Once Again Through The Sherlock Holmes Miasma-Round Up The Usual Private Eyes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s-Based “Voice Of Terror” (1942)-A Film Review

Once Again Through The Sherlock Holmes Miasma-Round Up The Usual Private Eyes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s-Based “Voice Of Terror” (1942)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror, starring foppish Basil Rathbone, fellow fop Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, 1942

Finally, I have gotten rid of the lame idea of having to do “dueling” reviews with young pup Will Bradley in this seemingly endless series of Sherlock Holmes flics. This is the series where Sherlock, played by aging dandy Basil Rathbone, and his male companion, make of that what you will, funky Doc Watson, played by foppish Nigel Bruce have been resurrected from late Victorian times to World War II times when it really was touch and go whether there would be some sun setting on the British Empire courtesy of Hitler’s Third Reich.

In this either twelve or fourteen series I can’t get a straight answer about how many they did they do their bit, do more than yeomen’s work, maybe OBE work to stem the freaking Nazi tide, a movement that had more than a few supporters in high places in old London town. Hell, the joint was crawling with them. In the previous ten or so reviews I have under the guiding hand of our esteemed site manager, Greg Green, aka the guy who hands out the assignments and hence esteemed, had to “battle” young Bradley for the true meaning of the Holmes myth. Greg’s idea, foolish idea if he dares to print this, was to have an old-timer vs. fresh look at the films to see what flushed out. I will not bore the reader with the details of that dispute, essentially a question of challenging the myth about the supposedly platonic Holmes-Watson relationship with hard evidence or their then closeted love for each other and their joint knee-deep involvement in every criminal operation from illegal drugs to armed robberies and more in greater London using the private eye gag as a cover. Against Will’s unbelievable naivete, really head in the sand, both on the true sexual relationship between the two men and the way they really supported themselves in the lap of luxury and idleness in their Bake Street digs.  

But enough of that, and good riddance, since Greg has now seen that the younger generation does not give a fuck about the old has-been Holmes and Watson and get their idea of this match-up from later Robert Downey, Junior-type interpretations of the Holmes myth. So with the film under review Voice of Terror I will just do what my old friend Sam Lowell, a fellow reviewer who is now, rightly so, under siege in his own older-younger writer wars called giving the ‘skinny.”

Apparently not trusting the vaunted foreign and domestic intelligence operations, MI5 and MI6 (the latter the one that one Bond, James Bond, took out of disgrace after Kim Philby ran the organization a merry chase during the early post-World War II Cold War period Winny Churchill kept warning about) the British intelligence inner council, you know the lords and such who ran things into the ground called in Holmes and by extension Watson to stop the flow of Nazi saboteurs and propaganda flooding Merry Olde England in post Munich, post Neville Chamberlain times. They really were running amok creating mortal terror among the ordinary citizenry especially with their radio broadcasts, their voice of terror broadcasts, about bad things happening in the country before they happened. Have everybody on edge. Looked like curtains for old John Bull (and his colonial tyranny).          

Off to work, off to figure out who was running the operation, the hearty team is stopped in its tracks when one of its operatives is killed trying to find out who is working for the filthy Nazis and where. All of this leads to two things first grabbing that operative’s wife Kitty, played by screaming Evelyn Ankers (who is not the dreaded voice of terror in this one like she was in a series of forgettable horror films, okay) and pumping her for information about the last words of her late husband. This is nothing but a ruse, an inner circle joke between Holmes and Watson since the last word was “Christopher,” meaning the dark and mysterious Christopher Wharves which they were quite familiar with from their trolling for “dilly boys” who worked the area and whose services both men were very familiar with. (If you are not familiar with the term “dilly boys” look it up but remember that reference to their sexual preferences and you will not be far off.) Be that as it may this was also the hideout of the key German operatives who had their own off-beat sexual proclivities to take care of. In any case through either Holmes or Watson’s stupidity they and Kitty were “captured” casing the area. Eventually they escaped as to be expected and found out that a German espionage operation was planned for southern England.

Off they go and from this point on you have to do some serious suspension of disbelief. As it turned out as almost anybody could tell who has read at least one detective novel in their lives this had to be an inside job. And it was. One of the esteemed members of the inner council was a traitor (remember I told you the sceptered island was swarming with Nazi sympathizers in high places) and that was that. Well not quite because Kitty in her attempts to thwart the Nazi scum took a fall, got killed holding off the leader of the Nazi thugs. A good soldier. Here is where that “suspension of disbelieve” comes in. Of course a member of the inner council could not be a British traitor, this before the Philby Cambridge spies exposes, no way, so the gag is that that person was an impostor, a German of similar appearance and status, sent as an infiltrator to England after killing the real guy. What gave him away. Well the real guy had a scar from an early age. The imposter’s was only about twenty years old and so it was another case of “elementary, dear (note the “dear”) Watson.” WTF. And you wonder why I have spent some considerable time bursting this balloon, taking these overblown amateurs to school who guys like Larry Larkin, Sam Spade, and Phil Marlowe, would have had for lunch and still have time for a nap.    

    

I Wasn’t Planning On This But These Days We Have To Start Thinking About Restarting An International Anti-Fascist United Front-Reflections On Dick Powell’s “Cornered” (1945)-A Film Review

I Wasn’t Planning On This But These Days We Have To Start Thinking About Restarting An International Anti-Fascist United Front-Reflections On Dick Powell’s “Cornered” (1945)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

Cornered, starring Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, Morris Carnovsky. Luther Adler, directed by Edward Dymtryk, produced by Adrian Scott, 1945

I took this film review with all hands. This anti-fascist film Cornered from 1945 which featured performances by two  men, Luther Adler and Morris Carnovsky and two men director Dymtryk (who would later turn stoolie to protect his oh so very precious career) and producer Adrian Scott, who were to be very soon on the notorious and scandalous Hollywood black-list as the post-World War II red scare Cold War night descended on the Western World is just the vehicle I needed to express some things about what is going on in the United States in an age when the fascists here (and internationally) are hearing the siren call of their return to the glory days. I had not thought as I passed my sixth decade that I would be spending time, much time anyway, worrying about the rise of the fascist movement kindled by events emanating from the White House and other high spots in the Western firmament. So be it. The fascists were buried deep down in some hole and as this film, this now cautionary tale film, points out they are keen to arise like phoenix from the ashes. As the main notorious villain and object of an international manhunt, Jarnac, played by red scare Cold War black-listed Luther Adler, said when confronted by the anti-fascists toward the end of the film as long as there are hunger men (and women) ignored by the “winners” in the global economy there will always be people like him ready to follow any half-mad adventurer. Good point, and a good reason to seriously re-start that international anti-fascist united front while there is still time, while the fascists and their allies, acknowledged and not so, are still relatively small in numbers. Remember 1933 was too late and maybe 1923 had been too (the year of the Munich putsch attempt).             

I should explain that when I mentioned I grabbed this film with “all hands” I was understating the case since the reader may not know that I have not done a film review since the days of the East Bay Other in the late 1970s before it folded like many other alternative hard-copy operations. Then I was primarily interested in French cinema, Godard, Truffaut, Celine, Dubois and other European cinematic efforts with an occasion scape handed to me by editor Sally Simmons doing film noir material helped by my association with Sam Lowell who wrote the definitive book on the subject back in the 1970s. Sam, a guy I grew up with in North Adamsville and I spent many an ill-advised (then) afternoon watching noir double-features at the old Strand Theater which was our home away from home when things got too crazy in our respective large households.

As I mentioned this film can stand as a cautionary tale for our times as well as a summing up for what happened, what ignited the backdrop to World War II. The fascists, called other names like Nazis and ultra-nationalist but fascists will do these days, rose up to smite the calm Europe, the so-called calm Europe from the days when World War I was thought, even by rational men after the carnage, to be the war that ended all wars. But like all mass movements which built up a head of steam they expanded internationally, had supporters who went the German and Axis tanks rolled in across Europe acted as fifth columns, acted in defense of the new world order as if their lives depended on it. Which it did if they lost. But when they were riding high, well, scum, like the main villain Jarnac, a Frenchman, a Vichy when the Fascists came storming into France, taking Paris and leaving the south to be administered by collaborators worked like seven dervishes to keep their power and place. Among Jarnac’s actions, the one that drives the action of the film and which will eventually lie him low he summarily had a cadre of resistance fighter shot and buried in their hideout caves. This Jarnac then left for parts unknown leaving little or no paper or physical trail behind him except that he was to be considered dead, not real dead but fake dead so you know which way the winds will blow hereafter.     

Among the resistance fighters executed in the caves was the too short time married wife of one Canadian Air Force pilot,  Gerard, played by Dick Powell last seen in this space, according to Seth Garth who did the review, in the film adaptation of  Raymond Chandler’s Private Detective Phillip Marlowe classic Farewell, My Lovely ( on screen titled Murder, My Sweet) also directed by Edward Dymtryk, who wanted to know, and know fast as you will find out, who ordered the execution of his own people, of Frenchmen, of his wife so it was personal with him. From various sources we find out that it was Jarnac and his underlings who did the dastardly deed and that Jarnac was presumed to be dead as already mentioned. Marlowe was a tough as nails no nonsense P.I. and Gerard is no less a tough anti-fascist fighter cum enraged widower. The chase is on. 

Not surprisingly, take note, Gerard, picks up Jarnac’s trail in Buenos Aires, meaning that Jarnac was not without resources, contacts or organization. (The “take note” part is today “on the low” there are similar resources available for fascists and their allies to do their dastardly work.) Of course Buenos Aires was a favored watering hole, a pleasant waiting area, for legions of fascists on the run as the clamp closed down on them in Europe so plenty of intrigue and cash are on the line. Getting nowhere for a while Gerard meets an independent agent who will sell his services to the highest bidder, played by Walter Slezak, who is out to make as many dishonest dollars as he can by working the rat hole circuit of scum fleeing Europe. He leads Gerard to Madame Jarnac, the widow, but she is really just a front, hired help to keep the charade going.

From that meeting on it is tag team who will get to Jarnac first-enter what Gerard thinks are some unsavory characters but who in reality are anti-fascist fighters looking for Jarnac too-to bring him to Nuremburg-style justice-to see him hang high if it comes to that. Gerard though keeps getting in his own way (which he will admit at the end) and after fake news Madame Jarnac gives him a sliver of information about where Jarnac might be meeting others to pull off some nefarious caper on the road back to the glory days, to power he is doggedly on the trail. Winds up grabbing Jarnac and killing him to the chagrin of the anti-fascist agents. It can’t happen here, it can’t happen again. Believe that if you will and dismiss this as a nice political thriller. Then look at today’s world headlines. Jesus.     

Welcome Young-With Remembrances Of Golden Age Fourth Of July’s In Mind (2017)

Welcome Young-With Remembrances Of Golden Age Fourth Of July’s In Mind (2017)

By Prescott Blaine

Si Lannon had always been a man of unmitigated memories. Had always been the guy, the kid when that term was appropriate, who kept vigil over what had occurred and when from the surprise of the first conscious Christmas (and thereafter the unscrambling of the Santa question) to the scent of Laura Perkin’s perfume (or when she was a kid herself the smell, the intoxicating smell, of that bath soap that drove him crazy when they danced close in that first school days dance meant to keep unruly thoughts in check. He would, such was his memory drive, often later wonder whether she had used that article for a certain effect that far back in the boy-girl tango. He knew later she would do such things consciously and he was glad of it). Si, now having lived long enough to have a treasure trove of memories, had of late been drawn to the faraway events that made up his early childhood in the old neighborhood where he grew up, came of age (along with that Laura Perkins with whom he was an item all through high school but when he went off to college they broke up since she did not want to wait four years or more to get married-such were the times and expectations back then). Since it was that time of year he had been musing over the old days when the Fourth of July was something of a watershed in the summer.      

This series of recollections back in time to those particular times were no mere happenstances and it was a question in Si’s mind whether he would have been dwelling on this seasonal event if it had not been for the fact that he had recently moved back into the old neighborhood. As Si would say “to make a long story short” so we can get to the heart of what has possessed the man of late his marriage, his long-time marriage, to Lana Shea had ended when she decided that she had to go “find herself” and that adventure was not to include Si who she considered part of the problem for not having been able to “find herself” in some earlier time. (Admittedly Si did not, does not, understand how all they had together could blow away like some mistral wind since he believed, believes, that he never stood in her way to do whatever finding was to be found). He had spent some time up in Maine after the break-up in order to see if distance would help heal some wounds. They didn’t and one night, maybe less, he decided that he was not cut out for the isolation of the wilds of Maine and that he needed to get back around cities and some sense of rootedness. So back to the much changed old neighborhood-and memories.   

Si had adjusted pretty well to his return, knew some things like the change in the ethnic composition of his old working class neighborhood from overwhelming Irish to mostly Asian was a fact of life in mobile America. He could understand the Chinese exodus from Boston’s Chinatown and environs since the Irish and Italians had respectively exited the North End and South Boston in search of fresher air in his grandparents’ time but the Vietnamese migration had him baffled since there had been no previous indigenous grouping in the Greater Boston area. Moreover, Si, a Vietnam veteran himself although he had long ago made his peace with the Vietnamese if not his own government wondered how Jimmy Jenkins and Vince Riley two neighborhood guys who had laid down their heads in Vietnam would have reacted to the fact that right there on Kenny Street which he passed almost every day Vietnamese families were living in their respective growing up houses. Probably not any better than when they joined up to kill commies.

But Si also knew some things had been lost although he could not put his finger on exactly what that was until the Fourth of July. And then only by becoming aware of the absence of any celebration, a hallmark of the old neighborhood come America’s birthday. Such celebrations having gone the way of the horse and buggy it seemed in an age when people flee their neighborhoods on the holidays to vacation or “to summer” elsewhere, anyway perhaps. In the old days “to summer” was to hike the mile to Adamsville Beach to roast in the sun and roast weenies. Then people stayed put either because they had no car to flee with (Si’s family situation until he was a late teenager) and no additional funds beyond the weekly white envelopes to fend off the bill collectors-for a while.    

So much for the sociology and cultural aspects which really was not what was driving Si’s memory bank on reflection. All he could think about were those maybe half a dozen maybe eight years when his (and that of his four other brothers) Fourth of July centered on events not one hundred yards away from his family’s house. Si grew up and lived across from the Welcome Young ballfield (still there although shortened up with the addition of some tennis courts). Welcome Young an apt name and which was actually the name of the person who gave the town the property to be used for the young.  This Welcome Young field most of the summer was a hot, dusty usually during the day vacant lot (at night the local fathers and older brothers played softball there as an excuse  to have a few beers at the three barrooms located directly across from the field and those institutions collectively sponsored some of the teams in the makeshift league). But on the Fourth it was turned into something like a carnival. 

What would happen every year is that some of the guys who frequented the barrooms (and their owners’), including Si’s father, formed what was called the North Adamsville Associates whose members would comb the neighborhood in search of donations from residents and local businesses in order to put on “a time” (an old expression from the Irish diaspora not heard expressed in many a moon). That “time” included everything from food, drink, and prizes to paying for the band at the night’s end dance (mostly for adults and older kids). Si claims he never attended one but could hear the music from across the way as he drifted off to sleep after a hard day’s work at having fun.   

Si had to laugh to himself as he thought about the various silly kid escapades he had partaken in. The first in time was early on exploiting the fact that for once the tumbledown house where he and his siblings grew up actually proved of strategic importance. One of the highlights of the day was that twice, at ten and at one, members of the Associates would put up makeshift tables and distribute tonic (an old New England term for soda also not heard in many a moon) and ice cream to the throngs of kids milling about nervously waiting for the distribution. All well and good. The cause of Si’s laughter though was that he and his brothers would form a relay from those tables to their house. Or rather the refrigerator in the back hall of that house which before the day ended would be filled with enough tonic (remember soda) and ice cream to last the whole summer (or that was the idea). Kids holy goof stuff.             

Of course there were rides, baby carriage contests, singing contests, pie-eating contests, beauty contests and the like although Si never got a prize for anything like that. What Si remember though were the foot races (including the silly three-legged ones), the fifty yard dashes. He never won any of those either. But the last year that he attended the festivities, the summer of the year that he entered the ninth grade he did win a race. The vaunted, locally vaunted, six hundred yard race around several of the neighboring streets. This was for the older boys, boys and young men a lot older than him. He would always remember that race since he made a cardinal mistake of running too fast (out of fear of the older guys) at the beginning and running into oxygen debt toward the end. He won though, barely, and would wear the jacket that was the prize seemingly forever before it bit the dust.

Ah, such is memory…maybe next year he will check out and see if anybody wants to “put on a time” for the kids. Payback-okay.            

When Just An Average Joe Gets Waylaid By The Strange Fate Sisters-Anthony Mann’s “Desperate” (1947)-A Film Review

When Just An Average Joe Gets Waylaid By The Strange Fate Sisters-Anthony Mann’s “Desperate” (1947)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Si Lannon

Desperate, starring Steve Brodie, Raymond Burr, Audrey Long, directed by the legendary Anthony Mann, 1947

You know not every guy who did his service, did his military time and came back to what we who were in Vietnam during the 1960s called the “real” world couldn’t hack it, couldn’t back to the nine to five idea once he had seen enough craziness, had committed stuff he never though he would commit, and saw others do the same. Bad stuff all around. This publication has been filled with many sketches, even a few expanded pieces, detailing the experiences of a bunch of corner boys from North Adamsville and their troubles trying to readjust after their fucking war. I was one of the guys who had trouble, drifted in and out of towns, relationships, jobs, friendships, larcenies and drugs before I got my head screwed back on somewhere near the right way. Of course nobody associated with this publication in even an attenuated form can forget the toll that war business took on one Peter Paul Markin, the Scribe, who although we didn’t appreciate it that much at the time took his Vietnam time real hard. Not right away, but several years after having done an incredible job detailing the lives of a bunch of fellow veterans who were so bummed out by the world they came back to that they eventually formed an “alternate universe” down along the railroads and riverbanks of Southern California. Whatever haunted Markin, the Scribe, was just too deep for him to keep his own head on straight and he succumbed to serious drugs and treachery down in Mexico in the mid-1970s.

Like I said not every guy reacted the same way as I did, as Markin did and just went back to the real world and forgot about the past or at least didn’t let it get in the way. Probably most guys who served followed that road. And some guys, some straight-shooters still got fucked around with. Take the guy in Desperate, take Steve Brodie as straight a guy as ever wore shoe leather. Maybe the guys who came back from World War II were different from us, although the more stories I hear the more it sounds like the same old, same old only guys like my father and a couple of uncles kept it tightly under their lids. Steve came back after European Theater time, a few medals, a skill as a mechanic and truck driver to tide him over on cold night. Married a country girl from Wisconsin or one of those cow country places, started up his own small independent trucking operation in some Every town, they were, are legion. Hell, started out in a dinky cold water flat, didn’t even have a personal telephone but had to keep a stash of nickels like some rooming house joker which that country-bred blonde kept bitching about, had ideas about living in a ranch house and raising a parcel of kids and dogs. Sticking with his Anne, his love of his life through good times and bad. Then all hell broke loose, and he got caught in a grinder he couldn’t work his way out of.

The problem with Steve, like a lot of guys who are clueless about the ways of the world, is he couldn’t pass up a buck in order to help put up that down payment on his, their dreams. For fifty buck the world could toss and turn him around and spit him out. See the monthly payments, the bane of small dream guys, the truck insurance, or something was a little behind (Anne parceling out the weekly white envelopes each a little short in each bill packet, Jesus) so he took the job from an old friend, a guy from the old days back in the old neighborhood. Easy dough. Problem, problem is that old corner boy, a guy named Walt, but I knew him as Ray, Ray something, never got off the corner, always had to have the best of it, play every crooked angle. The job, the need a Steve truck job was a heist of some dark alley warehouse. Except things went awry as they do when you have small time crooks working the inside dope. Steve, once he knew the score took a pass, or tried to but the fate sisters weren’t rolling his way that night and he went for a fall. Worse, the botched job got a cop killed which meant the squeeze was on, somebody had to step off, take the big fall in the state pen for this one.         

This is where thing gets weird. The guy who got caught, the actual cop killer, a guy named Johnny, something like that, was this small- time hood Walt’s kid brother. Walt had an unexpectedly strong fondness for this brother and didn’t want to see him get the chair, the electric chair sitting waiting for him. Ray, Walt wouldn’t dream of taking the sword himself even though it was his botched caper so he came up with the bright idea that Steve should take the fall. Nice guy. At least Steve had sense enough to put a big bite into that plan once he got free from Walt’s clutches. The problem was that Ray, no, Walt threatened to do bodily harm to his wife, to Anne of the nickels, if he didn’t play ball, tell the coppers he was the cop-killer. Jesus, again.  They had to blow town, blow town fast and without a lot of fanfare.

Steve had to get his Anne to safety especially when she told him she was pregnant, was with child (she would deliver a daughter on the run, nice way to start life). But Walt was relentless especially after a jury put an X next to Johnny’s name. No matter where they went Walt and his cronies caught up to them. Finally, on the night Johnny was to meet the grim reaper, was to what did Seth Garth call it in a recent film review of Fallen Angel hear the noise of wings very close Walt cloistered Steve and expected to have a join execution with Steve as the sacrificial lamb who would cleanse the world for Walt over his Johnny boy. After a little gunplay Walt took a fall, although Steve did too. Yeah, not every guy had trouble coming back to the real world from their respective wars but trouble came their ways no matter what.