Doris Merrick Movies

In a mountain home, Dr. Cliff Groves (Robert Shayne) is working hard on the theories that have driven him to the point of overbearing obsession, frightening his sister Jan (Joyce Terry), who lives with him. When the local game warden is shocked to see what looks like a saber-tooth tiger in the area, he consults scientist Dr. Ross Harkness (Richard Crane) about the mysterious animal, and the two men decide to find the tiger and kill it. Meanwhile, Groves' experimentation has escalated. One night he injects himself and turns into a savage Neanderthal man who commits a murder and a rape then quickly returns home and transforms back into Groves. When Dr. Harkness finds evidence to incriminate Groves, he confronts the madman, who transforms again, kidnapping a woman and fleeing into the woods. Unfortunately for Groves, a second saber-tooth tiger, created by injecting a housecat with his own formula, tears him to pieces; transforming back to himself, he murmurs "It's better this way," as he dies.
This wearily routine variation on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was directed by E.A. Dupont, who once had a substantial reputation, based on his film Variety; his work here is indistinguishable from that of any standard low-budget hack. However, the dialogue by producers Aubrey Wisberg and Jack Pollexfen is, if nothing else, highly identifiable -- they wrote some of the most ponderous, hard-to-say lines in movie history. "All I can say," poor Robert Shayne has to say, "is that I cannot determine now which I admire less in you, your humor or your wit." The makeup transformations are weirdly elaborate, though the end result -- the Neanderthal Man himself -- is rendered by a standard rubber mask. The script is not only badly written, it's clumsily organized, with way too much time spent on the saber-tooth tiger, and very little, relatively speaking, on the menace of the title.
Intrigued, Ross heads up to the town, and meets Ruth Marshall (Dorris Merrick), Groves' fiancee, who has him drive her to the Groves home. Groves himself becomes furious when a group of Los Angeles scientists refuse to believe his theory that Neanderthal Man had a larger brain than human beings today. He stays furious when he meets Harkness, and when the game warden and Ross kill the saber-tooth tiger, he's initially still angry -- but is in a better mood when the body proves to have vanished. ~ All Movie Guide

The Fighting Stallion stars Bill Edwards as Lon Evans, an ex-GI who is slowly losing his eyesight. Lacking a seeing-eye dog, Lon opts for a seeing-eye horse, training one of his father's stallions for that purpose. Unfortunately, the horse is slated to be destroyed because of its alleged wildness. Lon thinks otherwise, and sets about to prove it--though he hasn't much time. The film slows down whenever the romantic subplot involving Lon and Jeanne Barton (Dorris Merrick) rears its silly head. Overall, The Fighting Stallion is a film in which the title character has all the best scenes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Beneath the proper, prurient exterior of a spinster college professor beats the passionate, seductive heart of a sexy romance novelist. When she finds her ribald first book approved for publication she finds herself facing a terrible dilemma. If word of her secret avocation leaks out, she could be ruined at the school and so she asks her pretty niece to masquerade as the book's author. Things work out just swell until the niece falls for the handsome publisher the professor wanted. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Doctor Charles Korvin walks out on his musician wife Merle Oberon when he suspects her of infidelity. Twelve years later their paths cross again; Oberon is now saddled with an abusive husband. Possessed of a protective instinct that he hadn't evinced in the first part of the film, Korvin rescues his ex-wife from her miserable marriage, and the two fall in love all over again. Based on a play by Luigi Pirandello (no, it wasn't called Two Characters in Search of a Movie, This Love is Ours is worth watching only when supporting player Claude Rains is on the scene. The 1956 remake Never Say Goodbye was no improvement, not even with Rock Hudson taking over from the stolid Charles Korvin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this crime drama, a naive, honest young woman falls for a louse who takes her to illicit gambling houses. When one of them is raided and she is there, her angry father throws her out of the house. After that her life takes a real dive until she is able to talk her way into joining a chorus-line at the night club frequented by the creepy boyfriend. Even a job doesn't stop her downward spiral and soon her boyfriend jilts her for her best friend. In the end she shoots them both. More tragedy ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy play janitors for a detective agency who pose as super-sleuths when they're hired to protect inventor Alva P. Hartley (Arthur Space). Moving bag and baggage into Hartley's gadget-laden house, Stan and Ollie must first contend with the inventor's bratty son Egbert (Bobby Blake, aka Robert Blake) and much-married Aunt Sophie (Esther Howard). More problems ensue when Hartley's next door neighbors Charlton (Frank Fenton), Hartman (James Bush), Dutchy (Phil Van Zandt) and Mayme (Veda Ann Borg) reveal themselves as the crooks they really are. Entrusted with Hartley's latest invention, super-bomb called "The Big Noise", Stan and Ollie skeedaddle to Washington, just one step ahead of the criminals. Escaping the villains, the boys take flight in a balky airplane, only to find that they're the targets for Army gunnery practice. Our heroes save themselves-and the day-when they use the bomb to destroy a Japanese submarine. Long regarded as the worst of Laurel & Hardy's feature films, The Big Noise has in recent years been championed by several of the team's fans, not least because the admittedly patchy storyline incorporates several of their classic routines from such earlier 2-reelers as Habeas Corpus, Wrong Again and Berth Marks. Arguably the film's best scene finds Stan and Ollie trying to gorge themselves on a "banquet" consisting of dehydrated food capsules. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

On the day of his death in 1943, the spirit of Henry Van Cleave (Don Ameche) obligingly heads for the place where so many people had previously told him to go. The immaculately dressed septuagenarian arrives at the outer offices of Hades, where he is greeted by His Excellency (Laird Cregar), the most courteous and gentlemanly Satan in screen history. His Excellency doubts that Van Cleave has sinned enough to qualify for entrance into Hades, but Henry insists that he's led the most wicked of lives, and proceeds to tell his story. Each milestone of Henry's life, it seems, has occurred on one of his birthdays. Upon reaching 15, Henry (played as a teenager by Dickie Moore) naively permits himself to get drunk with and be seduced by his family's French maid (Signe Hasso). At 21, Henry elopes with lovely Martha Strabel (Gene Tierney) stealing her away from her stuffy fiance Albert Van Cleve (Allyn Joslyn), Henry's cousin. At 31, Henry nearly loses Martha when, weary of his harmless extracurricular flirtations, she goes home to her boorish parents (Eugene Pallette and Marjorie Main). Henry's grandpa (Charles Coburn) orders the errant husband not to let so wonderful a girl as Martha get away from him. Henry once more declares his love to Martha, and she can't help but be touched by his boyish sincerity. Twenty years later, Henry, now a faithful and proper husband and father, attempts to charm a beautiful musical-comedy entertainer (Helen Walker) so that she'll forsake his young and impressionable son. But Henry's gay-90s romantic approach is out of touch with the Roaring 20s, and he ends up paying the entertainer a tidy sum to rescue his son--a fact that amuses Henry's understanding wife Martha, who now knows that her husband is hers and hers alone. Ten more years pass: Henry dances a last waltz with Martha, whose loving smile hides the fact that she knows she hasn't much longer to live. Five years later, it is "foxy grandpa" Henry who must be kept in check by his conservative son Jack (Michael Ames). Finally, it is 1943: as he quietly drinks in the loveliness of his night nurse (Doris Merrick), the bedridden Henry contentedly breathes his last. His story told, Henry once again asks to be permitted to enter Hades. But His Excellency, realizing that the only "sin" Henry has truly committed is attempting to live life to the fullest, quietly replies "If you'll forgive me, Mr. Van Cleave, we just don't want your kind down here." While he allows that Henry may have some trouble getting past the Pearly Gates, the wait will be worth it, since his loving wife Martha will be waiting for him. His Excellency cordially escorts Henry to the elevator, giving the operator a one-word instruction: "Up." A charming delight from first frame to last, Heaven Can Wait is another winner from director Ernst Lubitsch, and his first in Technicolor. Samson Raphaelson's screenplay was based on Birthdays, a play by Laslo Bus-Fekete. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, set in WW II, a Venezuelan rubber planter's son must travel to New York to try and secure a loan for the expansion of the family business. There he encounters an impoverished American girl whose fortune lies frozen in England until the war ends. To make ends meet, she rents her apartment to the Venezuelan and becomes his personal maid. Mayhem ensues as the two get involved in merry mix-ups, fall in love, fall out of love, and fall in love again. Eventually, she helps him get the loan he needs. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide