Who Doesn"t?

 

 (imdb)

I LOVE TROUBLE-1948-PI Stuart Bailey (Franchot Tone) investigates the past of the wife named Jane (Lyn Merrick) of a "public figure" (Tom Powers). It leads to a night club run by Keller (Stephan Geray) & Reno (John Ireland). After he's threatened and slugged, Bailey meets a woman (Janet Blair) who says she's Jane's sister. This leads Jim to Caprlllo (Eduardo Ciannelli) and young wife Ligia (Janis Carter) and their shady chauffeur Martin (Donald Curtis). Later he's beaten up by Reno and his henchman (Raymond Burr). Bailey escapes their clutches and suspects Jane of murdering an ex-con cook (Sid Tomack). Glenda Farrell is his secretary and Adele Jergens is a helpful showgirl. 

OK typical film noir with Tone giving a good performance as the cool PI. Screenwriter Roy Huggins later created the TV show “77 Sunset Strip”. This is one of the last movies made by director S. Sylvan Simon (ABBOTT & COSTELLO IN HOLLYWOOD (1945)) who died suddenly of a heart attack in 1951.

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George Pal and The Moon

DESTINATION MOON-1950-In the near future a rocket is set to the moon but doesn't make it. Dr. Cargraves (Warner Anderson) suspects sab-otage. Two years later he and the designer of the rocket's engine General Thayer (Tom Pow-ers) convince aircraft honcho Jim Barnes (John Archer) to help gather private investors to back their new design (called “Luna”). However, public outcry over radioactivity leakage seems to doom the project. Barnes decides to circum-⁹vent all the red tape and take off in 17 hours! He, Cargraves and Thayer enlisted skeptical Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) as the radio operator (“It'll never budge”). After some quick goodbyes and just beating a court order not allowing them to go, they take off and head to the moon. All goes well despite trouble with g-force and weightlessness until it's learned Sweeney put too much grease on an antenna and it has to be fixed. So three of them take a space walk on the side of the ship. Thayer is almost sent adrift in space but Barnes saves him with a pretty clever use of an oxygen tank. The group make a precarious moon landing and two of them go out and do some exploring. After everyone treks around Barnes is informed that they wasted too much fuel on their botched up landing and may not have enough to take off. They have to get rid of all non-essential equipment but it's not enough. One of them must stay behind! While the three scientists argue which one of them should be sacrificed. Joe takes it upon himself to be the one but Barnes' quick thinking saves Joe and they all return to Earth heroes. Woody Woodpecker is seen in a film explaining how going to the moon is possible.

Produced by George Pal, DESTINATION MOON is a serious early look into how space travel would be. Its level headed script doesn't go over the top in speculation and employs more science than fiction. This is probably due to the fact that it's based on a novel by the legendary Robert Heinlein who also co-wrote the screenplay! It should be boring but director (and former actor) Irving Pichel puts a lot of good SFX to use and doesn't let all the scientific talk bog down the story line.  

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