Oswald

THE TRIAL OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD-1964-In this black & white "what if" production Lee Harvey Oswald is put on trial for the killing of President Kennedy. The defense wants to prove Oswald is insane. The audience is the jury. It's on par with writer/director Larry Buchanan's other serious work HIGH YELLOW. There's a few factual errors. This should be a boring piece of shit but it's actually kind of fascinating. Conspiracy enthusiast Buchanan flubs on some of the facts but it's pretty straight forward. 

Buchanan regulars Annabelle Weenick, Bill McGhee and Bill Thurman all play witnesses. Filmed in Dallas and released less than 5 months after the real assassination. Of course about 17 years later there was a similar TV movie made with an all star cast with Annabelle Weenick (aka Ann McAdams) as Oswald's mom!

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Pre-Perry Burr

PLEASE MURDER ME-1956-Interesting film noirish murder mystery. Attorney Craig Carlson (Raymond Burr) breaks some bad news to his best friend Joe Leeds (Dick Foran), a guy who even saved Carlson's life during WW2. He's is in love with Joe's wife Myra (Angela Landsbury) and she's going to divorce hubby and marry his best bud. Joe takes in all in stride. A few days later he seems to make a decision, writes a letter and asks a friend to mail it. He then goes and visits his wife. A shot rings out and the next morning hubby is dead and Myra is charged with his murder even though she claims self defense. Carlson defends her and she gets off but then he discovers the mysterious letter Joe wrote and Carlson begins to see the error of his ways. 

Clever film also features John Dehner as the prosecuting attorney and Denver Pyle as a detective. England born Director Peter Godfrey was a former actor and by this time was mostly directing for TV.

Burr became famous the next year when he starred in the long running TV show PERRY MASON.

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The Hilton Sisters

CHAINED FOR LIFE-1952-The stars of this low budget morality tale are The Hilton Sisters, Daisy and Violet, the real life Siamese twins who were in Tod Browning's FREAKS way back in 1932.

In CHAINED they basically play themselves but are called Vivian and Dorothy, the famous Hamilton sisters as this is not really a biography. It begins with one of the sisters being charged with murder. They tell their life story to the judge and jury in flashbacks. They sing a song and are signed to a Vaudeville act. Their manager Hinkley (Allen Jenkins) cooks up a phony romance angle with Dorothy and the greasy Andre (Mario Laval), a target shooter for the publicity. Unfortunately Dorothy really falls for the gold digging Andre which ticks off not only sister Vivian but Andre's girlfriend Renee' (Patricia Wright). He seems sincere at first, even singing a (terrible) song over the phone! But he's two timing her. Dorothy has a weird dream where she is no longer attached to her sister and she and Andre dance in a garden (this scene is well done with a double). They go see Dr. Thomas so they can have an operation and be separated but after much soul searching decide against it. Instead Dorothy decides to marry Andre but 27 states deny them a license! A blind minster finally helps them. Later it's discovered Vivian killed Andre. This causes a courtroom dilemma for the judge.

I'm sure it was a unique feature for the time but very cheaply made and the acting (except for Jenkins) and direction are atrocious. The director Harry L. Fraser also made THE WHITE GORILLA.

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