Jack Reynolds Movies

When seen today, Bullwhip seems to be a dry run for the 1975 Jack Nicholson-Mary Steenburgen western Goin' South. To save himself from being hanged on a trumped-up murder charge, frontiersman Guy Madison agrees to marry whip-wielding spitfire Rhonda Fleming. Once the ceremony is over, Fleming wants nothing to do with her new husband, but he insists upon insinuating himself in her burgeoning fur-trading business. How long will it be before the heroine succumbs to Madison's rakish charms? When Shakespeare wrote this story, he called it Taming of the Shrew. ~ Hal Erickson, 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

I Was an American Spy is a true story, based on a series of autobiographical Reader's Digest articles written by Claire Phillips. Ann Dvorak stars as Ms. Phillips, an American nightclub singer trapped in Singapore when the Japanese march in. Having lost her husband to the Bataan death march, Phillips agrees to join an American secret agent (Gene Evans) in undermining the Japanese occupation troops. She is captured by the enemy, tortured, and sentenced to be shot, but is rescued at the last minute by her American contact. I Was an American Spy handles its more brutal scenes with a marked degree of tastefulness, thanks to the careful direction of Lesley Selander. Just as in their wartime movie appearances, Chinese actor Richard Loo and Korean actor Philip Ahn are eminently hissable as the Japanese villains. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A haunting work of stark confessionalism disguised as a taut noir thriller, In a Lonely Place -- Nicholas Ray's bleak, desperate tale of fear and self-loathing in Hollywood -- remains one of the filmmaker's greatest and most deeply resonant features. It stars Humphrey Bogart as Dixon Steele, a fading screenwriter suffering from creative burnout; hired to adapt a best-selling novel, instead of reading the book itself he asks the hat-check girl (Martha Stewart) at his favorite nightclub to simply tell him the plot. The morning after, the girl is found brutally murdered, and Steele is the police's prime suspect; however, the would-be starlet across the way, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), provides him with a solid alibi, and they soon begin a romance in spite of Gray's lingering concerns that the troubled, violent Steele might just be a killer after all. During production, Ray's real-life marriage to co-star Grahame began to crumble, and his own vulnerability and disillusionment clearly inform the picture; the brooding, bitter Steele -- a role ideally suited to Bogart's wounded romanticism -- is plainly a doppelganger for Ray himself (the site of his first Hollywood apartment is even employed as the set for Steele's home), and the film's unflinching examination of the character's disintegration makes for uniquely compelling viewing. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

The Sun Sets at Dawn is a crime melodrama with strong religious overtones. The Boy (Philip Shawn) is about to be executed in the State's brand-new electric chair. On this momentous occasion, dozens of reporters gather around as The Boy tells his sad life story. While this is going on, the person who should be electrocuted is exposed, and it is suggested that a Divine force has brought about this last-minute miracle. Sally Parr co-stars as The Girl, who believes in The Boy's innocence (the characters have no names; this, evidently, is meant to be symbolic). Walter Reed also appears as The Chaplain, who has ever so much to say. The Sun Sets at Dawn represents the return after a lengthy retirement of director Paul H. Sloane, who also wrote and produced. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide