johnny can deliver the vital military information he's managed to glean from his captors. Though it probably wasn't supposed to happen this way, Lynn Bari steals the film from official star Gene Tierney. China Girl was scripted by Ben Hecht with his usual blend of sentiment and cynicism. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of Bela Lugosi's least remembered films, this ultra low-budget whodunit with science fiction overtones features the murder of a professor who had recently perfected the new invention of television. Suspects are plentiful and include Bela Lugosi's rivaling academician Dr. Perry. Alas, the good doctor proves yet another Red Herring and is soon enough found stabbed to death himself. Or is he? Perry suddenly appears to have risen from the grave and the real culprit quickly confesses. Produced by perhaps Hollywood's cheapest entrepreneur, William Pizor, Murder by Television was filmed at the low-rent Talisman Studios and came complete with a song, "I had the Right Idea", composed by future Academy Award winning songwriter Oliver Wallace and performed by June Collyer. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Jerry Paris's Star Spangled Girl (1971), based on Neil Simon's play (a notorious Broadway flop), never made much of an impression in theaters, which is understandable with a cheap, overlit television look to most of it and Davy Jones singing the song "Girl" over the main titles (which got a lot more visibility from its use in the Brady Bunch episode in which Marsha has to get the singer to appear at her school), it looked too much like a small-screen production blown up; it was dated from the first frame of its opening credits. Tony Roberts and Todd Susman play Andy Hobart and Norman Cornell, a pair of self-styled political radicals living in California, beating the system by stealing as much as they can from neighborhood shops and conning the rest out of anyone around, all for the greater goal of keeping their underground newspaper alive and kicking. Their lifestyle is a cross between the ideas in Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book and Max Bialystock's dalliances in The Producers. Into their midst moves a transplant from rural Florida, Amy Cooper (Sandy Duncan) (who was called Sophie Rauschmeyer in the play), a perky aspiring Olympic swimmer and old-fashioned, patriotic Southern girl, and as corn-fed a hick as you found in movies in 1971 without a cynical bone in her body. Norman, a hopelessly neurotic and sexually dysfunctional writer, falls in love with her almost instantly upon encountering her; not, mind you, based on her personality or even her looks, but her smell. Andy is, at first, oblivious to her charms and content to maintain his relationship with their libidinous landlady (Elizabeth Allen, totally wasted here), paying their rent with all-night barhopping and trysts involving skydiving. At some point, however, Amy decides she has to have Andy (based on his smell...), and he feels the same way. Andy and Norman end up -- Odd Couple-style -- in conflict over their differing approaches to life; the Odd Couple allusions are further amplified by Roberts' remarkable resemblance to Walter Matthau in his manner and delivery of dialogue. The story is resolved as unconvincingly as it's played. It's also a sign of just how unfunny the play was in that the funniest moment in the movie is new to the screenplay and comes just a minute after the opening credits with a gag referring to a certain John Schlesinger movie from 1969. It's not much of a gag, but it's funnier than anything in the main body of the movie, which otherwise plays like a terminally extended version of a Love American Style episode. The original Broadway production, incidentally, starred Richard Benjamin, Anthony Perkins, and Connie Stevens. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi