Impact Zone

 

 (themoviedatabase.org)

IMPACT-1949-Irene (Helen Walker), the wife of industrialist Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy) plots with her boyfriend to murder her husband. Things go wrong. The boyfriend clouts Williams with a jack and throws his body into a ravine. He's promptly killed in a fiery crash. Now everyone (including Irene)) thinks he's dead. The boyfriend hinted that he and Irene were in cahoots and after a phone call Williams knows she is behind it. A police officer Quincey (Charles Colburn) investigates and suspects Irene of murder. Meanwhile, in Idaho, Williams meets female mechanic Marsha (Ella Raines). He fixes cars while Irene is arrested for his murder. Later he goes back to San Francisco and admits he is still alive. Bad move. He winds up on trial for murder. His housekeeper is Anna May Wong and her uncle is Phillips Ahn. Also with Art Baker, William Wright, Mae Marsh, Jason Robards Sr., Erskine Sanford, Ben Welden, Joe Kirk, Thomas B. Henry and gossip columnist Sheilah Graham as herself. 

The story is good up to a point but when Williams returns and reveals himself it kind of goes downhill to a unsatisfying conclusion. Director Arthur Lubin had directed Abbott & Costello's first 5 movies, then the big color remake of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1943) and later THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES (1946). After IMPACT, he directed most of the “Francis, The Talking Mule” series.

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Phantom Take 2

 

 (the movie database)

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA-1943-Technicolor remake of the Lon Chaney silent classic from Universal studios (who also made the first one).

Claudin (Claude Rains), violinist with the Paris Opera, is fired by his conductor because he can't play like he used to. His boss and his bitchy landlady, think he has a lot of money but in reality, he's spent all his dough secretly providing lessons for opera singer Christine Dubois (Suzanna Foster) from Signor Ferrati (Leo Carrillo). When he hears Franz Liszt (Fritz Leiber) playing his concerto he thinks a guy named Pleyel (Miles Mander) has stolen his music. He kills Pleyel but his floozy student throws acid in the composer's face. He escapes into the sewers. 

Meanwhile, Christine is pursued by singer Anotole Garron (Nelson Eddy) and Inspector Raoul Daubert (Edgar Barrier). Claudin sneaks around the opera house in a mask and cloak and listens to Christine sing after he drugs lead diva Biancarolli (Jane Farrar) so Christine can take her place. When she recovers, Claudin kills her. However, to set a trap for the phantom, the inspector has another singer replace Christine and plans to have Liszt play one of Claudin's compositions. The phantom doesn't like it and has the huge chandelier fall on the crowd. In the panic, Claudin snatches Christine. The poor misunderstood phantom dies when the sewer walls collapse but not before Christine unmasks him. Also with J. Edward Bromberg, Fritz Feld, Steven Geray and Hume Cronyn.

There is too much music and not enough phantom in this pretty lavish production directed by Arthur Lubin who directed the first five Abbott & Costello movies before this. It got mixed reviews but was a box office hit. A sequel was planned but it was never made due to the unavailability of Rains. The script was later re-worked to become THE CLIMAX starring Foster and Boris Karloff (who was actually the first choice to play The Phantom).  

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Sondergaard and Hatton

 

THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK-1946-Jean Kingsley (Brenda Joyce) returns to her hometown after a career somewhere else to be a companion to Zenobia (Gale Sondergaard), a blind woman who lives in a dark house with her mute manservant Mario (Rondo Hatton). 

Zenobia seems a pleasant sort while Mario seems rather sinister. One night while Jean is asleep (obviously drugged) Zenobia comes to Jean's bedroom and draws blood from her. She then meets Mario in the basement where she feeds her carnivorous plants with Jean's blood! After some cattle and a little girl die, Z draws more blood from Jean. 

From a talk between her and Mario we learn Z killed the other girls who came to work for her. She promises Mario, who's sweet on Jean, that Jean won't die. Hal (Kirby Grant), a guy who once asked Jean to marry him, brings agricultural agent Moore (Milburn Stone) in to investigate. Later Jean discovers Z isn't blind and she's making the poison that's killing the cattle. Her mad plan is to drive all the farmers away and buy up all the land that once belonged to her family. In a frenzied effort to burn all the plants when suspicion is thrown on her, she and Mario die. Hal rescues Jean. 

This Universal quickie is like a TV movie running less than an hour. Since it was not a hit, some critics feel this movie signaled the end of the classic Universal Pictures horror run. 

Director Arthur Lubin directed 5 of Abbott & Costello's classic Universal films and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA remake with Claude Rains. Later did most most of the "Francis The Talking Mule" series and in the '60's made THE INCREDIBLE MR. LIMPET. 

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Bud & Lou

HOLD THAT GHOST-1941-Classic Abbott & Costello haunted house comedy has Bud & Lou (sometimes referred as “the boys”) as incompetent waiters Chuck and Ferdy who are fired from their jobs. While working at a gas station they wind up in the backseat of a mobster Moose Mattson's car just as he's “bumped off”. Since his will stated that who was ever with him when he died would inherit all he had the duo inherit his rundown inn. Another gangster Smitty (Marc Lawrence; later in the duo's HIT THE ICE) believes the mobster's fortune is hidden somewhere in the place and plans to do away with Chuck and Ferdy who are accompanied by a radio actress (Joan Davis), a nerdy doctor (Richard Carlson) and a blonde waitress (Evelyn Ankers) after their driver strands them all together. Though the team does a few routines, a highlight is a kind of violent dance between Costello and Davis.

 Director Arthur Lubin made the first five Abbott and Costello comedies and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA remake with Claude Rains. Later he did several in the FRANCIS THE TALKING MULE series. Shemp Howard appears as a soda jerk and the Andrews Sisters show up to sing at the end. 

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Herman's Hermits

HOLD ON!-1966-Herman's Hermits are a hit in America! They disguise themselves as policemen to get away from screaming fans. Somehow NASA winds up naming one of there rockets after the group. A government employee (Herbert Anderson) investigates the band because the State Department doesn't like the idea of naming a US rocket after an English pop band. Herman falls for American Louisa (Shelly Fabares) and he has a daydream about being a knight in shining armor. There's also a fantasy sequence where Herman dreams he and his manager (Bernard Fox) are astronauts.

This dumb but harmless Sam Katzman produced musical comedy (obviously trying to emulate The Beatles' HELP!, from a year early; both titles end with exclamation points...) also features a side plot about an actress (Sue Ane Langdon) trying to get a publicity shot with Herman. (Character actor Mickey Deems is her agent) In the end Anderson decides “the lads” are just like any other teenagers.

While no Beatles Herman's Hermits had some pretty nice songs (although almost none are in this!). Ray Kellogg (director of THE KILLER SHREWS) and John Hart (who'd played The Lone Ranger on TV for a season or two) play detectives. HOLD ON was written by B-movie Robert Kent under the pseudonym James B. Gordon. He wrote THE FASTEST GUITAR ALIVE (with Roy Orbison) the next year. Director Arthur Lubin had work on several Abbott & Costello movies in the early '40's. Then on the Francis the Talking Mule series. By this time he was doing a lot of TV. The title song and several others were penned by PF Sloane who died this passed November.

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Karloff & Lugosi

BLACK FRIDAY-This is the last of the Universal Pictures "team up" of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. It's more a crime revenge drama with horror overtones. Dr. Ernest Sovac (Karloff) faces death by electric chair. Before he goes he gives his notebook to a news reporter (James Craig) and we learn through flashbacks how Sovac became a murderer.

When his good friend Prof. George Kingsley (Stanley Ridges) is involved in a near fatal car accident, Sovac uses a secret, illegal brain transplant to save him. Unfortunately, Sovac uses the brain of a violent gangster Red Cannon (also Ridges). Everything goes well but when Sovac learns that Cannon stashed away half a million dollars he's anxious to get his hands on it so he can "continue my research". He takes Kingsley to NYC hoping familiar surrounding will jog his memory (they even stay in Cannon's old hotel room). The two go to a nightclub where Cannon's former lover Sunny (Anne Nagel) sings. They also run across Cannon's old gang members now led by Marley (Bela Lugosi). They are also looking for the hidden loot. Eventually, the Cannon persona gets out of control and starts killing in revenge but reverts back to Kingsley just in time before the police arrive. He and Sovac return to their sleepy town and seem to live fairly normally till a siren brings the Cannon personality back. He attacks Sovac's daughter (Anne Gwynne) and Sovac is forced to shoot him (he reverts back to Kingsley and dies).

BLACK FRIDAY is often ran down by detractors as not being a horror film but the real thing wrong with it seems to be that while Lugosi does get second billing, he's hardy in it at all (and badly miscast). He doesn't even have any scenes with Karloff! It's said Karloff (who smokes a lot!) was originally cast in the Kingsley role with Lugosi as his friend Sovac but his version of the Red Cannon gangster wasn't effective enough so Karloff was given the Sovac role and character actor Sidney Ridges replaced Karloff and he makes the most of the role giving quite a performance first as the timid bookish Kingsley and then as the ruthless revenge bound killer Cannon. (Some Jack P. Pierce make-up helps though). Lugosi was given the only other male role of any substance, that of Cannon's former second in command.

Director Arthur Lubin would make BUCK PRIVATES with Abbott and Costello the next year and go on to make many of the team's most famous movies (and many of the FRANCIS THE TALKING MULE series) Co-screenwriter Curt Siodmak would write the similar theme novel "Donovan's Brain" in 1942 and would work on many of the Universal horror film s of the '40's.

BLACK FRIDAY is fairly well done if improbable little story of which the only real failing is Lugosi wasted in a minor role.

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Fish Tale

THE INCREDIBLE MR. LIMPET-1964-This was the first feature movie Don Knotts made after leaving THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. It's a mixture live action and animation and aimed at both kids and adults. The former Barney Fife plays Henry Limpet, a meek bookkeeper with a nagging wife (Carole Cook) and an abnormal love of fish. It's the early '40's and he's come up 4-F in the draft. When his obnoxious brother in law (Jack Weston) comes home on leave from the navy he gets even more unhappy. When they go to Coney Island Limpet falls in the water and somehow becomes a (animated) fish (with glasses). He meets Crusty the Crab (voice of Paul Frees) and falls in love with Ladyfish (voice of Elizabeth Macrae). Eventually he helps The Navy sink Nazi U-boats.

Despite that premise it's harmless fun but it really feels like the first installment of a continuing series as the whole movie is basically a flashback and it ends with Chief Naval officer Andrew Duggan and Weston looking for Limpet in the present day. However no sequel was ever made. One can only wonder what a remake could be like...(one was announced at the time of this writing). Some songs are also featured.

Larry Keating plays another Naval officer and Oscar Beregi is Nazi captain. Director Arthur Lubin made the first 5 movies with Abbott & Costello, BLACK FRIDAY with Karloff & Lugosi, the 1943 version of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, several in the Francis, the talking mule series and lots of TV (including MR. ED!).

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