The Girl in Black Stockings (1957, Howard Kotch) *1/2

    I was hoping for a gem of a B movie, when I  saw that it was “A Bel-Air Production”. A studio whose logo was vaguely reminiscent of a poverty row studio that was primarily responsible for movies for the Drive-In market of the 50's. This one comes with a stellar cast: Lex (Tarzan) Barker in the lead as an attorney on vacation who stumbles upon a horribly disfigured murder     victim. As these kinds of movies       have it he reports the murder and sticks       around to solve it. In this case  T.V. character actor superstar      John Dehner (12 “Gunsmoke” episodes alone) is       the dogged Sheriff in whose territory the victim is       found. Much of the rest   plays out in and around a       remote lodge where every guest is a suspect – but the  guy who runs it   (Ron Randell; also a      veteran of TV) is  the guy you want to watch.       Too slow to be really   effective as a thriller      but there is a nice assortment of actors to      watch as you     wind through the process of unraveling the mystery: Anne Bancroft       (outstanding as always she shines   through the production and makes    the other actors      work for it), Mamie Van Doren, Marie Windsor,     John Holland and Dan Blocker.  One more,      someone I was certain I had seen many      times named Gerald Frank – as it happens     he only has 2 film credits and 1 for TV. He plays Frankie of whom it is said, “poor (Frankie)     had all the big man scared out of him.” Lastly     it is eerily evocative (???) in its prediction of Hitchcock’s Psycho; in it’s straight-up presentation (not docudrama but not pulp either) and emotionless performances. But such a comparison is an anachronism as “Black Stockings” precedes Psycho as both a movie and novel. 

Star Wars, Trenchantly Served -- The End of Hollywood's Golden Age

Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962, Robert Aldrich) 

Bette Davis (Baby Jane Hudson) was 54 when she made Baby Jane and her motion picture career had pretty much ground to a halt (Frank Capra’s disappointed remake of his Lady For A Day – Pocket Full of Miracles being a rare exception) and was mostly doing guest shots on television. She even filled in for Raymond Burr on "Perry Mason" when he was having a dispute with CBS. Her nemesis (as Hollywood legend has it) Joan Crawford (Blanche Hudson) was 57 and pretty much suffering the same fate. Both Oscar winners, but no longer box-office draws took on what could have been a real freak show of a movie playing old time child starts who live alone in an old Hollywood mansion forgotten by their once adoring public; not exactly art imitating life, but not far from it. Bette Davis went on to win her last AA nomination and Crawford was not nominated, but she had the last laugh when Anne Bancroft won the Oscar that year (The Miracle Worker) and in her absence Joan accepted the award at the ceremony. The movie was an enormous success and ushered in a wave of old time movie stars making horror pictures (in fact Bette teamed with Aldrich two years later to make Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte along with Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotten). Crawford’s career basically consisted of horror fare going forward -- Strait-Jacket 1964, I Saw What You Did 1965 and Berserk 1967 to name a few. A relative newcomer, Victor Buono successfully chews the scenery with the two grand dames and even steals a few scenes as a creepy
conman after their money. Buono collected his single Oscar nod for Best Supporting Actor and the eye of Frank Sinatra. Frank saw the character Buono played, a creepy lug of a Baby Hughey man and cast him in all the parts that had been set for Peter Lawford in future Rat Pack movies (Robin and the Seven Hoods and Four For Texas). Something that no doubt rubbed salt in Peter’s wounds after his falling out with Frank. Robert Aldrich was also on the career skids compared to his glory in the mid 1950’s -- Vera Cruz (1954), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955) and Autumn Leaves (1956) also with Crawford. Aldrich continues to be an underrated director, also helming The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and The Dirty Dozen (1967), before trying to reinvent himself with The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968). What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? scared the hell out of me when I was a kid and today it still creeps me out. Curious fact: Barbara Merrill plays the daughter of the pesky woman who lives next door to the Hudson’s, in real life she was Bette’s daughter.

The Most Dangerous Game Runs For the Sun

Run From the Sun (1956, Roy Boulting) **1/2

Richard Widmark plays a Hemingwayesque writer, rogue and adventurer (with the requisite death wish, plane crashes and all) living in a self-imposed Central American exile; eating, drinking, fishing and whoring. Like Hemingway he suffers from writer’s block (he thinks all his current writing is “phony” – as opposed when he knew he could write because “he knew the truth, he lived it, he felt it.”) and too much booze. Jane Greer shows up looking for him (and trying not to be obvious; though as is later pointed out “she is trying to take him for a ride”); kind of a role reversal from her picture of ten years earlier (Out of the Past) when she was self-exiled in Mexico and Robert Mitchum is sent to look for her. But her character provides the grist for the story and aims to manipulate Widmark all the way. Despite it’s sun drenched Technicolor and widescreen presentation the movie (SuperScope 235), primarily due to its script, pales in comparison with Out of the Past. But then again this isn’t a noir thriller; it’s more of an adventure picture. While canoodling during a flying vacation Widmark and Greer crash land and find themselves houseguests of Trevor Howard (still a new face in Hollywood) in a scenario first seen in 1932 with The Most Dangerous Game the hunter and the prey and all of that + plus crypto-Nazis. That’s when the plot gets interesting and timely for it’s day. Saturday morning fun, but don’t expect anything more special than a “B-movie” with superior talent in front of the camera.  Best line “What do you know about truth or honesty, doing it the hard way without your big brown eyes to get ahead, well don’t give yourself too much credit anyone of those four eyed monsters from your nosy little magazine might have done just as well. I was ready. Do you do this for money or do you get a build out of prying into other people’s lives? The new kind of journalism, ‘let’s play peeping Tom’.” Saturday B-movie all the way, and I am loving it.