Tag: movie review

October Viewing – 5

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I was all over the place deciding on what I should watch next, I considered two movies that are genuinely disturbing; “Psycho” and “Silence of the Lambs.”  I couldn’t decide between them so I put them aside.  Then I started watching “Carnival of Souls.”  But although that movie has some truly disturbing images, the majority of the film is so devoid of acting, interest or sympathetic characters that I turned it off in disgust.  I may go back to it later.  As I said it has some potent imagery but I just wasn’t in the mood to subject myself to its depressing banality.

I decided to watch the 1932 “The Mummy.”

Of course this is a movie I’ve already reviewed.  But I needed something fun and also, I wanted see what I could extract from it by giving it a pair of fresh eyes.  So, I tried to imagine what the crowd of 1932 would see in it.

I looked through some of the older and newer discussions about the production and what was common to them all was the link to the King Tutankhamen discovery in the 1920’s.  Apparently, that archeological discovery had been enormously popular with the general public and so the filmmakers were right in thinking that a horror movie that piggybacked on ancient Egypt was likely to be popular.

And so, they cobbled together the story line of the Egyptian priest who was buried alive for stealing the secret of resurrection from the sacred Scroll of Thoth to bring back to life his great love; the Princess Anck-es-en-Amon.  Of course, whenever Karloff chants the name in the movie it sounds like “ankhs and almonds.”  Which made me think of some kind of mummy-themed breakfast cereal like Count Chocula but more health conscious like Honey Nut Cheerios.

But I digress.

So, I could see the audience of young men and teenagers bringing their girls to be frightened by the monster and thereby getting to hug them for moral support.

But what about the modern audience?  Well, my favorite scene is the initial discovery of the mummy and the chest holding the scroll of Thoth.  In this scene the character played by Edward Van Sloane, the same actor who plays Professor Van Helsing in Dracula and Doctor Waldman in Frankenstein is once again warning the impetuous skeptics about the dangers of interfering in the dark arts.  But of course, the young archeologist opens the chest and begins reading the scroll and so, awakes Imhotep (Karloff) who absconds with the scroll and leaves shocked scientist laughing psychotically and headed for death in a strait jacket.

This is the only scene where we see Karloff in his mummy makeup.  It was well made.  He looked quite like a 4,000-year-old corpse.  After that the story goes downhill.  Twelve years later the British Museum expedition is back in Egypt but now the son of the previous expedition’s leader is in charge and after receiving a hint as to where to dig, by Ardath Bey (the mummy pretending to be a modern Egyptian), they dig up the undisturbed tomb of ankhs and almonds.  Once she is safely deposited in the Cairo Museum of Antiquities Ardath Bey begins to work at resurrecting his former love.  And by reading passages from the scroll, he is able to lure ankhs and almonds present reincarnation (a pretty half-English half-Egyptian girl who happens to be Edward Van Sloane’s medical patient).

She falls in love with the young archeologist and it’s a photo-finish to see if she ends up with Ardath Bey as a murdered but re-animated corpse like him or her modern self marrying the Englishman.  In the intervening struggle the older archeologist is murdered by Ardath Bey and hijinks ensue.  In the final showdown the girl remembers her past life and enough ancient Egyptian language to make a prayer to the statue of Isis to help her by zapping Imhotep with her ankh which both burns up the scroll of Thoth and turns the mummy into a pile of bones.

Being in my senior years I was disturbed to see how little concern the younger archeologist seemed to exhibit at his father’s death.  I mean sure, the guy was old but at least a day or two of mourning before proceeding with his pursuit of the hot-looking former Egyptian princess should have been a reasonable thought.  Well, that is the essence of life.  And she was pretty alluring in her more scantily clad scenes.  So, I guess I can cut him some slack.

All in all, it’s a decently entertaining film.  Allowances have to be made for the definition of scary a hundred years ago but it’s a fun film.  I’ll give it a thumbs up as a light-hearted October viewing.

Update:
War Pig commented:

I, too, am intrigued by what Americans found frightening a century ago. Of course with modern special effects a scary film from today would cause a stampede out the doors of a roaring twenties theater and a call for congress to ban or restrict such films. I also find it curious that naked bodies and other sexual scenes were made verboten while wholesale slaughter and bloodshed were allowed when the 1930s movie codes were mandated.

For me, simple shock and violence are moot. I want suspense. Old classics like Night Of The Demon, Black Sunday, Psycho, Night Of The Hunter or Hour Of The Wolf and Rashoman. There’s just something about black & White cinematography that lends itself to horror movies. Masters of the craft such as Bergman, Hitchcock, Brava and Kurosawa used it to great effect. Horror, and suspense, are best served in black and white where you have to concentrate on the story instead of the fancy effects.

photog replied

Yes, a century has removed all the taboos.  But as you say gore and shock don’t guarantee satisfaction with the product.  Engage our imagination and gore isn’t that important.

October Viewing – 4

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I thought of an interesting choice for tonight; the 2023 movie “Nefarious.”  I hadn’t watched the movie since it came out last year.  I had forgotten how good it is.  The malevolence and twitchiness of the Nefarious character and the step-by-step demolition of the psychiatrist’s composure and then his mental balance is fascinating to watch.  The creative team (including the actors) crafted an intricate little machine that advances the plot one ratchet tooth at a time and then brings us to the electrocution room in the penultimate scene.

And the electrocution of the demon’s host provides all the horror that is needed for a Halloween movie.  They even have to “fry” him twice for good measure.  And even though this film was made by a “Christian” production studio and has a clear message concerning the reality of evil in the world, that messaging does not overpower the dramatic balance.  The story works as a story for any audience.  I guess for non-believers they’ll just have to chalk up the strange events to psychological phenomena, such as multiple personality syndrome and autosuggestion.

Comparing this movie to other films I think the confrontation with Nefarious is somewhat akin to Agent Starling interacting with Hannibal Lector in “Silence of the Lambs.”  Of course, not exactly because there was a certain sympathy that Lector felt for Starling.  Whereas Nefarious is wholly bent on the destruction of everyone around him including the psychiatrist.  But there is the same sense that a malevolent genius is toying with his jailors.

And the other comparison that this movie conjures up in my mind is C. S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters.”  In both works you get to see the demon’s point of view.  Nefarious at a certain point has to prove to the psychiatrist that there is a logic to the whole idea of demonic possession.  He has to explain how it’s done and how it advances the goals of Nefarious’ master.  And from what I can tell I think he used pretty orthodox doctrine on how and why Satan carries out his war against Heaven and mankind.

So, all in all I think I made a pretty good choice for tonight’s movie.  Of course, whether I watch the movie for Halloween or Easter is a matter of mood.  After all, you really can’t consider Hell without contrasting it with the establishment run by the power whom Nefarious calls “the Enemy.”  But even for atheists I think Nefarious is a pretty good choice for this time of year.  And to round off this post I’d like to say that all of the actors in this little teleplay acquitted themselves very ably.  But the actor who portrayed Nefarious was especially good.  If they gave Academy Award nominations to actors in movies made by Christian production companies then he would have deserved one for the performance he gave.  And the actors who played the psychiatrist and the warden were also top notch.

Well, if you’re looking for a good scary movie, I highly recommend Nefarious.  Give the devil his due.

October Viewing – 3

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And now a return to form.  Whereas Charles Laughton can make a “horror” movie into a semi-legitimate film, putting Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi into a movie ensures that the full Universal horror treatment will ensue.

The Black Cat was such a pairing.  Bela Lugosi is a German medical doctor who was taken prisoner by the Russians during the First World War and eighteen years later he is looking to take revenge on Karloff who was the German commander who sold his troops out before the battle.  Also, while Lugosi was in prison Karloff stole away his wife telling her that Lugosi was dead.  Lugosi comes back to the scene of the battle where strangely Karloff has built an art deco palace on the site of the fort that he had commanded.  Later on, we learn that the whole hill is still booby-trapped with dynamite.  Well, you never know when that might come in handy.

There is a young American couple honeymooning in this Hungarian locale (sure why not) and Lugosi befriends them and then because of a motor vehicle accident during a rain storm, Lugosi is forced to bring them both to Karloff’s house where the doctor performs minor medical procedures that require putting her under a powerful sedative that makes her somewhat prescient upon meeting Karloff.

While the Americans sleep that night Lugosi and Karloff have a conference and we find out that Lugosi’s wife died of “pneumonia” years before.  Unsurprisingly Karloff decided to have her embalmed and put on display in his basement.  Well, sure, who wouldn’t!  And if all that isn’t bad enough Karloff tells Lugosi that his young daughter also died.  Next, we find out that Karloff is a satanic priest and the next night is the new moon and he will be celebrating a black mass at which he wants to sacrifice the American girl to Satan or something.  Lugosi objects and Karloff offers to play a game of chess to see whether she will die.  And Lugosi loses.  Darn.  Meanwhile we discover that Lugosi’s daughter is not dead but is married to Karloff and living in the house they are in.  The American girl meets her but somehow Lugosi still hasn’t heard about her.

A lot of goofy stuff happens with Lugosi’s servant pretending to obey Karloff and the American man being trapped in a room that eventually he escapes by just opening the door.  And even though the satanic mass is quite crowded Lugosi somehow easily manages to rescue the American girl.  And then everyone heads down into the basement for the climax.

So, let’s see.  Lugosi stumbles on the dead body of his daughter.  Karloff and Lugosi get into a fight that ends when Lugosi’s fatally wounded servant helps him over power and chain up Karloff to a dungeon wall (yes dungeon).  Then Lugosi decides to finally revenge the deaths of his wife and daughter on Karloff by skinning him alive.  But when the American girl sees this going on she screams and her husband finds their location and mistaking Lugosi’s intention he shoots the doctor.    Lugosi calls him a fool but tells the American couple to rush out of the building and get away from the hill because he is about to set off the timer that will trigger the dynamite to blow up the satanists, Karloff and Lugosi.  And in the last scene the happy honeymooners continue their railway journey to Budapest.

This movie has so many hokey things going on.  Why would Karloff believe that Lugosi’s loyal servant would do his bidding instead of his master?  Why would Karloff still have the timer and detonator for the dynamite not only intact but on prominent display in his basement?  Why wouldn’t Lugosi have killed Karloff as soon as he saw his wife stuffed and mounted in Karloff’s basement?  Are all art deco architects, satanists?  Or are all satanists art deco devotees?  What did Lugosi’s morbid fear of black cats have to do with anything else in the movie except the title?  So many questions.

The strange thing is I enjoyed the movie.  Sure, it made no sense.  But there was a style and an energy to it that was fun.  You sort of knew the American couple would emerge unscathed so really, we were watching the duel between Lugosi and Karloff and we knew that some kind of justice would prevail.  And those lousy satanists would get blown up.

In a way, with its modernist architecture juxtaposed against the medieval stonework of the underground fort it was a perfect way for the modern (1930s) world to intrude on the gothic horror that is the stock in trade of the Universal horror movies.  Art deco horror.  Well done Bela and Boris.

October Viewing – 2

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So, I enjoyed my recent first foray into old horror movies with Dracula enough to give it another whirl.  Tonight, I was going to try the Mummy but last night TCM had some Lugosi movies on so I picked “The Island of Lost Souls.”  This is a 1932 film starring Charles Laughton as Dr Moreau; a scientist who experimented on surgically converting animals into humans.  Lugosi has a relatively small part as one of his experiments.  He looks like a man-wolf and functions as, “The Sayer of the Law.”  This movie is just a renamed version of H.G. Wells’ story, “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

Okay, the first thing to take into account is that Laughton is a much better actor than your typical horror movie mad scientist.  Now granted, this isn’t “Mutiny on the Bounty” so he has to work with what he’s given but Laughton sells it well.  The rest of the cast is adequate to the task at hand.  And the movie does deliver the climax that a fiendish Frankensteinian scientist will always reap; destruction at the hands of his tortured creations.

The highlights of the movie are of Moreau portraying an omnipotent ruler as he commands the obedience of his many creations.  On a hill in the jungle, he rings a gong twice, cracks a bullwhip and shouts down to his assembled subjects repeatedly, “What is the law?”  And the Sayer of the Law gives the various answers at each repetition of the question,

“Not to walk on all fours.  Are we not men?”

“Not to spill blood.  Are we not men?”

“Not to eat meat.  Are we not men?”

And this is enough to quiet the beast within each “man” when the night awakens his blood.  And if they become especially restless, he reminds them of “The House of Pain.”  This is where Moreau rearranged their living flesh to simulate a human form and apparently anesthetic was not part of the program.  Just the mention of it triggers howls of fear.

But when Moreau orders one of his creatures to murder an outsider, a man like Moreau, the creatures put together the pieces of the puzzle.  Moreau ordered one of them to spill blood, so, “the law is no more!”  And a man like Moreau was killed, so Moreau could be killed!  And so, dragging Moreau into the House of Pain for some unskilled surgery of their own was now on the agenda!

The subplot where Moreau tried to get an outside human male to fall in love with the “panther woman” who was his most successful attempt at mimicking the human form is somewhat interesting.  And the antics of the sailors who show up in a couple of sections of the story provide a slight amount of comedy.  But the real story is Moreau playing god to his creations and the inevitable revenge reaction destroying him.  H. G. Wells was a good writer so it is no surprise that his story is somewhat fun to watch in its first Hollywood portrayal.  I very much enjoyed rewatching Island of Lost Souls.  And I assume that Charles Laughton is the main reason.  Now, without a doubt he hammed up his portrayal as needed.  But his Moreau is a successful portrayal of the mad scientist.  Kudos to Mr. Laughton.

 

October Viewing – 1

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I was thinking of watching the Vance/Walz debate.  But I just didn’t feel like it.  Around ten o’clock I was browsing my X timeline and noticed that several of the people I follow were saying that Vance was doing serious damage to Walz.  But I just couldn’t be bothered.  I figure by tomorrow if he really did serious damage to Walz there would be all kinds of highlights to watch and if there weren’t I would have saved myself a lot of annoyance.  Instead, I decided to celebrate October by watching some Universal Horror.  I watched Dracula.

Now. I’ve seen that movie dozens of times.  I know it inside and out.  But what I did was to try to watch it as if for the first time.  I divorced it from the familiarity that renders it just a collection stereotypes and associated memories and tried to look at the images and the dialog to see how they strike me as cinema.

And it’s a funny thing.  It occurred to me that an audience that was used to cowboy movies and had only in the last year or so begun watching talking pictures might have been very excited by the visuals and the scenes portrayed.  The opening scene of Renfield travelling by horse drawn carriage into the Carpathian Mountains was very atmospheric.  The backdrops of the mountains were very well done.  And Castle Dracula was equally well done.

Renfield’s interview with Dracula was just the right combination of comedy and menace.  I will confess that I never found Bela Lugosi menacing enough to make his Dracula compelling but Van Helsing’s scientific vampire hunter is highly entertaining.  When he confronts Dracula with the mirror and later during his conversation with the vampire where he promises to find Dracula’s coffin and drive a stake through his heart, we are witnessing the central tension of the movie.  Everyone else is blind to how their neighbor from Transylvania is the nexus for all of the death and inexplicable occurrences.  But once Van Helsing shows up with his wolfbane and crucifixes even Renfield starts talking sense.

And that brings me to another aspect of the movie.  The humor between Renfield and the psychiatric orderly Martin is hammy and over the top but provides a very enjoyable counterpoint to the wildly unrealistic dramatic story.  The working-class manners and behavior of Martin and the rest of the staff contrasts to the more aristocratic manners and speech of the Sewards and their friends.  Even the madman Renfield is humanized in his dealings with Martin who affectionately calls Renfield “old fly-eater” and seems genuinely friendly to this vampire-in-training.

The final climax of Van Helsing and Harker storming Carfax Abbey and finishing off Dracula with the promised stake through the heart is a little underwhelming but I think that at the time and at first view Dracula must have been an exciting motion picture that thrilled audiences, especially young women who would have personalized the erotic danger that Dracula was meant to imply for them.

Now of course, for us, after nearly a century of time in which the movie has accreted mostly comical connections to everything from breakfast cereals to Sesame Street characters it’s hard to imagine real fear associated with this film.  But looked at as a piece of art it can definitely be enjoyed for what it is.  There is still blood left in the movie.  And as Bela reminds us, “The blood is the life.”

Update:

War Pig commented:

To the contrary, since I first saw it as a child, Lugosi was the perfect Dracula. While Christopher Lee was more intimidating, Lugosi was the epitome of the Count. Suave, debonaire, charming, intelligent, faultless evening dress which he wore with dignity and aplomb. So smooth and with the east European accent. Yet he was also the very image of evil when he went for the throat.

Mom and my sister sat and watched it with rapt attention. The vampire is, of course, the ultimate Casanova, as well.

 

Congratulations to Matt Walsh as His Movie Passes $10MM

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Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire have their first commercially successful documentary movie.  “Am I Racist” starring Walsh was made on a budget of $3MM.  Yesterday it passed the $10MM mark.  For any movie tripling your budget in sales is considered a success.  But for a documentary it’s a miracle.

Let’s hope this is the first of many profitable movies for the Daily Wire and every other conservative outfit that combines entertainment value and reality.

Long, Long Ago, In a Franchise Far, Far Away

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In the late 1970s a movie studio green lit a modest science fiction/fantasy film called Star Wars that made so much money that the studio and the creative team that owned the rights to it made billions of dollars from sequels, toys and every other monetizing scheme imaginable.

And why did all this happen?  Well, accidentally or on purpose the makers of that original movie tapped into the primal desire of young men (and it was almost exclusively boys and young men) to watch an exciting updating of the young apprentice’s journey to becoming a hero.  Whether it’s young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone or the Marine recruit proving himself on the battlefield of Iwo Jima or the hot shot pilot in a Top Gun movie, every boy (and man) enjoys the visceral experience of seeing the hero prove himself in combat and if he’s lucky enough win the heart of the princess (or in less monarchical times, some pretty girl in general).

And 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm rode that male archetypal fantasy to fame and fortune for almost forty years.  But in 2015 Lucasfilm (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney) launched the seventh film in the Star Wars franchise, “The Force Awakens” and drove a stake right through the heart of that golden goose.  With Kathleen Kennedy producing and J. J. Abrams directing all of that male-oriented story-telling was jettisoned and replaced with “girl-power.”  Kathleen Kennedy gleefully proclaimed that “The Force is estrogen.”  Well, “The Force Awakens” made billions.  Of course, it would have made billions even if it was just an empty screen for two hours.  That’s how much good will had been built up over the course of decades for the franchise.  But the following two films and the various spin-offs like the recent television series “The Acolyte” have completely dried up those wells of enthusiasm that had been produced previously.  The last couple of movies have lost money, in fact hundreds of millions of dollars.  And now the folks at Disney have cancelled a number of Star Wars productions and they’re trying to figure out how to fix their dying franchise.

Well Bob Iger, I’ve got an idea.  First off fire Kathleen Kennedy and all the people who decided to create the monstrosities that caused all this damage.  In fact, don’t just fire them but publicly abuse them verbally and force them to apologize for their heinous sins.  Then make a short trailer video for the next film.

It will consist of all the most egregious scenes from all of the horrible movies you released since 2015 in short snippets in a nightmare montage.  Then we switch to Han Solo in bed waking up from a nightmare and expressing relief that the whole thing was a bad dream.  He then gets up and joins his son, wife and brother-in-law at breakfast and he tells them some of the details of his nightmare and they all have a big laugh at how ridiculous it all sounds.

Then you get some good writers to reread the Arthurian legends and the pulp science fiction stories from the 1930s and you start making money again.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) – A Movie Review

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(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to recommendation section at the bottom to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

“Sweet Smell of Success” was produced by Burt Lancaster’s independent production company and starred Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker a New York City newspaper entertainment columnist whose influence allows him to make and break careers of entertainers, politicians and anyone who displeases him.  Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco; a cynical and morally bankrupt press agent who depends on Hunsecker’s largesse to survive in the shark infested waters of New York City’s entertainment industry.

Falco is being punished by Hunsecker because he hasn’t been able to break up a love affair between Hunsecker’s sister Susan and a jazz musician named Steve Dallas (played by Martin Milner).  And most of the plot revolves around Falco and Hunsecker’s efforts to smear Dallas’s name and/or have him arrested for marijuana possession.

Hunsecker’s influence with a brutal NYPD police detective named Kello eventually leads to Dallas being arrested on a trumped up marijuana possession charge, assaulted by Kello and hospitalized.  Near the end of the movie Susan rebels at the plot that her brother and Falco concocted against Dallas and she tells Falco that Hunsecker will blame him after she commits suicide by jumping out the window of her Manhattan penthouse.  Falco stops her from jumping but when Hunsecker walks in on them and sees his sister in her underwear with Falco he believes her when she says that Falco had attempted to sexually assault her.  He slaps Falco several times.  At that point Falco reveals to Susan that it was Hunsecker who hired Kello to beat Dallas.  As revenge Hunsecker calls Kello and reports that Falco framed Dallas and he should be arrested for this offense.  But Susan finally rebels against her brother and walks out of their apartment to join Dallas.  When Falco tries to flee the apartment, he is met on the street by Kello who beats him mercilessly and drags him away to jail.

Recommendation

This is one hell of a strange movie.  Lancaster and Curtis spend the whole movie bantering back and forth at each other with a rapid-fire dialog composed of some kind of 1950’s beatnik/hipster patois, or at least what someone in Hollywood thought beatnik/hipster patois should sound like.  It’s truly bizarre.  Such lines as:

”I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

“You’re blind, Mr. Magoo. This is the crossroads for me. I won’t get Kello. Not for a lifetime pass to the Polo Grounds. Not if you serve me Cleopatra on a plate.”

“You’re dead son. Get buried.”

“Sidney, this syrup you’re giving out with… you pour over waffles, not J. J. Hunsecker.”

And as you could imagine this is an incredibly downbeat movie.  Almost none of the characters are admirable or even likable.  The ending is something of a redemption for Susan but hardly worth the ordeal of swimming through J.J’s and Falco’s cesspool.  I can’t recommend this movie to most people.

I’ll confess that about once a year I want to watch this movie, sort of as a joke.  Maybe I just kind of like Falco saying, “You’re blind, Mr. Magoo.”  And there are many people who admire this movie for its gritty portrayal of something or other.  I’ll leave it to the individual to decide.

Stage Fright (1950) – A Movie Review

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Stage Fright is an Alfred Hitchcock suspense movie.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Jane Wyman is Eve Gill an acting student who is in love with Jonathan Cooper.  Unfortunately, Jonathan is in love with Charlotte Inwood (played by Marlene Dietrich) who unfortunately is married to a man she doesn’t love.  One day Jonathan comes to Eve and asks her for her help.  He tells her that Charlotte came to his apartment in a dress covered in blood and told him that her husband started beating her and in self-defense she killed him with a fireplace poker.  She asked Jonathan to go back to the scene of the crime to get her a clean dress.  But while he was there the maid saw him and called the police.

Jonathan asks Eve to help him hide from the police until he can figure out how to escape from the trap, he has found himself in.  Eve enlists the help of her father “Commodore Gill (played by Alistair Sim) who owns a boat that Jonathan hides on.  Meanwhile Eve goes to Charlotte’s home to see what the police are up to.  While snooping around she meets police detective Wilfred Smith (Michael Wilding) who happens to be working on the case and she proceeds to fall in love with him.  She also manages to insinuate herself into Charlotte’s household by impersonating a relative of Charlotte’s maid and theatrical dresser.  In this role she discovers that Charlotte has no intention of disrupting her life but instead expects Jonathan to flee the country permanently.,

Meanwhile Jonathan sneaks into the theater where Charlotte is playing and confronts her.  She explains that she will not be joining him in permanent exile and he reacts by saying he has the bloody dress and he might give it to the police if he has to.

Finally, Eve and her father arrange for the police to eavesdrop on Charlotte being confronted about the bloody dress in a fake blackmail conversation with Eve.  But in the conversation Charlotte states that even though there is blood on her dress Jonathan murdered her husband in front of her.  Meanwhile Inspector Smith has captured Jonathan at Eve’s home and he has been brought to the theater for questioning.  He breaks loose and Eve helps him hide in the theater basement with her.  While this is going on Smith reveals to Eve’s father that Jonathan is actually a dangerous maniac who has killed before.

While hiding with Eve, Jonathan confesses to Eve that he did indeed murder Charlotte’s husband more or less at her instigation.  He also admits that he previously killed another man, but was cleared based on self-defense grounds.  And then he hinted that he would be executed for this new murder unless he was thought completely insane.  And the only way he could think of convincing a jury of that would be if he killed another person for no reason at all.  Now Eve sensed her personal danger and she tells Jonathan that they must escape the building before the police got down into the basement.  And as he walked through a door ahead of her, she locked it behind him and screamed to the police to capture Jonathan.  Jonathan was now on the stage and trying to escape so the police dropped the heavy fire curtain (actually a heavy metal sheet) to trap him but just as he reached the edge of the stage he tripped and the steel curtain crushed and killed him.

Great Caesar’s ghost, I’m exhausted just reciting that plot.  And I left several subplots and characters out.  There’s Charlotte’s manager that she’s having an affair with and Charlotte’s mother who is estranged from her father and Eve’s friends, one of whom is played by Hitchcock’s daughter, and on and on.  It’s a bit much.  Plus, Dietrich sings several songs and that maybe okay for her French song but the one in English wasn’t so good.  Without a doubt this movie is very odd.  I enjoyed it, maybe because of its oddity, but I tend to doubt most people are like me.  Let’s say this is for Hitchcock fans who like the theatrical.