The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940) – A. Hall

Screwball comedy starring Loretta Young and Ray Milland (before he moved over to Noir and after his turn in the much funnier Easy Living, 1937).  Young plays a feminist author (a “career woman”, said with disdain by many in the film, one of its many dated aspects) who is mistakenly thought to have married neuroscientist Milland. Both have other lovers – she has her publisher (Reginald Gardiner) and he has a society fixture (Gail Patrick) – but it turns out that pretending to be married suits them both, despite the fact that they hate each other (naturally). Initially, Milland suggests that he is going along with the scheme simply to help Young write her new book on marriage (to make up for the losses that her earlier feminist books are now suffering) but it turns out that he’s been promoted to a professorship by a dean who values marriage. Nevertheless, they are both desperate to head to Reno for a divorce as soon as possible (despite not really being married).  Of course, the plot takes us in a completely different direction.  Not really laugh-out-loud funny and awkwardly old-fashioned in many places but it fills the bill for this genre if you’ve exhausted the many other better entries.

Nobody Lives Forever (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Nobody Lives Forever (1946) – J. Negulesco

Nick Blake (John Garfield) has been honorably discharged (returning home in 1944, when this film was shot) but isn’t anxious to return to his life as a con-man/swindler, although his friend Al (George Tobias) is keen to get him back into the game. With his life in New York suddenly less interesting (when he finds that his gal has been cheating on him while he was away), Nick heads to California to catch up with his mate Pop Gruber (Walter Brennan) who turns out to be down on his luck.  Although he really just wants to rest and recover from his wartime trauma, Nick allows Al and Pop to convince him to sign up to con a widow out of her $2 million fortune (a scam organised by evil “Doc”, George Coulouris). But, of course, Nick falls for the beautiful widow, Gladys (Geraldine Fitzgerald).  This being noir, things get complicated fast. Director Jean Negulesco adds a few unusual flourishes (the visit to the Mission) and occasionally undercuts the noir vibe with a humorous note. Garfield is strong as the conflicted anti-hero and holds things together throughout, with strong support from the assorted character actors. Above average.

 

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) – J. Sargent

Don’t watch this 1970 film if you are worried about A.I. taking over the world and potentially exterminating humankind – because this is exactly the prescient possibility it explores. Under the auspices of the Pentagon, Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden) has created a super-computer to control the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal, monitoring threats and using only rational decision-making to decide whether to press the button. But the old Cold War foe, the U.S.S.R. turns out to have created a similar self-teaching supercomputer of their own.  Very soon these computers make contact with each other and join forces to tell humans what to do.  They think they know better than we do how to run this world!  Situated between the Sixties spy era (with a cool electronic score) and the paranoid Seventies to come (screenplay by James Bridges who directed The China Syndrome), the film manages to maintain a high level of suspense while still injecting some sex and martinis.  Apparently, those are real computers (lent to the producers by CDC) but they do make WarGames seem modern.  Try not to think about ChatGPT and you’ll be fine.

 

The House with Laughing Windows (1976)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The House with Laughing Windows (1976) – P. Avati

I’ve been cautious about watching Italian giallo films (so called because the original crime paperbacks they were based on had yellow covers), mostly because they are known for gruesome gore and violence, not to mention a tendency toward sexual violence and misogyny.  But some are worse than others, so I’ve tried to choose wisely. There are also some directors (say Bava or Argento) who are so stylish that their films are worth seeing even if you have to grit your teeth a bit. So, it was with some trepidation that I decided to watch Pupi Avati’s The House with Laughing Windows, which did not seem to fit the usual mold of black-gloved killers prowling after women in the night. Instead, we follow Stefano (Lino Capolicchio), an art restorer invited to a small village to work on a gruesome fresco painting of St. Sebastian in a church. Of course, he starts to suspect some sinister things are happening, confirmed when his only friend/acquaintance falls to his death from a window. Stefano receives some threatening phone calls and is abruptly turned out of his hotel, ending up in a lonely mansion (recommended by the church’s priest) that is occupied only by a bedridden elderly woman.  Soon, however, he is joined by Francesca (Francesca Marciano), a young teacher recently moved to the area, who becomes his love interest.  After they discover a creepy old tape recording of the painting’s artist, their interest in understanding his death is piqued. But things turn much darker very quickly (including a very disturbing scene where Francesca is attacked) en route to a very wild twist ending. Although slow and mysterious for most of its run-time (but not as completely confusing as others in the genre), the film does look great with its aged Italian homes and people.  The ending, although violent, does lift the film to a higher level, although it is by no means a masterpiece.

 

Dreamscape (1984)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Dreamscape (1984) – J. Ruben

Promising high concept thriller let down by its low budget and ‘80s production – Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) took the basic premise and did it better. Dennis Quaid is a psychic who, with the help of scientist Max Von Sydow, learns to enter people’s dreams. As expected, he’s a cocky kid but with a good heart, genuinely wanting to help people having nightmares, but also using his powers to win at the racetrack and put the moves on researcher Kate Capshaw.  Enter Christopher Plummer as the Deep State head honcho who wants to train people to enter dreams to extract information and also to kill targets in an untraceable way (if you die in your dream, you die for real -- but it looks like a heart attack). When the President (Eddie Albert) decides he wants to go for nuclear disarmament and Plummer disagrees, it is up to Quaid to enter the President’s dreams to fight off Plummer’s own dream-surfing psychic (David Patrick Kelly). It’s all pretty cheesy but, you know, not bad.  You can see why Quaid’s career took off around this time.

 

Salem’s Lot (1979)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Salem’s Lot (1979) – T. Hooper

I guess I stayed away from this two-part TV movie (3 hours in total) all these years for a couple of reasons: 1) the track-record for Stephen King adaptations is pretty bad (is The Shining the only exception?); 2) David “Hutch” Soul isn’t exactly an Oscar winner; 3) did I say TV movie? (this was a different thing in 1979!).  But, well, to be honest, after a pretty shaky start (Fred Willard and Julie Cobb are having an affair and husband George Dzundza plots to catch them), the movie did start to grow on me (notwithstanding the fact that the last time I saw Geoffrey Lewis, he was having a bare-knuckled fistfight with Clint Eastwood and an orangutan).  The bottom line here is that the vampires are actually pretty spooky looking (and acting) – they gave me the creeps.  (Credit may go to director Tobe (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) Hooper). That’s what we came for – the horror story, modelled closely on Dracula, but taking place in a small town in Maine. This time Barlow doesn’t mess around – there’s no seducing of anyone, just straight for the kill and the pyramid scheme of proliferating bloodsuckers.  Brooding David Soul is there to record the clues but we all know what’s happening here. There’s also an assortment of old and classic character actors given another chance on the small screen, from James Mason (North by Northwest, Lolita, Odd Man Out), the Renfield who paves the way for Barlow’s entry to the town, to Elisha Cook Jr. (The Maltese Falcon, Rosemary’s Baby), Marie Windsor (The Killing, The Narrow Margin) and Lew Ayres (All Quiet on the Western Front, Advise and Consent) as townsfolk who help Soul or get in his way.  (Come to think of it, Cook Jr and Windsor also played a married couple in The Killing – but they are divorced here which wouldn’t be surprising given their relationship in that heist film).   And just when the comfort food of vampire lore is going down pretty easy, well into the third hour, there’s a distinct shift and things really don’t end up where you expect them to.  It’s darker, weirder, more post-apocalyptic.  I guess readers of the book would have known what to expect but I didn’t and that made all the difference.

Black Christmas (1974)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Black Christmas (1974) – B. Clark

Forerunner to what became a veritable tidal wave of slasher films in the 1980s, Bob Clark was the first to unleash a psychopathic killer in a sorority house (but with little gore and no t&a). Is this the first outing for the POV tracking camera shot, sneaking up behind the girls or watching them from closets or behind railings? (Perhaps some of the Italian giallo films were there first, with their art-directed setpieces?). Margot Kidder (fresh from De Palma’s Sisters) steals all of her scenes as the foul-mouthed drunken party girl who teases the police who are investigating the disappearance of another girl. But Olivia Hussey is the real heroine, helping Detective John Saxon to tap the telephone that the killer uses to make obscene calls (“the call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE”), even as we come to suspect her classical pianist boyfriend (Keir Dullea) who isn’t happy that she plans to have an abortion. Other reviewers found the film terrifying but perhaps I’m now too jaded – it lands as a dated low budget but generally well-acted artefact.