Joan Barry Movies

This confusingly-titled science-fiction thriller is both an artifact of its time and a surprisingly forward-looking film, in terms of plot. On the one hand, its plot makes it a kind of 1950's B-movie antecedent to The Andromeda Strain -- on the other, it owes a lot to the popular police procedural films and television shows of the decade or so leading up to its production. The title refers to an advanced US satellite sent into orbit, in part to gather and return samples of material from space. The latter includes a microscopic organism believed to be the same existing on the planet Mars which, so one scientist, Dr. Charles Pommer (Paul Frees), believes, is responsible for that world's red coloration. Pommer, who is permitted to take the sample to his home laboratory, is brilliant and single-minded in his work; but his intellect and ambition, coupled with his unstable personality and chaotic personal life, leads to disaster. He discovers that the organism, which he christens "Blood Rust," can multiply incredibly fast in Earth's environment, and attach itself to (and ultimately consume) any living host creature, including human beings. The alien organism proves his undoing, and he lives just long enough to warn project security chief John Hand (Bill Williams) of the danger -- but the warning comes too late to prevent Pommer's ex-wife (Lyn Thomas) from becoming an unwitting carrier of the organism. It's up to Hand and his assistant, Radigan (Robert Ellis), to find this woman -- whose identity they don't even know at first -- even as she tries (for purely personal reasons) to elude the authorities, not knowing of the danger she presents to herself and the world. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

A young woman comes to England to escape her checkered past and assumes the name of her late cousin. This melodrama chronicles what happens when she falls in love with the son of a disapproving judge. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Sailor George Barraud and a shopgirl marry while the sailor's first girlfriend is in prison. When released, the girlfriend attempts to get her man back, but ends up saving the wife from suicide when the girlfriend realizes their true love. ~ Rovi

Set during an ugly divorce proceeding, a faithless second wife is found guilty of adultery (with a wealthy nobleman whom she wants to marry) after the wronged husband's first wife shows him irrefutable evidence. Soon after the judge's gavel falls the newly freed husband and his first bride joyously reunite. Melodramatic but tuneful tripe. ~ Rovi

This atypical Alfred Hitchcock effort is a cautionary fable which lends credence to the old saw "Love flies out the door when money flies in the window." Joan Barry and Henry Kendall play a young married couple who suddenly come into an inheritance. Bored with their working-class existence, hero and heroine embark upon a world cruise, and it isn't long before Barry gets romantically involved with a landed-gentry gentleman. Meanwhile, Kendall is swept off his feet by a phony princess, who tricks him out of all his money. Broke and miserable, Barry and Kendall head home on a shabby cargo boat, only to find themselves in the middle of a shipwreck. The couple is rescued by a Chinese junk, where the solemn crew members dine on their pet cat. By the time Barry and Kendall have returned to their humble suburban lodgings, they've both learned the sagacity of remaining in their own back yard. Partly a sophisticated sex comedy, partly a grim seafaring melodrama, Rich and Strange had the negative effect of confusing the public in general and Hitchcock's fans in particular, and as a result the film, which remains one of Hitch's best early talkies, died at the box office. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film utilized the new sound technology in a rather creative way off-camera. Hitchcock's lead actress, Anny Ondra, had a strong Eastern European accent that was difficult for English audiences to understand, so Hitchcock's solution was to have British actress Joan Barry speak Ondra's lines of dialogue off-camera. The film concerns a woman who kills a man who tries to assault her. Ondra plays Alice White who, while having dinner in a fancy English nightspot with her husband-to-be Scotland Yard Detective Frank Webber (John Longden), begins to flirt with an artist (Cyril Richard) seated at the next table. The artist invites her up to see his studio, and she goes but balks when the artist asks her to pose in the nude. When the request becomes a demand, Alice stabs him to death. She rejoins her fiance and tries to forget the murder, but her conscience keeps bothering her. To make matters worse, sniveling rat Tracy (Donald Calthrop) materializes to blackmail Alice for the crime. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The Pittsburgh-born star of low-budget serials such as Wolves of Kultur (1918) and Hurricane Hutch (1921), Charles Hutchison moved his operations to Great Britain in the mid-1920s. Playing a cowboy who crosses paths with a mad nobleman (Greed's Gibson Gowland), Hutchison attempted to transfer his stock-in-trade -- furious, non-stop action -- to the more leisurely paced British film industry. The attempt -- which included torture chambers, damsels-in-distress and other cliches of the genre -- was by all accounts unsuccessful. Hutchison was soon enough back in Hollywood, where he continued his career mainly behind the camera, producing and directing very low-budget action melodramas and serials through the 1930s. He was still associated with the genre as late as 1944, when he appeared in the Republic serial Captain America. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi