The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936)

If there’s one thing Paula Bradford (Jean Arthur) can’t resist, it’s a good mystery case. She loves writing about them and loves investigating them. Her ex-husband Lawrence (William Powell) does not share her enthusiasm and divorced her because he was tired of getting dragged into her murder investigations. But even though they are no longer married, he still finds himself getting asked to help with her investigations.

When jockey Eddie Sands suddenly dies during a horse race, Paula suspects he was murdered and goes straight to see Lawrence. Lawrence really doesn’t want to get involved, but when Eddie’s horse’s trainer Mike North (Frank M. Thomas) offers up some compelling evidence, he agrees to examine Eddie’s corpse and the only unusual thing he finds are traces of gelatin on his skin. But when a mysterious package for Mike arrives at Lawrence’s home, one that mysterious people are eager to get their hands on, Lawrence can’t help but get involved with the investigation. Not long after the package arrives, Mike is found dead on Lawrence’s doorstep, making Lawrence a top suspect and the only way to clear his name is to find the real murderer.

The Ex-Mrs. Bradford was definitely an attempt by RKO to capitalize on the success of The Thin Man, but despite the fact that you can tell what it’s trying to emulate, it doesn’t feel like a completely cheap rip-off, either.  William Powell and Jean Arthur were both too strongly talented to let that happen. It tries, and it makes a good effort, but it just falls short. The chemistry between Powell and Arthur is nice, but not nearly as spectacular as the Loy/Powell chemistry did. The writing has some really witty moments that Powell and Arthur both do very well with, but it’s not as consistently sharp as The Thin Man. It’s not that terribly remarkable, but there are far worse ways you could spend 80 minutes, too. It’s one of those movies that I’d say rises above being mediocre, but isn’t strong enough for me to call it an underrated gem.

Harper (1966)

When Elaine Sampson’s (Lauren Bacall) wealthy disappears, she calls detective Lew Harper (Paul Newman) to track him down. Elaine doesn’t care if her husband is dead or alive, but she knows he’s likely drunk and with another woman and she just wants to find out where he is before he gets too generous in his drunken state and gives away something valuable yet again. He starts by talking to Sampson’s daughter Miranda (Pamela Triffin) and personal pilot Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner). After finding out Sampson had been keeping a bungalow in Los Angeles, Harper takes a trip there to investigate and finds a picture of washed-up starlet Fay Eastabrook (Shelley Winters). Harper spends an evening with Fay, and when he brings her home very drunk, he answers a mysterious phone call from a woman thinking she was talking to Fay’s husband.  The woman calling says she saw Fay out with a strange man that night and that she ought to get rid of before “the truck comes through.” From there, he keeps following lead after lead until he finds himself tied up in a conspiracy involving Taggert, Fay, Troy, drug-addicted singer Betty Fraley (Julie Harris), a cult leader, and that mysterious truck.

This movie is just plain awesome. I absolutely loved Paul Newman in this role. Lauren Bacall was a flawless choice to play the jaded, bitter wife. Pamela Triffin was so campy and over the top, but when she was on screen with Lauren Bacall, their two attitudes were so big, that it was just too much and I mean that the best possible way. If drag queens are not already re-enacting that scene in their acts, they are missing a golden opportunity. But fun, campy moments aside, Harper is a quality mystery.  The story’s got enough twists and turns to keep you on your toes the whole time and there’s a great twist at the end. From start to finish, it’s nothing but good, quality entertainment.

Cry Wolf (1947)

When Sandra Marshall (Barbara Stanwyck) gets word that Jim, her husband of five months, has passed away, she does what any good wife would do and goes to see his family. But Sandra and Jim’s marriage wasn’t exactly conventional. Their marriage was a secret and they had an arrangement to stay married for six months so he could collect money from his trust fund. Sandra visits Jim’s scientist uncle Mark Caldwell (Errol Flynn), who is naturally surprised, yet skeptical, to hear his brother had a wife. But until her claims can be proven, she stays at the family home.

The more time Sandra spends with Jim’s family, the more strange behavior she sees.  First of all, Jim’s funeral was closed casket, which is odd considering he allegedly died of pneumonia. When Sandra visit’s Jim’s room, she finds all his sport clothes and pipes are missing. Mark is also disturbingly controlling of Jim’s younger sister, Julie (Geraldine Brooks). He has the family’s servants constantly monitoring Julie, he reads her mail, and he refuses to let her leave the estate. Sandra and Julie quickly become friends and when Julie hears screams coming from Mark’s laboratory, Sandra goes with her to investigate. Although Mark later tries to dismiss Julie’s claims of hearing screams as nothing more than her imagination, Sandra heard the screams too and suspects it may have been Jim’s screams they heard.

For the most part, I liked Cry Wolf. I like movies that keep me guessing and Cry Wolf did just that. It also did a good job of not letting me quite pinpoint Mark’s motives up until the very end. But unfortunately, since I couldn’t fully figure out what type of person Mark was, it made it a little hard for me to be satisfied with the ending. However, I did enjoy seeing Errol Flynn in a role different from the usual swashbuckler/adventure type movies I”m used to seeing him in. He was good, as was Barbara Stanwyck. However, the script isn’t quite strong enough to elevate Cry Wolf from being a good movie to a great movie.

Murder at the Vanities (1934)

It’s opening night of Earl Carroll’s newest show and it’s the hottest ticket in town.  Stage manager Jack Ellery (Jack Oakie) wouldn’t even be able to get a ticket for the president if he wanted one. Just before the show is set to start, the show’s stars Eric Lander (Carl Brisson) and Ann Ware (Kitty Carlisle) decide to get married as soon as the show is over.  But once they arrive at the theater and word gets out about their impending nuptials, Ann is nearly killed twice before going on stage.  But the show must go on and Ellery refuses to cancel the show.  Instead he calls his friend police lieutenant Bill Murdock (Victor McLaglen) to investigate while the show is still going on.

Murder at the Vanities is kind of like if you took the ending of 42nd Street and combined it with a murder mystery storyline.  On the whole, Murder at the Vanities doesn’t quite work as either a mystery or a musical.  Paramount was clearly trying to hop on the backstage musical bandwagon set in motion by Busby Berkeley, but the musical numbers aren’t executed as well as Berkeley’s.  But I’ve got to give them points for putting a totally unusual spin on the backstage musical concept.  The mystery element of the story isn’t particularly compelling, either.  But despite all that, Murder at the Vanities is still a darn fun movie.  For its sheer outrageousness, it’s a pre-code classic.  Not only does it have women in skimpy costumes as far as the eye can see, it’s also got a musical number called “Sweet Marijuana.”  And as an added bonus, Duke Ellington makes an appearance!  If nothing else, it’s worth watching just because it’s a pretty unusual movie.  You just don’t come across very many murder mystery/musical movies.

The Honey Pot (1967)

After catching a performance of the play “Volpone,” Cecil Fox (Rex Harrison) has the idea of playing a prank on some of his former lovers.  He decides to send letters to three of his former lovers — actress Merle McGill (Edie Adams), Princess Dominique (Capucine), and his common law wife Lone Star Crockett Sheridan (Susan Hayward) — telling them he is on his deathbed and his heir has yet to be decided.  Cecil is perfectly healthy, he just wants to see how they react. Cecil hires out of work actor William McFly (Cliff Robertson) to pose as his assistant and help carry out this scheme.

Since Cecil is a very wealthy man, naturally the three women rush to be by his side.  When Lone Star arrives with her personal nurse Sarah Watkins (Maggie Smith) in tow, she is confident that she will inherit his estate since she is his common law wife.  That night, Sarah goes out with William and when she returns, she finds Lone Star dead, looking as though she had overdosed on sleeping pills.  But Sarah knows it couldn’t have been an accidental overdose or suicide.  Even though Lone Star took sleeping pills regularly, Sarah made a point of giving her placebos to take at night so she couldn’t possibly take too many.  Someone else had to have given Lone Star the pills that killed her.

After a police officer pays a visit to question Cecil and his guests, Sarah finds out that Cecil isn’t really dying, it’s all a ridiculous prank.  Since Sarah had told William that Lone Star took sleeping pills, she immediately suspects him of killing her and believes he may be planning to kill Cecil next.  William is innocent, so when Cecil turns up dead, the story only becomes more twisted.

I really enjoyed The Honey Pot.  The entire cast is absolutely wonderful; I positively adored Rex Harrison, Maggie Smith, and Susan Hayward in this. Joesph L. Mankiewicz’s writing and direction is masterful.  The tone of the movie changes sharply from dark comedy to murder mystery, but Mankiewicz was able to make it work. The comedic parts are extremely witty and the murder mystery aspect is loaded with twists to keep you on your toes.  The Honey Pot is one of those movies I’m going to have to watch twice to make sure that I caught all the details.  I’m definitely glad I decided to give this one a chance.

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

In 1921, Ivan Igor (Lionel Atwill) is an exceptionally gifted wax sculptor living in London.  He runs his own wax museum, but it isn’t particularly successful.  The public wants to see figures of people like Jack the Ripper, not Marie Antoinette, which he considers to be his masterpiece.  Eventually, Ivan’s business partner Joe (Edwin Maxwell) gets fed up with losing money on the museum and burns it down for the insurance money, with Ivan inside at the time.

Ivan survives the fire and twelve years later, he sets up shop in New York to open a new wax museum.  The fire left his hands and legs badly damaged and Ivan has to direct others on how to make the figures. Just before the museum’s grand opening, all of New York is abuzz with news of the suicide of model Joan Gale. At first it looks like a pretty cut and dry suicide case, but when newspaper reporter Florence Dempsey (Glenda Farrell) starts doing a little investigating, she discovers that there’s more to the story.

When Joan’s body disappears from the morgue, officials begin to suspect foul play and the top suspect is George Winton (Gavin Gordon), Joan’s ex-boyfriend. Florence quickly realizes that George is innocent and is determined to find the truth. Florence’s roommate is Charlotte Duncan (Fay Wray), who is engaged to Ralph Burton (Allen Vincent), one of Ivan’s employees. While meeting Charlotte for lunch one day in front of the new wax museum, Florence sneaks inside and notices the new Joan of Arc sculpture bears an uncanny resemblance to Joan Gale. At the same time, Ivan meets Charlotte and is taken by just how much she looks like his beloved Marie Antoinette sculpture. He asks her to pose for him and she agrees.

Florence continues her investigation, and eventually she discovers there is a badly disfigured person working for the museum stealing bodies to be covered with wax and placed in the museum. Of course, the police write her off, but she keeps looking. Meanwhile, Charlotte arrives at the wax museum to meet with Ivan, and things immediately start getting scary. Ivan has no intention of having Charlotte simply pose for him; he plans to kill her and dip her in wax, just like the others. Luckily, Florence shows up just in time to save her friend.

For a long time, Mystery of the Wax Museum was thought to be a lost film.  It finally resurfaced in the late 1960s and it’s a good thing it was found because it’s a darn good movie. It’s an excellent blend of horror and mystery with lots of witty lines. I have so much love for Glenda Farrell in it, but Fay Wray felt a little underutilized. And I’ve really got to acknowledge Ray Romero and Perc Westwood who did some really amazing make-up work here and they weren’t even given on-screen credit for it. All in all, a pretty great movie.

Hugo (2011)

In 1931 Paris, a young orphaned boy named Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) lives inside a train station’s walls and because he knows all about fixing clocks, he takes care of the station’s clocks.  When Hugo is caught stealing spare parts from Georges (Ben Kingsley), who runs a toy booth in the train station, Georges gives him the chance to make it up to him by working in the booth.  Hugo ends up becoming friends with Georges’ god-daughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), and he soon finds out that she has never seen a movie before.  Georges has forbidden her from seeing them but she doesn’t know why.  But the two of them soon discover that the real reason is because Georges is none other than silent film pioneer Georges Méliès.  The kids are eager to learn more about his past, but convinced that he has been long forgotten and that all his work has been lost, the last thing Georges wants to do is look back on those days.  Hugo and Isabelle start investigating on their own and in the process, they are able to help Georges realize that not all of his work has been lost forever and that are able to show him that he has not been forgotten.

If you are a fan of silent films, by all means, go see Hugo!  I positively adored it!  It’s starts out looking like it’s going to be a kids’ adventure movie, but then it turns into a crash course in Georges Méliès and an introduction to silent film.  Even if you already know about Méliès and film history, it is truly delightful to see how Scorsese recreates Méliès’ studio and to see the clips featuring Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, Louise Brooks, and Douglas Faribanks, just to name a few.  Martin Scorsese’s love of film history is very well known and you can see that influence in his other movies, but I loved seeing him be able to just go all out with it here.  You can tell that he must have been loving the fact that it was his job to recreate Méliès’ studio and sets.

Not only does Scorsese’s passion for the subject matter show, but it’s also very visually interesting.  Normally, I’m not a big fan of 3D and this was actually the first modern 3D movie I ever saw.  Before the movie, they showed trailers for some upcoming 3D releases and really wasn’t wowed by the 3D I saw in those, but Hugo’s use of 3D was far superior to anything I saw in the trailers.  The 3D was very well done and wasn’t used to carry the movie.  I’m confident that I would have loved it just as much if I had seen it in 2D.  It’s funny that the movie often referenced how audiences would scream and duck when they first saw Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat because they thought they were going to be run over, because there were moments in Hugo that made me sort of try to get out of the way of the 3D effects.  There was one scene where the Station Inspector is confronting Hugo and keeps leaning in closer and closer to Hugo (and toward the camera) and I caught myself leaning back in my seat because it felt like he kept leaning in toward me.

Overall, Hugo is a purely delightful and magical film.  I very highly recommend it.  It’s a very rare film and not just because it is a family friendly Martin Scorsese film.  Even though it has rightfully gained a lot of critical acclaim, it has only managed to peak at #3 on the weekend box office charts since it’s been released, which is too bad because it deserves to be on top.

Girl Missing (1933)

Kay (Glenda Farrell) and June (Mary Brian) are a couple of shameless, gold digging chorus girls.  They’re on vacation in Palm Beach with Kenneth Van Dusen (Guy Kibbee), the latest rich guy they’ve latched themselves onto.  But when he comes on to June and she turns him down, Kenneth takes off and leaves the girls with the $700 hotel bill.  While they’re scheming up a way to get the money for the bill, they run into Daisy (Peggy Shannon), a rather dim chorus girl they used to work with.  She’s at the hotel to get married to the wealthy Henry Gibson (Ben Lyon), but when they go up to talk to her (and hopefully get some money), she gives them the could shoulder.  They try their luck in the casino instead, and even though Kay wins enough money to cover the bill, she looses it all when she pushes her luck to the breaking point.  But luckily for them, they run into Raymond (Lyle Talbot), one of Daisy’s ex-boyfriends.  He offers them the money for their hotel bill and train tickets out of town.

The next day, Raymond sends the money and train tickets over to the hotel, but before they leave, June runs into Henry Gibson in the elevator and flirts with him so long that they miss their train and they have to stay in town another night.  Meanwhile, Daisy and Henry have gotten married and are on their way out of town for their honeymoon.  After they get to the hotel, Daisy complains of having a headache so while she goes to lay down, Henry steps out to have a cigarette.  When he comes back in to check on her, she’s gone, apparently kidnapped.  When news of Daisy’s disappearance hits the newspaper the next day, Kay and June decide to stay and help look for Daisy.  Not that they’re terribly concerned about finding Daisy, but because there’s a $25,000 reward for any information that leads to finding Daisy.

They suspect she’s run off with Raymond and rush to tell Henry their theory, but when a detective overhears them, he assumes that they are involved and brings them in for questioning.  They tell the police their theory about Raymond, but when they question him, he doesn’t strike them as suspicious.  But later that night, they see Raymond’s chauffeur messing with Henry’s car.  They try to warn Henry, but he’s in a hurry and won’t listen, so they have no other choice but to hop in a car and chase him down.  When they finally do stop him, they’re able to prove his car has been tampered with.  Kay has the idea that if he wrecks the car, the person trying to kill him would come out of hiding.  So he wrecks the car and Kay plants a story about Henry being killed in a car wreck and sure enough, her plan works.  When Daisy hears the news, she goes to the police station.  But by now, the police have some real dirt on Daisy and even though she almost weasels her way out of the situation, Kay manages to get the truth out of her.

Girl Missing is a lot of fun.  I adored Glenda Farrell and Mary Brian in it, they made a great couple of wise cracking show girls.  The two of them made it fun to root for the characters you’re not always supposed to root for.  It’s full of snappy lines and I love a movie full of snappy lines.  Not only is it funny, but the mystery element of the movie is also pretty enjoyable.  Definitely keep an eye out for this one on TCM.  If you like The Thin Man, you would probably like Girl Missing.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

In 1945, not too many people are coming to the small western town of Black Rock anymore.  In fact, when John Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) comes to town, it’s the first time the train has stopped in Black Rock in four years.  Although he doesn’t exactly expect a warm welcome, he sure wasn’t expecting hostility from every resident of Black Rock.  When he says he stopped in Black Rock so he could drive out to Adobe Flat and see a man named Komoko, everybody gives him the third degree.  He tries to check into the hotel, but Pete Wirth (John Ericson) doesn’t want to give him a room.  When he does get a room, Hector David (Lee Marvin) threatens him for no reason.  Even some of the locals don’t understand why everyone is so on edge about Macreedy being in town.  Macreedy tries talking to sheriff Tim Horn about Komoko (Dean Jagger), but he’s too drunk to be much help.  Even though Tim is the sheriff, Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) appears to be the one running things in Black Rock and tells Macreedy that since Komoko was Japanese, he had been sent to an internment camp during World War II.

Regardless of what Reno had told him about Komoko, Macreedy is determined to make the trip to Adobe Flat anyway, so he rents Liz Wirth’s (Anne Francis) Jeep and drives out there.  The only things he finds in Adobe Flat are a burned down house, a very deep well, and some wildflowers.  When he sees the wildflowers, he begins to suspect that someone is buried beneath them.  On the way back to Black Rock, Coley Trimble (Ernest Borgnine) gets behind Macreedy and runs him off the road.  Unharmed, Macreedy gets back to Black Rock and decides to get out of there as soon as he can.  Unfortunately, the train won’t be back until the next day and he can’t get a ride to the next town.  Reno comes to talk to Macreedy again, and he finds out that Reno is horribly racist toward the Japanese.  After this little chat, Macreedy begins to suspect that Komoko is buried under those wildflowers and Reno is the one who put him there.

Macreedy tries to call the state police for help but can’t get through.  Doc (Walter Brennan), one of the few people in town willing to help him, offers him a vehicle to get out of town, but it’s been tampered with.  In a last ditch effort, he tries sending a telegram to the state police to come help.  Since all he can do now is wait, Macreedy stops in at the local bar and Coley and Reno show up to cause trouble for him.  But by now, he’s had just about enough of them and gets into a fight with Coley and tells Reno that he knows he killed Komoko and he couldn’t even do it alone.  The next day, before he was due to leave, Macreedy finds out that his telegram was given to Reno instead of the state police.  Macreedy, Doc, and Tim all remind Reno that it’s a federal offense to do that, but Reno isn’t scared of them.  Once Reno is gone, though, Macreedy tells Doc and Pete that he had come to Black Rock to find Komoko so he could give him a medal awarded posthumously to his son, who had saved Macreedy’s life during the war.  Finally, Pete cracks and admits what happened to Komoko.  Doc and Pete then plot to get Macreedy to safety and to take back control of their town.

Even if you don’t like Westerns, you really shouldn’t be deterred from Bad Day at Black Rock.  It’s much more of a mystery than it is a Western.  And it is one captivating mystery, at that.  There wasn’t a moment in the movie where I wasn’t glued to the screen, eagerly awaiting to find out what on Earth was going on in Black Rock and what happened to Komoko.  Not only is the story wonderful, but you can’t ask for a much better cast than this!  Everything about it was amazing, it’s a real must-see movie!

Penthouse (1933)

Jack Durant (Warner Baxter) is a lawyer who relishes taking on cases other lawyers won’t touch.  He loves defending bootleggers, showgirls, and all the other dregs of society, much to the dismay of his law firm partners.  They would much rather work on more respectable cases and fire Jack after he successfully defends the notorious gangster Tony Gazotti.  His fiancée Sue is also not impressed by the company Jack has been keeping and leaves him for Tom Siddall.  But Tom has been seeing Mimi Montagne (Mae Clarke), who is known to hang around with gangsters.  When Sue agrees to marry Tony, she tells him to end things with Mimi.  Mimi is furious and calls up gangster Jim Crelliman and Jim arranges it so Mimi can publicly humiliate Tom at a party.  When Tom shows up at the party, he and Mimi go out onto the balcony.  Next thing anyone knows, there’s a gunshot and Mimi is dead on the balcony with Tom holding a gun.  Of course, Tom is arrested.  The only person who believes Tom is innocent is Sue, who convinces Jack to take the case.  At first he doesn’t want to, but eventually he comes around to it.  He starts investigating the case with a little help from Tony Gazotti and Mimi’s roommate Gertie Waxted (Myrna Loy), a good-hearted call girl.  But in the process of investigating the crime, Jack falls in love with Gertie.

Penthouse is a true pre-code gem.  The writing is very sharp and innuendo filled, it’s full of some fabulous art deco sets, there are some great suspenseful moments, and it’s quite fast paced.  It’s only 90 minutes long and those 90 minutes just fly by.  I really liked Warner Baxter, he seemed to be having so much fun with his role, and I always like Mynra Loy.  Warner and Myrna were naturals together.  It’s like this was Myrna getting practice for The Thin Man, which came out the following year.  Penthouse is a movie that also appeals to so many different genres.  It’s a gangster movie, it’s a murder mystery, it’s got a love story, and it’s a pre-code all rolled into one.  If you see this one come up on TCM, it’s absolutely worth checking out.  It was so much fun to watch, I just love it!