Ian Keith Movies

Based on the Holy Scriptures, with additional dialogue by several other hands, The Ten Commandments was the last film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The story relates the life of Moses, from the time he was discovered in the bullrushes as an infant by the pharoah's daughter, to his long, hard struggle to free the Hebrews from their slavery at the hands of the Egyptians. Moses (Charlton Heston) starts out "in solid" as Pharoah's adopted son (and a whiz at designing pyramids, dispensing such construction-site advice as "Blood makes poor mortar"), but when he discovers his true Hebrew heritage, he attempts to make life easier for his people. Banished by his jealous half-brother Rameses (Yul Brynner), Moses returns fully bearded to Pharoah's court, warning that he's had a message from God and that the Egyptians had better free the Hebrews post-haste if they know what's good for them. Only after the Deadly Plagues have decimated Egypt does Rameses give in. As the Hebrews reach the Red Sea, they discover that Rameses has gone back on his word and plans to have them all killed. But Moses rescues his people with a little Divine legerdemain by parting the Seas. Later, Moses is again confronted by God on Mt. Sinai, who delivers unto him the Ten Commandments. Meanwhile, the Hebrews, led by the duplicitous Dathan (Edward G. Robinson), are forgetting their religion and behaving like libertines. "Where's your Moses now?" brays Dathan in the manner of a Lower East Side gangster. He soon finds out. DeMille's The Ten Commandments may not be the most subtle and sophisticated entertainment ever concocted, but it tells its story with a clarity and vitality that few Biblical scholars have ever been able to duplicate. It is very likely the most eventful 219 minutes ever recorded to film--and who's to say that Nefertiri (Anne Baxter) didn't make speeches like, "Oh, Moses, Moses, you splendid, stubborn, adorable fool"? ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

It Came From Beneath the Sea was the first of several fruitful collaborations between producer Charles H. Schneer and special-effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. "It" is a giant, six-tentacled octopus, which is galvanized into action by an H-bomb test. Worse still, the monster is highly radioactive, rendering useless the normal means of defense against it. Scientists Donald Curtis and Faith Domergue team with atomic-submarine commander Kenneth Tobey to halt the creature's progress before it begins to attack major coastal cities. Alas, the monster manages to reach San Francisco, wreaking havoc on the Golden Gate Bridge, the Ferry Building, and Market Street before Tobey figures out a way to destroy it. The stop-motion animation utilized by Harryhausen in It Came From Beneath Sea is convincingly frightening, but before long he'd top this achievement with such superb projects as Earth vs. Flying Saucers and Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

19th century Louisiana is the setting for Duel on the Mississippi. Patricia Medina stars as Lili Scarlet, a vengeful Creole girl who masterminds a series of pirate raids on the local plantations. To cover up her perfidy, Lili operates a lavish gambling ship, and it is here that aristocratic Jules Tulane (John Dehner) runs up a huge debt. As "security", Jules' son Andre (Lex Barker) turns himself over to Lili as a sort of bond slave. It doesn't take long for Andre and Lili to fall in love, much to the dismay of her knife-wielding paramour Hugo Marat (Warren Stevens). The titular duel between Andre and Hugo, fought with machetes, is the film's most exciting sequence. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The third talkie version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, this splashy MGM adaptation is also the first version in Technicolor. Gene Kelly romps his way through the role of D'Artagnan, the upstart cadet who joins veteran Musketeers Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote) in their efforts to save their beloved Queen Anne (Angela Lansbury) from disgrace. They are aided in their efforts by the lovely and loyal Constance (June Allyson), while the villainy is in the capable hands of Milady De Winter (Lana Turner) and Richelieu (Vincent Price). Notice we don't say Cardinal Richelieu: anxious not to offend anyone, MGM removed the religious angle from the Cardinal's character. While early sound versions of Three Musketeers eliminated the deaths of Constance and Milady, this adaptation telescopes the novel's events to allow for these tragedies. True to form, MGM saw to it that Lana Turner, as Milady, was dressed to the nines and heavily bejeweled for her beheading sequence. Portions of the 1948 Three Musketeers, in black and white, showed up in the silent film-within-a-film in 1952's Singin' in the Rain, which of course also starred Gene Kelly. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

They said it couldn't be done, but they did it: Kathleen Winsor's "notorious", bestselling bodice-ripper Forever Amber actually made it to the screen in 1947 with full censorial approval. Of course, it was necessary to tone down the more erotic passages of Winsor's novel, but the end result pleased fans of the book and bluenosed nonfans alike. A last-minute replacement for British import Peggy Cummins, Linda Darnell steps into the role of 17th century blonde bed-hopper Amber as though she'd been born to play it. Feeling suppressed by her Puritan upbringing, Amber heads to London, finding considerable success as a courtesan (that's the polite word for it). The first real love of her life is dashing soldier Bruce Carlton, who leaves her pregnant and penniless when he marches off to war. Subsequent amours include the sadistic Earl of Radcliffe (a superbly loathsome performance by comic actor Richard Haydn), handsome highwayman Black Jack Mallard (John Russell) and privateer Captain Rex Morgan (Glenn Langan). Surviving the Plague and the Great London Fire with nary a hair out of place, Amber ends up in the arms of no less than King Charles II (wittily portrayed by George Sanders), but true love, as personified by Bruce Carlton, will always elude her. Taking no chances, 20th Century-Fox sent out Forever Amber with a spoken prologue, heard over the opening credits, which explained that the film in no way endorsed its heroine's libertine behavior, and that she would be amply punished for her sins before fadeout time (that prologue has thankfully been removed from current prints). A model of restraint by today's standards, Forever Amber was sufficiently titillating in 1947 to post an enormous profit, far in excess of its $4 million budget. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Nightmare Alley is the sordid tale of a conniving young man who, in the words of one of the film's supporting characters, ends up low because he aimed so high. Drifter Tyrone Power sweet-talks his way into a job as barker for a rundown carnival. He is fascinated by an illegal side-show attraction called "The Geek," a near-lunatic who bites the heads off live chickens and then is "paid off" with a cheap bottle of rotgut and a warm place to sleep it off. Otherwise, Power's attention is focussed on a beautiful if slightly stupid carnival performer (Coleen Gray) who works in an "electricity" act with an equally dense strongman (Mike Mazurki). Power also befriends an alcoholic mentalist (Ian Keith), who demonstrates how easy it is to fool an audience into thinking that his mind reading is genuine. When the mentalist dies after accidentally drinking wood alcohol, Power works his way into the confidence of the performer's widow (Joan Blondell), who teaches Power all the tricks and code words of the mind-reading racket. Power walks out on Blondell in favor of Cathy Downs, who marries him and becomes his partner in a classy nightclub mentalist act. But Power is dissatisfied with show business, and with the help of a beautiful but shifty psychiatrist (Helen Walker) he convinces several wealthy people that he can communicate with their dead loved ones...for a price. One elderly millionaire (Taylor Holmes) offers Power a fortune if he can conjure up the spirit of the millionaire's dead daughter. Power enlists his wife to impersonate the deceased girl, but at the crucial moment she has an attack of conscience and exposes the fraud. His career ruined, Power goes to the crooked psychiatrist for help, but she laughs in his face and calls the cops. He escapes the law by going on the bum, and before long is a drunken derelict. When he approaches a carnival for work, he is told that there is only one job open...as a "geek." When asked if he wants the job, the defeated Power replies "Mister, I was born for it." Based on a lurid bestseller by William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley was Tyrone Power's attempt to break away from romantic leads in favor of roles with more substance. The picture wasn't a success, but it proved that Power was more than just a pretty face. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

B-movie auteur Edgar G. Ulmer managed to direct a few A-pictures during his long career; he was personally selected by Hedy Lamarr to helm this big-budget thriller, a project she put together to change her image as a starlet whose sex appeal outweighed her acting abilities. Set in the early 19th century, The Strange Woman takes place in Bangor, Maine, where logging and lumber mills have made the town prosperous. Jenny Hager (Lamarr) has grown up in Bangor, not far from the watchful eye of wealthy Isaiah Poster (Gene Lockhart). The fact that Jenny is twenty years Isaiah's junior does not stem his amorous intentions, and when she's finally out of her teens, Jenny accepts his proposal of marriage. But beneath her sweet exterior, Jenny is a shrewd, conniving women, and while she makes a fine life for herself with Isaiah's money, she obviously doesn't care for him. When Isaiah's son Ephraim (Louis Hayward) visits from college, Jenny is immediately attracted to him, and she tells him that she'll marry him if he murders his father. But, unknown to Ephraim, Jenny is already scheming to win the affections of businessman John Evered (George Sanders), even though he's pledged to marry her best friend Meg (Hillary Brooke). Based on a novel by Ben Ames Williams, The Strange Woman was generally considered one of Hedy Lamarr's best performances, although her best-known performance would continue to be in Ecstasy (1933), largely because of her then-daring nude scenes. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Produced by Gower Gulch maverick Robert L. Lippert and filmed in not-so-glorious two-strip Cinecolor near Idyllwild, California, this Northwest Mounted melodrama starred the veteran Bob Steele as a rather surly mountie who, against his own better judgment, is persuaded to escort a patronizing Eastern girl (Joan Woodbury through the wilderness to her uncle's logging camp. Constantly bickering with her guide, the girl is carrying $20,000 in her purse, payroll money which is promptly stolen. At the logging camp, Steele runs into trouble with the local sergeant, Means (John Litel), who may not be all he appears to be, a wife-beating saloon-keeper (George Meeker, and sundry other more or less mysterious persons, most of whom were aware of Miss Woodbury's travel plans. Steele, who was nearing the end of his starring career (four Grade-Z Westerns were to come), also headlined Wildfire (1945), another Cinecolor "experiment" for Lippert's Action Pictures. Northwest Trail, however, was all but stolen by Miss Woodbury, whose feisty character made up for Steele's aging inertia. Troubled silent star Madge Bellamy made her final screen appearances as the mistreated wife of the saloon proprietor and real-life circus performer Poodles Hanneford played himself Like so many low-budget mountie melodramas, this one implied a non-existent connection to pulp writer James Oliver Curwood. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Predating 20th Century-Fox's Somewhere in the Night by at least a year, Identity Unknown is one of the first (if not the first) 1940s melodramas centering around an amenisiac ex-GI. Richard Arlen plays Johnny March, who returns from WW2 with nary a clue as to his true identity or the details of his past. March begins a long and arduous trek across America, visiting a wide variety of people who've lost loved ones in the war, in hopes of piecing together his own previous existence. In the manner of The Fugitive, March profoundly affects the lives of everyone he meets, helping them understand what the sacrifices of the war were all about and enabling them to face the future with optimism and pride. Though it may have been merely coincidental, Identity Unknown was released around the same time that the United Nations' first San Francisco Conference was about to convene. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Statehood for Wyoming became the weighty focal point in this very low-budget music Western from poverty row company PRC, which served to introduce Eddie Dean as the company's newest singing cowboy. Old Ma Conway (Sarah Padden) champions statehood for Wyoming, believing the measure would put an end to the territory's lawlessness; but the elderly woman is opposed by cattle buyer and tax assessor Lee Landow (Ian Keith and greedy banker Dixon (Robert Barron). When Ma offers her opinion in a newspaper article, Landow sends his henchman Ringo (Rocky Camron) to put the fear of God in the woman. Ranch foreman Eddie Reed (Dean) is outraged, and after warbling such Western ditties as "My Herdin' Song" and "Wild Prairie Rose" to Vicky (Jennifer Holt), Ma's foster-daughter, the cowboy takes matters into his own hand. At first he is aided by a mysterious stranger, "The Cheyenne Kid" (Lash LaRue making his Western debut), but this black-clad rider proves to be a wolf in wolf's clothing, who is in cahoots with Ringo. A former National Barn Dance crooner, the rather homely Dean had been bouncing around Hollywood since 1936, writing prairie ballads and supporting Western stars such as Ken Maynard and George Houston. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

RKO Radio's first film in the three-color Technicolor process was the standard-issue swashbuckler The Spanish Main. Paul Henried is his usual stoic self as Laurent Van Horn, a Dutch sea captain shipwrecked on the coast of Cartagena, a Spanish-held island. Sentenced to be hanged, Van Horn and his crew escape from jail and take up piracy as revenge against Spain. Soon afterward, they capture a ship carrying Francisca (Maureen O'Hara), the fiance of Cartagena's corrupt governor Don Alvarado (Walter Slezak). Van Horn vengefully forces Francisca to marry him instead, which causes dissension at the Pirate colony of Tortuga. Naturally, Van Horn and Francisca eventually fall in love with each other, but the bad guys must be vanquished before a happy ending can be realized. Binnie Barnes steals the show as feisty female buccaneer Anne Bonney (who in real life looked less like Barnes and more like Walter Slezak!) The script is a cynical melange of pirate-movie cliches and the performances are generally routine, but The Spanish Main pleased the crowd in 1945, posting a profit of nearly $1.5 million and encouraging future Technicolor adventure films from RKO. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this western, Red Ryder and his young sidekick Little Beaver help prevent an impressionable duchess from being duped by a bogus British aristocrat. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi