Tormented (1960)
Grade: C-
John Lennon once creepily sang:
I'd rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
Tormented's equivalent, as performed by short-lived chanteuse Vi (Juli Reding), would be something like:
I'd rather be dead, big boy
Than to see you with another woman
(But if you do, I'm'a creep you out)
(BTW, little girls are OK, go nuts)
And our protagonist, Tom Stewart, does indeed enjoy hangin' with the pre-teen...
...though mostly he likes to play the piano. The jazz piano.
He also has the pre-teen's older sister, Meg (Susan Gordon), lined up to be his bride, though her rich father doesn't approve: "It's bad enough to accept a musician into this family, but a jazz musician is asking too damn much!"
Anyway, Vi really puts the fatale in "femme fatale", as her demise happens in the first few minutes of the movie (so no spoilers here). That's her cue to start (ahem) tormenting Tom from beyond the grave: whereupon hallucinations, apparitions, and other poltergeisty hijinks ensue.
She also tries to off Tom's sweet-natured blind landlady, steals various trinkets, and makes annoying noises. (So basically, she's a crow.)
It's all schlock and offers few surprises, but at least we get a few good one-liners, to wit:
"You're not scared of me, are you?"
"I didn't used to be."
The World Gone Mad (1932)
Grade: B
"It's the Bernie Madoff story, starring Brian Peppers Sr. and Grandma Edelstein!"
Corporate fraud, deception, and double-dealing are the order of the day in The World Gone Mad...and sadly, it's every bit as timely today as it was 80 years ago.
The film's surprisingly intricate plot and incorrigibly fast-talking characters -- especially Pat O'Brien as manic reporter Andy "Cyclone" Terrell -- made The World Gone Mad a bit hard to follow our first time out, and we certainly benefited from a second viewing. A spoiler-free plot summary is nearly impossible, but suffice it to say the film revolves around the murder of a DA who's pursuing a subsidiary of the "Cromwell Investment Corporation" for possible fraud.
Those who investigate are plunged into a maelstrom of hitmen, crooks, and corruption.
As an early talkie made on the cheap, it's all the more impressive that The World Gone Mad is loaded with little ironies and symmetries of the sort normally reserved for higher-class films from later years.
(Our favorite was the wry commentary on middlemen toward the beginning. Follow the math: they contribute nothing, but take a 95% cut! The reappearance of the train motif was also an elegant touch.)
Now, we at the Umbrellahead Review are not film scholars -- though anyone who's seen M (for example) knows that the best films of the 1930s were about as sophisticated as any movie ever made. And there's hardly been much new under the sun since, unless you count Jar Jar Binks (please don't).
Maybe, with all the bad movies we watch, we're too easily pleased: who knows.
But we quite liked The World Gone Mad. It has complex characters, kept us guessing, and basically felt like A Real Movie (you know, the kind they stopped making around 1995).
And the plenitude of Depression-era eye candy certainly didn't hurt: Grandma Edelstein, aka Evelyn Brent as Carlotta Lamont, was kinda foxy!
Like many films from the 1930s, it has practically no score, which we appreciate -- though a strange clack-clacking, like a room full of typewriters, underpins almost every scene (we assume it's background noise from a lazy transfer process, but who knows). The print's fine, though.
Of course, the elephant in the room: The World Gone Mad is not, in any way, by any Procrustean stretch of the imagination, a horror movie. Nope, not a bit, not at all, not even if you're sleeping with a member of the Mill Creek production staff. Sorry, friends, but as my drunken Bulgarian comrade used to say, "Dazzbu'shi'man."
And speaking of bu'shi', we'll leave you with the words of replacement DA Lionel Houston:
"The public looks to the law for protection from these leeches who chisel and gouge them out of their hard-earned dollars, giving them nothing but death and misery in return. If I had my way, I'd line 'em up against a wall and shoot 'em."
Plus ça change.
No comments:
Post a Comment