Richard Bond Movies

A great deal of director Al Viola's version of this film was pruned away for its general release. The missing portions are not only the heart of the story, but they are the heart of the novel by Graham Billings which gave rise to the film. The whole story is that Forbush (John Hurt) is going nowhere in his romance of Tara (Hayley Mills) because he is basically an uninteresting, shallow man. In desperation, he decides to go off to Antarctica and study penguins. He hopes that his heroism in doing this will prove his sincerity to Tara. Once there, he grows genuinely enchanted by his project and develops a real interest in penguins. It is this, rather than his courage, which wins him Tara's affections. The truncated version omits most of the film's reputedly spectacular and affecting Antarctic footage (shot by Arne Sucksdorff) in order to concentrate on the love story. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

One of the best serials ever made, Spy Smasher has managed to find favor even among non-serial aficionados. Like his fellow masked avenger, Batman, Spy Smasher possessed no super-human powers but was a mere mortal of flesh and blood. In brief, Spy Smasher, alias Alan Armstrong (Kane Richmond, and his twin brother Jack (also Richmond) pursue a nefarious German agent known only as The Mask (Hans Schumm). Witney and screenwriters Ronald Davidson, Norman S. Hall, Joseph Poland, William Lively and Joseph O'Donnell imbued their hero with a dark uniform very similar to the one he wore in the comics, but added a fancy belt decorated with a large "V" for "Victory" and the morse code symbol for the letter, three dots and a dash. The coup de grace, so to speak, was Mort Glickman's signature score adapted from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Leading man Richmond managed to make his identical twins a little less identical than the usual routine split-screen characterizations and the character of Jack Armstrong, the All-American boy, was actively mourned when killed off in chapter eleven, "Hero's Death," in perhaps the most unique chapter ending in the history of serialdom. Kane Richmond, who had been around Hollywood's action studios since 1930 and had even appeared as a Martian in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938), became a major genre icon on account of his stellar performance as the Spy Smasher. Borrowed from Columbia Pictures, flaxen-haired Howard Hughes discovery Marguerite Chapman proved one of the best purveyor's of serial pulchritude thus far as Jack Armstrong's imperiled fiancee Eve Corby, and Tristram Coffin, later a serial hero himself, was capital as Drake, The Mask's chief henchman who manage to insinuate himself as Jack's friend. The subsequent feature release Spy Smasher Returns constituted not a sequel but an edited-down version of this serial. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

When a young man is in trouble, his sister puts herself in danger to save him. ~ All Movie Guide

In the Ben Hecht-scripted Angels over Broadway. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays a poker hustler working in cahoots with good-time girl Rita Hayworth. Alcoholic playwright Thomas Mitchell, having saved embezzler John Qualen from suicide, decides to enter Fairbanks' high-stakes game, using Qualen as an easy-mark "bait." Mitchell's clever schemes to beat Fairbanks come acropper, but Fairbanks has a sudden change of heart and decides it's more fun to perform good deeds. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

There was no getting around the fact that child star Jane Withers was growing up in a hurry by the time she made The Boy Friend. To its credit, Withers' home studio 20th Century-Fox took into consideration the star's blossoming womanhood by allowing her to have her first on-screen romance. The plot concerns the efforts of police officer Jimmy Murphy (Richard Bond) to get the goods on gangster Ed Boyd (Douglas Fowley). To do this, Jimmy pretends to join Boyd's gang, a subterfuge that causes a great deal of grief for his hero-worshipping kid sister Sally (Withers). With the help of her military-school cadet boyfriend Bill Bradley (George Ernest) and dimwitted patrolman Greenberg (Warren Hymer), Sally tries to save Jimmy from disgracing himself by trapping Boyd and his minions in their lair-and, of course, nearly gets herself killed in the process. The fact that the villains use a nightclub for their hideout is excuse enough for Jane Withers to belt out a few forgettable songs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

They Made Me a Criminal opens in New York, depicting the latest victory in the ring for Johnny Bradfield (John Garfield), a young boxer who seems headed for a championship. When a reporter finds Bradfield drunk and carousing with women, and learns that the squeaky-clean image that he has cultivated is a complete lie, he threatens to blow the lid off the boxer's real life, and is beaten to death by Bradfield's manager. Bradfield, who was in a drunken stupor during the fight, is framed for the killing by his manager, who rolls him for his wallet, watch, and anything else of value, makes a run for it, and is killed in a fiery car accident. As far as the police are concerned, the case is closed, "Bradfield" having been identified in the wreck by the watch he was wearing. But Johnny Bradfield now has to disappear from New York and anyplace else he's ever been seen, in order to stay "dead." He is sent on his way by his crooked attorney with just a few dollars in his pocket, thumbing rides and walking west. Bradfield collapses one day from exhaustion and near starvation outside of a ranch in Arizona. The ranch is run by May Robson as part of a relief effort to help a group of boys from the New York slums -- Tommy (Billy Halop), Spit (Leo Gorcey), Dippy (Huntz Hall), T.B. (Gabriel Dell), Angel (Bobby Jordan), and Milty (Bernard Punsly) -- keep out of trouble. Identifying himself as "Jack Dorney," he first tries to see what he can get in the way of a free ride from the kids and Tommy's sister, Peggy (Gloria Dickson), who doesn't trust Dorney or his influence over the kids. Meanwhile, back in New York, one police detective, Phelan (Claude Rains), is convinced that the body found in the burned wreck of Johnny Bradfield's car wasn't Bradfield. Phelan is an outcast in his department for having once presented "conclusive" evidence in court against a man who was executed for murder, only to discover later that the man was innocent. He sees this as his chance to redeem himself and his career, and he is such a pariah that his chief gives him permission to follow up leads anywhere he needs to. At the ranch, Dorney takes a genuine liking to the kids, and sees Peggy as a kind of woman he's never known, who has no "angles" in her approach to life. The ranch may have to be sold, however, as there is no more money coming from the church in New York to keep it going. In order to save the ranch and set Peggy and the kids up in a roadside business pumping gas -- an idea of Tommy's -- Dorney decides to enter a prize fight for money against a barnstorming boxer. On the eve of the fight, however, Phelan shows up, drawn by a newspaper photo of Dorney, his face obscured but using the same unusual left-handed boxing stance he used as Johnny Bradfield. Dorney goes into the ring, and finds himself up against a brute who has already flattened two opponents in less than one round each, trying to hide his identity by fighting right-handed. He gets savaged, round after round, until Phelan tells him from ringside that he knows who he is. Free to use his left, Dorney saves himself. Phelan confronts him in the dressing room, and Johnny tells him he'll give him no trouble -- they're about to head back east, with Peggy and the kids trying to thank him, and it dawns on Phelan that possibly this is one case that might better be left "solved" officially the way it is already, even though it means the detective going back to his job as a laughing stock. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this, the premiere entry in the "Brass" Bancroft series (starring the man who would-be President, Ronald Reagan), Brass is seen as an ex-Army pilot who works as a commercial airline pilot. One day he quits his well-paying, safe job to become an agent for the Secret Service. His first assignment is to look into a gang of smugglers who are suspected of sneaking illegal aliens into the US via airplanes. This gang is really bad, and whenever they fear that they will be caught, they simply open their hatches and drop the hapless aliens like so many bombs. Bancroft is enraged at their inhumanity, and in the end, he and the ring leader battle it out in a plane spinning out of control. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a falsely convicted woman falls in love with the prison psychologist who tries to liberate her. She ended up in prison to protect her boyfriend who was just about to finish law school. The doctor and patient tryst in the prison furnace room. When he is not around, the woman must deal with the usual travails of a convict including a strict, domineering matron. A prison break occurs and violence erupts. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The 1938 filmization of Myron Brinig's novel The Sisters stars Bette Davis, Jane Bryan and Anita Louise as Louise, Grace and Helen Elliot. The daughters of turn-of-the-century druggist Henry Travers and his wife Beulah Bondi, the Elliot girls all meet their future husbands at a 1904 ball in honor of President Teddy Roosevelt. Special emphasis is given the relationship between Louise and reckless, irresponsible newspaperman Frank Medlin (Errol Flynn). Feeling trapped by his marriage, Medlin turns to drink and philandering. When Frank eventually runs off to Singapore, Louise is too proud to hold her husband by informing him that she's pregnant. Caught up in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (superbly conveyed with a single interior shot of a collapsing apartment), Louise wanders around dazedly until she finds shelter in an Oakland brothel (though it is not so specified). She loses her baby, but is consoled by her employer Ian Hunter, who falls in love with her. The original book ended with Louise giving up her unhappy marriage for a joyous relationship with her boss; the film ends with Louise being reunited with the suddenly sobered Frank (despite the protests of both Bette Davis and Errol Flynn). A prime example of Hollywood Soap Opera, The Sisters also yielded an amusing reel of outtakes, the best of which shows Bette Davis breaking up Errol Flynn by sighing "I've just had a baby in the ladies' room." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When two lovers are framed for a jewelry store robbery in which the clerk was killed, the only person capable of saving them from the death penalty is the gangster who actually committed the crime. A remake of the 1930 thriller The Pay Off, Law of the Underworld tells the tale of Shirley and Bond, two young lovers who are about to be swept up in circumstances beyond their control. On the surface Morris is a respectable citizen, the perfect cover for a career criminal. When Morris frames Shirley and Bond for a violent jewelry store robbery, the lovebirds are arrested and sentenced to death. Morris may be a criminal, but is he really willing to let two innocent people die for his crime, or will his conscience finally get the best of him at the last minute? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide