Perc Launders Movies

The best of Universal-International's followups to Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott & Costello Meet the Invisible Man casts Bud and Lou as mail-order private eyes. The boys champion the cause of boxer Arthur Franz, who has been framed for murder. Utilizing the formula created by Claude Rains in the original Invisible Man (1933), Franz vanishes before Dr. Gavin Muir's astonished eyes. Cloaked by invisibility, Franz talks Bud and Lou into helping him nab the real murderer, gangster Sheldon Leonard. A string of uproarious gags and comic setpieces is highlighted by a boxing-ring finale, wherein Lou, backed up by the invisible Franz, dukes it out with a behemoth prizefighter. A clever special-effects closing gag caps this delightful A&C vehicle. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Forget what you've been led to believe: Bedtime for Bonzo is a most enjoyable film, and Ronald Reagan is not outacted by the chimpanzee. Reagan is cast as psychology professor whose reputation is sullied by the fact that his father was a convict. To prove that environment rather than heredity dictates a man's personality, Reagan uses Bonzo the chimp to test out his theories. The hairy little guy seems to be responding to the kindnesses lavished upon him--and then he is accused of robbery. Reagan nearly goes to jail in Bonzo's stead, but everything turns out all right in the end (we're not giving anything away; after all, everybody knows that there was a Bonzo Goes to College in 1952). While it's an uphill climb, Ronald Reagan and his able costars Diana Lynn and Walter Slezak manage to keep Bonzo from running away with the picture. And yes, director Fred DeCordova is the same guy who produced Johnny Carson's late-night show in the 1980s and 1990s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

On a pure storytelling level, Crazy Over Horses is one of the best entries in Monogram's "Bowery Boys" series. This time, Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall) and the gang come into possession of a race horse. Slip is convinced that the horse, which he'd picked up as payment for a debt owed to sweet-shop owner Louie (Bernard Gorcey) by stable owner Flynn (Tim Ryan), is a thoroughbred. For once, he's right: the nag had been left with Flynn by a group of gamblers who'll do anything to get her back, even unto switching horses on the boys. The film leads steadily and logically to an exciting racetrack climax, capped by a final confrontation with the crooks. Comic patsy Huntz Hall is curiously unpleasant and abrasive in Crazy Over Horses, though he reverts to his old bumbling self in an extended sequence wherein he disguises himself as a black stablehand (this scene is usually removed when the film is shown on television). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When director Julien Duvivier's episodic, all-star drama Flesh and Fantasy proved a bit too long in previews, Universal decided to remove the film's opening segment, which dealt with the foredoomed romance between an escaped criminal and a blind girl. Because this segment was too good to waste, the studio hired screenwriter Roy Chanslor to come up with additional material and Reginald LeBorg to direct a few new scenes, so that the episode could be released as a separate feature film. The result was the 65-minute Destiny, a curious melange of the sublime and the banal. The Duvivier-directed footage stars Alan Curtis as fugitive-from-justice Cliff Banks, who hides from the authorities in the farmhouse owned by kindly Clem Broderick (Frank Craven). Clem's daughter Jane (Gloria Jean), blind from birth, "sees" only the good in the outwardly unsavory Cliff, so it isn't surprising that the two fall in love. This tender little episode was supposed to have ended tragically, but Universal insisted upon a few "framing" scenes, directed by LeBorg, wherein Cliff is shown to be innocent of the crimes for which he has been imprisoned, and which allowed Cliff and Jane a happy denouement The stylistic schism between the "old" and "new" scenes is glaringly obvious; still, what's left of the original Duvivier footage is terrific, with Alan Curtis and Gloria Jean offering the finest performances of their screen careers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Barry Fitzgerald's distinctive brand of Irish blarney, which was wonderful in small doses, leaned towards the precious and boring when he was given a leading role. In Easy Come, Easy Go, Fitzgerald portrays an inveterate horse player who refuses to allow his grown daughter (Diana Lynn) to get married. His motives are less paternal than materialistic: Fitzgerald has been spending all his daughter's hard-earned money at the racetrack. The old duffer reforms by fade-out time, allowing Lynn to choose between her pompadoured swains Sonny Tufts and Dick Foran. This bears no relation to the 1968 Elvis Presley musical of the same name, beyond the fact that both pictures were released by Paramount. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Flight to Mars is the second American film of the postwar era (after the previous year's Rocketship X-M) to depict a manned space trip to the Red Planet. Leading-man responsibilities are evenly divided between Arthur Franz as brilliant scientist Dr. Jim Barker and Cameron Mitchell as two-fisted reporter Steve Abbott. Both men make the journey to Mars, finding time along the way to battle over the affections of leading lady Virginia Huston. Upon landing on Mars, the earthlings learn that planetary leader, Ikron (Morris Ankrum, a fixture of 1950s sci-fi), intends to conquer the world. Fortunately a group of good Martians are on hand to lend moral and physical support to the heroes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romantic comedy, three man-hungry sisters consult a fortune-teller to help them with their romantic futures. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Irene Dunne made her final film appearance in the frothy fantasy It Grows on Trees. Looking at least two decades younger than her 52 years, Dunne plays Polly Baxter, the ebullient wife of Phil Baxter (Dean Jagger). Miracle of miracles, two of the trees in Polly's backyard garden begin sprouting paper currency! Assuming that it's genuine mazumah, Polly goes on a spending spree, and also pays off the long-standing mortgage on the house. The money-yielding trees soon become a nationwide sensation, drawing thousands of interested parties to the Baxters' tiny backyard. A major setback is inevitable, but the manner in which the dilemma is solved is both clever and logical. When it isn't concentrating on the plot proper, It Grows on Trees offers some amusing jibes at the U.S. Treasury Department, the IRS, and small-town pretentiousness. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based in part on a true story, Kiss of Death is given a veneer of reality by being filmed on location in New York, with a bare minimum of studio work. In one of his best performances, Victor Mature plays a cheap crook who is sent up the river for 20 years for robbery. District attorney Brian Donlevy, out of sympathy for Mature's two young daughters, gives him a chance to go free--if Mature will blow the whistle on his accomplices. Stubbornly adhering to the "code" of thieves, Mature refuses to do so, until his wife kills herself and his kids are placed in an orphanage. Once paroled, Mature is prevailed upon to extract additional information from sadistic mob torpedo Richard Widmark (in his chilling screen debut). Living with his children under an assumed name, Mature gradually divests himself of all criminal tendencies, and falls in love with sympathetic Coleen Gray. But Mature feels that it's only a matter of time before Widmark will come gunning for him, so he goes back to Donlevy, offering to turn over evidence that will send Widmark up for life. Thanks to a clever mob attorney, Widmark beats the rap, and Mature knows he is doomed. On his own, he schemes to arrange his impending demise so that the cops will have an air-tight case against Widmark. The last five minutes--one of the most tense 300 seconds on film--is devoted to the cat-and-mouse showdown and ultimate shootout between Mature and Widmark. Though much of Kiss of Death is a "conformist gangster film" (to quote critic Andrew Sarris), the presence of Richard Widmark makes up for any of the script's banalities. This is the film in which Widmark gigglingly pushes a wheelchair-bound old lady down a flight of stairs. Reviewer James Agee said it best: "You feel that murder is the kindest thing he is capable of". The film made Widmark a star--and also convinced him to start lobbying immediately for good-guy roles so that he wouldn't be typecast as maniacal killers for life. Kiss of Death was remade as the 1958 western The Fiend Who Walked the West, then re-remade under its original title in 1994, with David Caruso in the Mature role and Nicolas Cage in the Widmark part. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Technicolor musical Masquerade in Mexico is Mitchell Leisen's remake of his own Midnight. Stranded in Mexico City without a dime, glamorous Angel O'Reilly (Dorothy Lamour) is rescued by wealthy Thomas Grant (Patric Knowles). But Grant's motivations are anything but altrustic. In order to get his wife Helen's (Ann Dvorak) mind off handsome bullfighter Manolo Segovia (Arturo de Cordova), Grant passes Angel off as a Contessa at a weekend party, reasoning that Segovia will switch his attentions to our heroine. Screenwriter Karl Tunberg has added a jewel-theft angle to the original Edwin Justis Mayer/Franz Spencer story, which improves things not at all. Masquerade in Mexico is admittedly a handsomer production than Midnight, but the remake lacks the sparkle of the original film's stars Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Francis Lederer, Mary Astor et. al. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Young model Jean Dexter is knocked unconscious and drowned in her own bathtub in her Manhattan apartment, and a lot of jewelry that she supposedly owned is missing. The Naked City is actually about six days in the life of New York City that coincide with the murder and the subsequent investigation by Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and Detective James Halloran (Don Taylor). The account of their work, and the workings of the New York City police department, is interspersed with brief vignettes about the life of the city around them, and, especially, the reaction of residents to the murder and the newspaper reports of the progress of the case. Muldoon and Halloran first must determine why she was killed, which may (or may not) have to do with how a woman with a minimal income came by the jewelry -- was it a love affair gone bad (and if so, with whom?), or something more complex and sinister? Retracing the final 18 months of the victim's life, their investigation reaches out to a mysterious "Philip Henderson" with whom she was supposedly linked romantically, and to Frank Niles (Howard Duff), who's a little too fast-and-loose with the truth when he doesn't have to be to make Muldoon comfortable; to make things more complicated, Muldoon determines that there were at least two men involved with the actual commission of the murder. The victim turns out to have led a wild life, filled with men and parties, and was tied up with several sordid figures. Their investigation carries them into the highest and lowest ends of New York's social strata to find the killer, and it turns out there are a lot of interlocking reasons why at least three men might've wanted her dead. In the process, we get glimpses of the private lives of the detectives, which was something new in movies at this time; in the midst of all of this activity, the writers set up a fascinating contrast, in adjacent scenes, between Halloran, his wife, and their young son looking toward the future, with the parents of the dead woman, looking back with bitter regret and recriminations -- no movie ever presented in more subtle fashion the contrast between the zeitgeist of the 1930s and that of the postwar era. The final chase on the Williamsburg Bridge is one of the classic pieces of suspense cinema, as the armed and desperate killer races up the walkway past children playing and adults strolling, while detectives close in on foot from behind and patrol cars come up from ahead, with crowded subways rolling past, and then into the superstructure of the bridge for a stand-off and shootout. Sharp-eyed viewers will spot future character leads Paul Ford, James Gregory, John Marley, Kathleen Freeman, and Arthur O'Connell as well as familiar faces Tom Pedi, John Randolph, Molly Picon, and Walter Burke in the supporting cast. Cinematographer William Daniels and editor Paul Weatherwax won Oscars for their work, but awards might just as easily have been presented to director Jules Dassin, writers Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald, composers Miklos Rozsa and Frank Skinner, and, most notably, to producer/narrator Mark Hellinger, who intoned the closing monologue, which opens with one of the most famous tag lines in movie history: "There are eight million stories in the Naked City." ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Joan Davis, the daughter of a famed woman detective, has inherited none of her mother's deductive prowess. Nonetheless, Joan teams with patrolman Leon Errol to solve a series of blowgun murders. The two erstwhile Sherlocks track down the alleged murder weapon to a theatre, where it is being used as a prop in a play. After disrupting the performance, Davis determines that the murders weren't committed by blowgun, and that the culprit is a mild-mannered gentleman to whom murder is a "hobby." The title She Gets Her Man clues us in on the finale, and also refers to the shaky but affectionate relationship between Joan Davis and Leon Errol. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide