Film Reviews by Steve

Undemanding entry in the Universal Sherlock Holmes cycle which is fun but betrays evidence that the series is starting to run out of inspiration. In a castle on the remote and rugged Scottish coastline a fellowship of elderly bachelors are being murdered one by one, and their demise foretold by the delivery at dinner of orange pips.

While it's only an hour, the scenario feels stretched. Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson eases into his end of series imbecility and when he's running amok in a thunderstorm, this might as well be Abbott and Costello Meet Sherlock Holmes. Except Bruce is much funnier. Then Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) arrives to double up the comic relief.

There is absolutely nothing left of Arthur Conan Doyle's story, The Five Orange Pips. This is more like Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Still, no matter, there's all the atmosphere typical of the Universal series with the gothic old dark house and the craggy clifftops and the superstitious locals.

The series survives as it always does: because Basil Rathbone is perfect as Holmes and makes an endearing double act with his old pal; Roy William Neill is an expert B-picture director and continually drives the narrative forward, however illogical; and because Doyle's legendary heroes are immortal.

This is usually labelled film noir, but can also be regarded as the middle of German émigré John Brahms' melodrama trilogy which begins with The Lodger in 1944 and concludes with Hangover Square a year later. While those are gaslight melodramas, this is contemporary and draws on the '40s vogue for Freudian motives in thrillers.

But we still get the imposing house of shadows, the intrusion of madness and the grand climactic thunderstorm. Anne Baxter is discharged from a mental hospital and takes up residence in the family of her fiancée's brother. Then seeks to establish control through psychotic manipulation, while eliminating all her rivals.

Now, this looks very much like a prototype for the '90s cycle of yuppie nightmare thrillers. A bad seed is allowed to germinate in the heart of an ocean facing domestic paradise. Another point of interest is how good is Ralph Bellamy as the head of the household, a darker role than his usual affable buffoon.

Maybe the blend of genres is due to production difficulties; four directors were used. It lacks suspense and it's disappointing there isn't more of a period noir look. But Baxter is creepy as the malevolent threat and we get to see plenty of why Marie McDonald's studio nickname was 'the body'. It's an interesting oddball.

A popular observation about this WWII action adventure is that it is written by two winners of the Nobel Prize. It's freely adapted from the Ernest Hemingway novel by William Faulkner. But what we see on screen is an inferior reshuffle of Casablanca, which has a much better script. Once again, Humphrey Bogart refuses to fight until he does.

He runs a fishing boat out of Martinique and (eventually) gets involved in the struggle between pro and anti-Nazi groups, and an enigmatic drifter played by an 18 year old Lauren Bacall in her screen debut. The political intrigue never catches fire, but the chemistry between the stars is explosive. And they married after the shoot.

It's most like the Hemingway source in that it's a sequence of loosely linked episodes. The best of them showcase the flirtation between Bogart and Bacall. The scene in which she famously purrs 'You know how to whistle don't you?' is pure innuendo mayhem. Unfortunately, the narrative runs out of gas, and doesn't have an ending.

Like many Howard Hawks films, it's about an assembly of individualists and emotional refugees who meet in the kind of exotic place where adventures happen. The plot isn't paramount, and the whole thing ends up feeling like a revue, with some decent musical numbers by Hoagy Carmichael. It's a lesser Hawks film, but worth seeing for the stars.

This is often acclaimed as the best of Universal studio's series of Sherlock Holmes mysteries starring Basil Rathbone as the great detective and Nigel Bruce as the loyal Dr. Watson. This time they are in Quebec where a mythic glowing fiend with lethal claws is said to be killing the superstitious villagers.

Luckily Holmes and Watson are attending a nearby symposium on the occult, so can investigate. As they are not in Baker Street, this means there is no Lestrade or Mrs. Hudson, which is disappointing. The story outline draws on The Hound of the Baskervilles. They seem to be in Canada solely to deliver a postscript praising the nation's war effort.

It's an exciting and suspenseful thriller as we pick from the long list of locals to discover the murderer. This is the entry closest to the style of Universal horror, and it extensively exploits the studio's rural backlot constructed for their monster sequels. But this has a much better story, as well as all the fog and ruined churches.

Holmes demonstrates there's a perfectly rational explanation, while Watson falls into a bog- twice. Bruce introduces the habit of ending scenes harrumphing about his misfortunes, which would lead to the doctor becoming a complete imbecile. Maybe not my absolute favourite, but still one of the best ever entries in a Hollywood series.

This is the most faithful of the Universal Sherlock Holmes series to the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. The premise of the Adventure of the Six Napoleons is intact, though the script elaborates to good effect. It introduces The Creeper played by Rondo Hatton, a huge actor whose features were deformed by acromegaly.

It's tragic his disfigurement meant he was cast as a human monster. But he turned it into a career and even appeared in a couple of spin offs. Someone has hidden the priceless Borgia Pearl in the bust of one of six new plaster Napoleons. The giant killer breaks the spines of all the buyers, scattering their corpses with the broken pottery.

So Sherlock Holmes investigates. Basil Rathbone complained that all his performances as the great detective were just copies of the first. But he's so perfect, that's a good thing. Nigel Bruce isn't the Dr. Watson from the page, but provides comic relief with some expertise. Miles Manders and Evelyn Ankers make excellent villains.

Ankers was frequently cast as support in Universal monster pictures, and there is a conspicuous aura of horror in this. But the big takeaway is how artfully photographed it is. It's just a B feature, but time has been spent on these lighting setups to create an attractive noir look. This is far better than it needed to be.

Superior entry in the Universal series of Sherlock Holmes B-pictures made during WWII. The title sounds like it features one of the studio's legendary monsters, but the spider woman actually just kills her helpless victims with poisonous arachnids. After relieving them of their life insurance, naturally.

So send for Holmes and Dr. Watson. Basil Rathbone hunts down the odious gang of crooks and Nigel Bruce raises some laughs. But they are (arguably) upstaged by Gale Sondergaard who is the best villain of this whole cycle. She even starred in a 'spider woman' sequel, though- disappointingly- in a different role.

The screenplay is crammed with references to multiple Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, which is gratifying for the fans. Most obviously, The Speckled Band, though with spiders rather than snakes. Roy William Neill gets it all done in under an hour. There are no lulls and a sudden plot twist is along every few minutes.

And there's a suspenseful climax at the fairground, with the great detective tied to a target in the shooting gallery. A baby would see through Holmes' disguises, even if they are beyond Watson, who having been fooled once too often tries to yank the beard off an eccentric entomologist. It's the Universal series at about its peak.

After three entries in which Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) investigated Nazi plots, Universal studios altered its approach with a series of films which stayed in the present day, but shifted closer to the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. And this proved successful. This one takes its outline from The Musgrave Ritual.

Dr. Watson (Nigel Bruce) is working in an isolated old dark house which has been taken over by the military to treat officers suffering from PTSD in WWII. Only someone is murdering the aristocratic family which owns the estate. Could it be related to the cryptic rhyme that has been passed down for generations?

And does the code lead to a hidden fortune? Roy William Neill directed the last nine films in the series, and he gives them an atmosphere of Universal Horror, with the thunderstorms, the fog, the ancient crypt and the folklore. The many changes to the original story are not necessarily improvements, but still effective.

Anyone who has seen this will remember the human game of chess, which is unique to the film. There's a lot of comedy; the way Watson and Inspector Lestrade (Dennis Hoey) as a pair of buffoons are instinctively competitive, is always funny. And thankfully, Rathbone is rid of the weird Roman haircut he wore to fight the Nazis.

Nostalgic social comedy which was legendary director Ernst Lubitsch's only completed film in glorious Technicolor. It's a life story which begins in the 1880s and extends into the 20th Century as the boy grows up into Don Ameche, a wealthy libertine who presents at the gates of hell to explain why he deserves to be admitted.

And the irony is that the devil's receptionist (Laird Cregar) is smooth talked just like everyone in his privileged life. Mainly women. Or alternatively, that in a time of social puritanism, we feel guilt for our normal human impulses. The whole film is saturated in a woozy haze of whimsy as the newly deceased describes his misdemeanours.

Gene Tierney- as his wife- is top billed but doesn't appear in the first half hour. Ameche is handsome and she is beautiful and their opiated performances give the fantasy the resonance of a dream. Though they are upstaged by Eugene Pallette and Marjorie Main as her feuding parents and Clarence Muse as their stoical domestic help.

Some period details are now obscure. And it's a comedy with few laughs. Where it excels is the extraordinarily literate script which accumulates a momentum that elevates the whole film into poetry. It's an exercise in the art of romantic flirtation and a monument to Lubitsch's longtime screenwriter, Samson Raphaelson.

Low budget polemic about the threat of fascism in the American media. A pro-Nazi has the liberal owner of the New York Gazette killed so he can seize editorial control. Only the dead man left a will which transfers the publication to an editor from Hicksville with real American values who must fight to save the paper for democracy.

This is remembered because the story was written by future cult director Sam Fuller. It was made by Columbia, the studio which emerged from poverty row largely because of the progressive films of Frank Capra. And it's easy to imagine this as a story treatment for the great director, though this is the punchy tabloid version. Well, there's a war on.

So swap in James Stewart for Guy Kibbee as the small town editor. Jean Arthur for Gloria Dickson as his spunky girl Friday. And Edward Arnold for Otto Kruger as the fifth columnist. What might have been! It's actually directed by B-picture stalwart Lew Landers who gets it all done in 64 minutes without style, romance or a lot of folksy hee-haw from Walter Brennan.

But it's really entertaining. It continually moves forward at pace and gives us what we want. And that's is a grim outcome for the enemies of the free world, including a big speech about the indomitable people. Which feels just as winsomely optimistic as the climax of a Capra film. All while Fuller was away fighting real Nazis in Italy.

*** for this/** for the collection.

This signals the launch of Italian Neorealism, a method and style of political film making which would have an impact across the world. It's an unauthorised adaptation of James Cain's novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice which was sold to Hollywood in the early '30's but considered too hot to make under the Production Code.

A deadbeat drifter (Massimo Girotti) turns up at a shabby, desolate roadhouse run by an flabby middle aged chump (Juan de Landa) with a young, sexy wife (Clara Calamai) and a life insurance policy. And adultery turns to murder. It's not a thriller, and to an extent this is a love story between the two flawed, unscrupulous sociopaths.

Director Luchino Visconti was a Marxist (and an aristocrat) and most of all this is about spiritual corrosiveness of ignorance and poverty. It was made under unfavourable conditions with WWII going badly. The poor film stock and low budget renders a stark, distressed look, like a newsreel. Everything is sordid and authentic.

There are occasional longueurs. But this is a dirty, baleful cinematic landmark. The weak, impulsive protagonists are horrifying and Girotti and Calamai are intensely erotic and sleazy, reduced to their primal emotions; sex and greed. It makes the authorised MGM version (1946) feel like the work of the Children's Film Foundation.

Controversial pre-noir made in France during the occupation based on a real life scandal from the early '20s. A doctor in a provincial town is accused via anonymous letters of carrying out illegal abortions and having affairs with married women. Soon all the residents are persecuted by a barrage of poison pen correspondence.

The film aroused antagonism all across the political spectrum. Most obviously it reflects the collaboration with the enemy; the public who anonymously denounced their neighbours to the Gestapo. Oddly the Nazis didn't stop the release, maybe because it was bad for French morale with its negative critique of national spirit.

The film itself was a provocation, like the poison pen letters. Postwar, it was banned by someone or other for years. Henri-Georges Clouzot creates that shadowy pessimism which came to be associated with film noir; the big final twist is his signature. He got called the French Hitchcock though this hasn't quite the suspense that implies.

It's best as an allegory for France under the occupation and a showcase for some piquant ensemble acting, led by Pierre Fresnay as the doctor. There's a resonant impression of small town life where everyone knows everyone else's business, but has something of themselves to hide. Have to wonder though if Clouzot ever saw the '39 British thriller, Poison Pen...

Lillian Hellman's play was a big deal on Broadway in 1941 and won the New York Drama Critics' Award. By the the time it was adapted into a film, its message- that if the US didn't enter the war, then the war would come to the US- was redundent. America was mobilised. Still, this works as upmarket propaganda which makes a moral case for anti-fascism.

Paul Lukas repeats his starring role from the stage and he's convincing as a member of the German underground who seeks respite in Washington among the complacent family of his American wife. Bette Davis hardly looks like a refugee, but plays more of an activist than was usual back then for a woman in a Hollywood political film.

Herman Shumlin directed the play in New York but had no experience in cinema, as Davis was quick to remind him. He mainly just photographs the play. The production is too pristine- gowns by Orry-Kelly- but that's Hollywood. This is largely about the performances and Lukas gives easily the best of his career.

And he won the Oscar for best actor, despite the nomination of Humphrey Bogart for Casablanca! Both play men compelled to return to the fight. But most of all this is a record of Hellman's skill as a writer of persuasive, high quality dialogue. There were films which argued more passionately for America to commit to the war, but few as elegantly.

Long, cumbersome propaganda excercise inspired by the audacious assassination the previous year in Prague of Reinhard Heydrich- the author of the Final Solution- and the horrific Nazi retribution which followed. Aside from this outline, the rest is fiction as very little else was known to the public.

Brian Donlevy portrays the lone assassin, which indicates some really bizarre casting, including Walter Brennan as a Czech intellectual. German refugees in Hollywood play the Nazis, with Alexander Granach most effective as a Gestapo goon. It works well when styled as a thriller, with an exciting opening and a suspenseful climax.

And the set design is imposing. The problem is that Fritz Lang (with assistance from Bertolt Brecht) overburdens the film with propaganda and a lengthy tribute to the Resistance movement. Some of this is expected, but eventually the plot is abandoned to freedom songs and an excess of editorialising and rousing patriotic oration.

Astonishingly, the censors actually wouldn't pass the final cut because... the assassin going free contravened the Production Code! The story was also made the same year as Hitler's Madman, and many times since, with greater historical accuracy. This version needed a producer to counter the director's overindulgence. But Lang was the producer.

Knotty hardboiled whodunit which pulls together diverse strands from a few recent box office hits. Brian Donlevy is top billed as a crooked political heavy, much as he was in The Great McGinty in 1940. Alan Ladd- as Donlevy's smooth finagler- and Veronica Lake are reunited following This Gun for Hire earlier in '42.

And it's faithfully adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel, a year after The Maltese Falcon. Though the context is more like a '30's gangster film. It had been made already back then with George Raft, which is where this convoluted exposé of civic corruption really belongs. There's a whiff of Prohibition.

The political process is ostentatiously run by hoods. There are no good guys so there's no one to cheer for, which may be why it doesn't quite emotionally engage. And there isn't the sadness of film noir. The best features are William Bendix's baroque portrayal of a sadistic thug. And the really stylish direction from Stuart Heisler.

He gives us a couple of astonishing, eye-popping set pieces. And once you have the measure of the serpentine intrigue, there is suspense. Ladd and Lake look good together and there's a lot of fast, sardonic dialogue. It's not in the class of The Maltese Falcon, but still a decent minor crime thriller with something to say about dirty US politics.

This was released the same year as Fires Were Started which is often listed among the great British films. Both are tributes to the bravery of the London fire services during the blitz. Humphrey Jennings' picture is a fake documentary which scripts actual firemen. Whereas this is an Ealing comedy-drama shot in a realistic style with actors.

It was Basil Dearden's first release as solo director and will never make any best-ever lists. There's obviously a pitiful budget and the script is particularly poor. Tommy Trinder's jokes are terrible, he can't act and his gobby-Cockney persona is a matter of personal taste. James Mason is mostly on the periphery of the action in an insubstantial role.

The rest of the cast are Ealing stalwarts who are more at home with the background tomfoolery. Which is mostly about Tommy's greyhound. William Hartnell stands out in a more dignified cameo as a survivor of the Spanish Civil War. All the situations are familiar, whether dramatic or comic.... plus the standard mustn't grumble stoicism.

Yet even despite itself, a palpable hum of realism gets into the circuit. Partly because of how skilfully Dearden cuts in newsreel footage from the blitz. And that impression common to many films made in the war years, that this horror is actually going on, somewhere. And because of the authentic heroism the story reflects.