Douglas Spencer Movies

The scene is a distant Arctic research station, where a UFO has crashed. The investigating scientists discover that the circular craft has melted its way into the ice, which has frozen up again. While attempting to recover the ship, Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) accidentally explodes the vessel, but the pilot -- at least, what seems to be the pilot -- remains frozen in a block of ice. The body is taken to base headquarters, where it is inadvertently thawed out by an electric blanket. The alien attacks the soldier guarding him and escapes into the snowy wastes. An attack dog rips off the alien's arm, whereupon Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) discerns that "The Thing" (played by future Gunsmoke star James Arness!) is not animal but a member of the carrot family, subsisting on blood. While the misguided Carrington attempts to spawn baby "Things" with the severed arm, the parent creature wreaks murderous havoc all over the base. Female scientist Nikki (Margaret Sheridan) suggests that the best way to destroy a vegetable is to cook it. Over the protests of Carrington, who wants to reason with the "visitor" (a very foolhardy notion, as it turns out), the soldiers devise a devious method for stopping The Thing once and for all. This oversimplification of The Thing does not do full justice to the overall mood and tension of the piece, nor does it convey the lifelike "business as usual" approach taken by the residents of the military base in dealing with something beyond their understanding. A superior blend of science fiction, horror, naturalistic dialogue, and flesh-and-blood characterizations, The Thing is a model of its kind. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Previously filmed in 1931 under its original title, Theodore Dreiser's bulky but brilliant novel An American Tragedy was remade in 1951 by George Stevens as A Place in the Sun. Montgomery Clift stars as George Eastman, a handsome and charming but basically aimless young man who goes to work in a factory run by a distant, wealthy relative. Feeling lonely one evening, he has a brief rendezvous with assembly-line worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), but he forgets all about her when he falls for dazzling socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). Alice can't forget about him, though: she is pregnant with his child. Just when George's personal and professional futures seem assured, Alice demands that he marry her or she'll expose him to his society friends. This predicament sets in motion a chain of events that will ultimately include George's arrest and numerous other tragedies, including a vicious cross-examination by a D.A. played by future Perry Mason Raymond Burr. A huge improvement over the 1931 An American Tragedy, directed by Josef von Sternberg, A Place in the Sun softens some of the rough edges of Dreiser's naturalism, most notably in the passages pertaining to George's and Angela's romance. Even those 1951 bobbysoxers who wouldn't have been caught dead poring through the Dreiser original were mesmerized by the loving, near-erotic full facial closeups of Clift and Taylor as they pledge eternal devotion. A Place in the Sun won six Oscars, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography, although it lost Best Picture to An American in Paris. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Damon Runyon's Broadway fable The Lemon Drop Kid was filmed twice by Paramount Pictures, but only the 1934 version with Lee Tracy paid more than lip service to the original Runyon story. The second version, filmed in 1951, was completely retooled to accommodate the talents of Bob Hope. Known far and wide as the Lemon Drop Kid because of his fondness for that particular round, yellow confection, Hope is a bookie who finds himself deeply in debt to Florida gangster Fred Clark. Magnanimously, Clark permits Hope to head to New York to raise the money--but he'd better have the dough ready by Christmas, or else. Ever on the lookout for Number One, Hope decides to exploit the Christmas spirit in order to get the money together. With the help of unsuspecting nightclub-singer Marilyn Maxwell, Hope sets up a charity fund to raise money for an "Old Doll's Home"--that is, a home for down-and-out little old ladies. He claims to be doing this on behalf of big-hearted Jane Darwell, but he has every intention of double-crossing Darwell and all the other elderly women by skipping town with the charity funds and leaving them at the mercy of the authorities. By the time Hope has seen the error of his ways and tries to do right by the old dolls, Maxwell's boss Lloyd Nolan has decided to muscle into the racket by using the ladies' home as a front for a gambling casino. To set things right, Hope finds it necessary to disguise himself as a fussy old spinster at one point. The best line in the film goes to William Frawley, playing one of many Broadway toughs who are being pressed into service as street-corner Santas. "Will you bring me a doll for Christmas?" asks a little girl. "Naw, my doll's workin' Christmas Eve" is Frawley's salty reply. The Lemon Drop Kid is the film in which Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell introduced the enduring Yuletide ballad "Silver Bells", written (reportedly in a real hurry) by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Lizabeth Scott and Diana Lynn are both effectively cast against type in Paid in Full. Scott plays Jane Langley, the spectacularly self-sacrificial older sister of selfish, reckless Nancy Langley (Lynn). Though she is in love with Bill Prentice (Robert Cummings), Jane gives him up to Nancy. And when Jane accidently causes the death of Nancy's child, she vows to makes amends by the most direct means possible. What follows is within the Production Code guidelines of the era -- but just barely. An unabashed "woman's picture" (that's what they called them back in 1949), Paid in Full doesn't always play well today, since viewers might be tempted to yell "Get real, Lizabeth!" at the screen. Still, it worked beautifully for its original target audience, especially those who'd read the factual Reader's Digest article upon which it was based. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Glenn Ford and Rhonda Fleming star in The Redhead and the Cowboy, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out who plays what. Fleming is cast as Confederate spy Candace Bronson, who makes her way through enemy lines to deliver an important message. She is accompanied by Gil Kyle (Glenn Ford), who needs Candace to testify on his behalf in a murder trial. Though not necessarily sympathetic to the Southern cause, Gil helps Candace complete her mission. Also around and about is Dunn Jeffers (Edmond O'Brien), a Union spy who pretends to help Gil and Candace. As Civil War westerns go, Redhead and the Cowboy is pretty good, with some particularly exciting action highlights. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tough reporter Ed Adams (Alan Ladd) wants to get the full story behind the apparent suicide of a young woman. It seems that the girl left behind a notebook with a list of seemingly unrelated names. Adams tracks down each one of the persons cited in the notebook, slowly but surely putting the pieces together. Once the basic mystery is solved, however, there's one surprising loose end left to be tied up. June Havoc co-stars as Leona, self-styled best friend of the decedent, who helps Adams in his quest. As the victim, Donna Reed appears exclusively in flashbacks. Based on a story by veteran suspense scrivener Tiffany Thayer (of Thirteen Women fame), Chicago Deadline was remade for television in 1966 as Fame is the Name of the Game. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Lloyd Bacon's baseball comedy stars Ray Milland as Vernon Simpson, a chemist who develops a product which repels wood. Signing on with a major league team as a pitcher, he throws screwballs doctored with his solution, becoming a sensation who strikes out every batter he faces. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

Lieutenant Harry Grant (William Lundigan) and Sgt. Art Collins (Jeff Corey) have been handed the unenviable assignment of tracking down "The Judge," a mysterious serial murderer responsible for seven deaths over the past few months. The police have plenty of clues and forensic evidence, but no solid leads to who this highly resourceful strangler is. Complicating Grant's work is the presence of Ann Gorman (Dorothy Patrick), an ambitious reporter for a sensationalistic crime magazine, who keeps sticking her nose into this case and into his work. In exasperation over The Judge's latest victim, a newspaper editor named McGill (Frank Ferguson), Grant decides to take a novel approach to catching the killer -- he prepares a life-size blank-faced dummy using all the clues the police have, as to height, weight, physique, preferred way of dressing etc., in order to give his officers a clearer picture of who and what they're looking for. The result is creepy but effective, and soon Grant is getting closer to the killer -- but The Judge is insane, and agitated by all manner of outside stimuli, and he might prove too much even for a police detective to deal with in a direct confrontation. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

John Farrow's movie adaptation of Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock, based on a screenplay by Jonathan Latimer (and produced by future James Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum), is a near-perfect match for the book, telling in generally superb visual style a tale set against the backdrop of upscale 1940s New York and offering an early (but accurate) depiction of the modern media industry. Told in the back-to-front fashion typical of film noir, it opens with George Stroud (Ray Milland) trapped, his life in danger, his survival measured in the minute-by-minute movements of the huge central clock of the office building where he's hiding. In flashback we learn that Stroud works for media baron Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), loosely based on Henry Luce, as the editor of Crimeways magazine. Janoth is a manipulative, self-centered megalomaniac with various obsessions, including clocks; among other manifestations of the latter fixation, the skyscraper housing his empire's headquarters has as one of its central features a huge clock that reads out the time around the world down to the second.

Twenty-four hours earlier, on the eve of a combined honeymoon/vacation with his wife, Georgia (Maureen O'Sullivan), that has been put off for seven years, Stroud was ordered by Janoth to cancel the trip in order to work on a special project, and he resigned. As the narrative picks up speed, in his depression, Stroud misses the train his wife is on and crosses paths with Pauline York (Rita Johnson), a former model for Janoth's Styleways magazine, who is also Janoth's very unhappy mistress, and the two commiserate by getting drunk together in a night on the town. While hurriedly leaving Pauline's apartment, he glimpses Janoth entering. Janoth and York quarrel, and the publisher kills her in a jealous rage, using a sundial that she and Stroud picked up the night before while wandering around in their revels. Janoth and his general manager, Steve Hagen (George Macready), contrive to pin the murder on the man that Janoth glimpsed leaving York's apartment, whom he thinks was named Jefferson Randolph -- the name Stroud was drunkenly bandying about the night before. He gets Stroud back to Crimeways to lead the magazine's investigators in hunting down "Jefferson Randolph," never realizing that this was Stroud. And Stroud has no choice but to return, desperately trying to gather evidence against Janoth and, in turn, prevent the clues gathered by the Crimeways staff from leading back to him. The two play this clever, disjointed game of cat-and-mouse, Janoth and Hagen planting evidence that will hang "Randolph" (and justify his being shot while trying to escape), while Stroud, knowing what they don't about how close the man they seek to destroy is, arranges to obscure those clues and, in a comical twist, sends the least capable reporters and investigators to follow up on the most substantial clues.

Janoth sometimes seems to be unraveling at the frustrating pace and lack of conclusion to the hunt, but Stroud can't escape the inevitable, or the moments of weakness caused by fear and his own guilt over his near-unfaithfulness to his wife or the inscrutable gaze of Janoth's mute bodyguard Bill Womack (Harry Morgan), a stone-cold killer dedicated to protecting his employer. The trail of proof and guilt winds ever tighter around both men, taking some odd twists courtesy of the eccentric artist (Elsa Lanchester) who has seen the suspect. Milland is perfect in the role of the hapless Stroud, and Laughton is brilliant as the vain, self-centered Janoth, but George Macready is equally good as Hagen, his smooth, upper-crust Waspy smarminess making one's skin crawl. Also worth noting is Harry Morgan's sinister, silent performance as Womack, and sharp-eyed viewers will also recognize such performers as Douglas Spencer, Noel Neill (especially memorable as a tart-tongued elevator operator), Margaret Field (Sally's mother), Ruth Roman, and Lane Chandler in small roles. Additionally, the Janoth Publications building where most of the action takes place is almost a cast member in itself, an art deco wonder, especially the room housing the clock mechanism and the lobby and vestibules, all loosely inspired by such structures as the Empire State Building and the real-life Daily News headquarters on East 42nd Street. This film was later remade as No Way Out. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Never mind Veronica Lake and Joan Caulfield: the real star of The Sainted Sisters is Barry Fitzgerald, dispensing Hibernian blarney by the wheelbarrowful. The story begins as turn-of-the-century golddiggers Letty and Jane Stanton (Lake and Caulfield) escape New York after divesting a gullible millionaire of $25,000. En route to Canada by way of Maine, the girls are caught in a storm and forced to seek shelter in the home of canny New Englander Robbie McCleary (Fitzgerald). Quickly figuring out that his pretty guests aren't the winsome innocents they pretend to be, McCleary draws upon his own larcenous impulses to convince the sisters to dispense their money amongst the needy and deserving. Letty and Jane not only accede to McCleary's wishes, but reform themselves in the process. Though George "Superman" Reeves is the nominal leading man, The Sainted Sisters belongs to its character actors: Fitzgerald, William Demarest, Beulah Bondi, Chill Wills,et. al. Incidentally, when first released, the word "Sainted" was italicized in the main titles, lest the producers be accused of sacrilege. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Billy Wilder's searing portrait of an alcoholic features an Oscar-winning performance by Ray Milland as Don Birnam, a writer whose lust for booze consumes his career, his life, and his loves. The story begins as Don and his brother Wick (Philip Terry) are packing their bags in their New York apartment, preparing for a weekend in the country. Philip, aware of his brother's drinking problem, is keeping an eye of him, making sure he doesn't sneak a drink before the departure of their train. Arriving at the apartment is Don's girlfriend, Helen St. James (Jane Wyman), who has tickets to a Carnegie Hall concert that night. Don persuades Wick and Helen to go to the concert without him, hoping to find one of his well-hidden bottles of booze. But when Wick and Helen go to the concert, Don discovers that Wick has gotten rid of the liquor. Don has no money, so he can't visit the neighborhood bar -- that is, until the cleaning lady arrives to reveal money hidden in a sugar-bowl. Don grabs the cash and hits the street, heading off to Nat's Bar. Nat (Howard Da Silva), a bartender who has seen it all, is surprised to see Don. But when Don shows he can pay for his drinks, Nat reluctantly serves him, telling Don, "One's too many and a thousand's not enough." Soon Don plunges in an alcoholic haze, his boozing landing him in a harrowing drunk tank, presided over by the cynical attendant Bim (Frank Faylen). ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Richard Dix is his usual strong, silent self in RKO Radio's Men Against the Sky. Dix plays a washed-up pilot who designs a revolutionary new plane. Realizing that he is persona non grata in the aviation industry due to his irresponsibility and alcoholism, Dix allows his sister Wendy Barrie to take credit for the "wonder" plane. Preliminary tests of the aircraft prove disastrous, but Dix establishes the viablity of his design by flying the plane himself, a spectacular act of self-sacrifice that has the salutary effect of restoring his tattered reputation. Among the aircraft seen in Men Against the Sky is the plane used by Howard Huges to establish a new transcontinental record when he flew from California to New Jersey in less than 7 1/2 hours. The film was scripted by Nathaniel West, better known for his trenchant Hollywood novel Day of the Locust. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi