My Little Chickadee.

Review #2530: My Little Chickadee.

Cast: 

Mae West (Flower Belle Lee), W. C. Fields (Cuthbert J. Twillie), Joseph Calleia (Jeff Badger/Masked Bandit), Dick Foran (Wayne Carter), Margaret Hamilton (Mrs. Gideon), Donald Meek (Amos Budge), Ruth Donnelly (Aunt Lou), Willard Robertson (Uncle John), Fuzzy Knight (Cousin Zeb), George Moran (Milton), Anne Nagel (Miss Foster), and William B. Davidson (Sheriff) Directed by Edward F. Cline (#877 - Three Ages, #1354 - The Bank Dick, #2483 - You Can't Cheat an Honest Man)

Review: 

What better way to go through another W. C. Fields movie than one with a bit of a twist? Apparently, one impetus for the film was the relative popularity of 1939's Destry Rides Again, otherwise known as the Western comedy with Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart that happened to deal with a new sheriff in town. Obviously why not go to the wheelbarrow and pair Fields, who had been in the moderately interesting You Can't Cheat an Honest Man the previous year...with West, who was looking for a comeback after her association with Paramount Pictures ended (you might remember that her sexually suggestive humor was made harder with growing censorship) with Every Day's a Holiday (1937). West claimed in later times that she wrote the majority of the film, while Fields was behind the bar scene and select parts of the dialogue, as one does when favoring ad-libbing. Used to being the big stars, they did not warm up to each other and West apparently never wanted to talk to or talk about Fields again. Naturally, there were still lines cut from the final release due, to, well, censors (hey, if you think people sound weird about sex or people, consider the dorks of yesteryear). This was the third of five movies that Fields made with Cline, with the others being Million Dollar Legs (1932), the aforementioned Honest Man, The Bank Dick (made and released the same year), and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). The movie was a fairly decent hit with audiences. As for West, her next film came with The Heat's On (1943) for Columbia Pictures, which went so well that she promptly didn't make a film again until Myra Breckinridge (1970), instead focusing her time with nightclubs, stage shows, and Broadway revivals* for years on end. 

It is the type of movie that looks great.... on paper. It merrily moves along for 84 minutes with a few good jokes and some interesting ideas of playing around with the Western with a goofy sheriff stumbling onto the scene. And then you realize, good god, this really did need just one big star and not two. Either focus on the zippy charm of West (remember that she was in her late forties doing this film and be astonished) or go along with the flim-flam world of Fields and his type of lines, because it basically feels like an episodic movie in search of more. You get your moments in the bar and with Fields yammering the huckster line, don't get that twisted. The sequence where West holds her own during a Native American attack* (done right before the "marriage" scene) certainly gives off more of an impression than most of what Fields does here, where he isn't even present during a schooling sequence involving shaping the lads up (that goes to West, as one does). Even the love triangle between West, Calleia, and Foran doesn't have the tinge of fire that you might hope for in generating anything other than a casual laugh in the circumstances that West glides along to (i.e. not caring about what one might think and moving to the beat of her own drum). At least folks like Hamilton feel right at home in busybody silliness. By the time the movie lumbers to its conclusion, you almost wish the movie had actually started right where it ended in seeing what life might be for West in the "maybe I'll choose today or tomorrow" phase with men and a town like this. As a whole, even a movie that probably does not live up to all of the potential that you would think would come from such a neat pair up is still a good enough movie to go along with, regardless of how many films you've circled around with Fields or West.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

*And then there was Sextette (1978), the one loosely based on her own play that saw West, now in her eighties, play a sex symbol with an ensemble cast. She died in 1980 at the age of 87.

*The tiniest bit of gripes not exactly related to the movie. I never understood the discourse about how to refer to Native Americans past, say, the year 1980. What the hell is the argument to call them Indians when there are people from India? I know about the "Indigenous" word but, you know, no.

Supernatural (1933).

Review #2292: Supernatural.

Cast: 

Carole Lombard (Roma Courtney), Alan Dinehart (Paul Bavian), Vivienne Osborne (Ruth Rogen), Randolph Scott (Grant Wilson), H. B. Warner (Dr. Carl Houston), Beryl Mercer (Madam Gourjan), William Farnum (Nick "Nicky" Hammond), and Willard Robertson (Prison Warden) Directed by Victor Halperin (#274 - White Zombie)

Review: 

"I don't believe in fear, violence, and horror, so why traffic in them?"

Be honest: how many of you can name a horror film in the 1930s that wasn't made by Universal? Sure, there are a handful, such as Victor Halperin's attempts at horror filmmaking in the 1930s, starting with 1932's White Zombie, the cheapie movie that actually used Universal sets. It was Victor Halperin's ninth film as a feature director, having started in 1924 with a variety of dramas and some crime movies, with most of them being collaboration with his brother Edward. The result of the low-budget venture with Bela Lugosi scored him a deal with Paramount Pictures. The result was his second horror film here, as written by Brian Marlow and Harvey Thew as based on a story by Zombie writer Garnett Weston. Halperin directed just two further horror films with Revolt of the Zombies (1936) and Torture Ship (1939) before retiring in 1942; he died in 1983 and judging from the quote, wasn't exactly big on making horror movies (the irony is that they probably are the only reason anyone remembers Halperin).

Most films don't start with title cards of prominent names of Mohammed, Confucius, and Matthew 10:1, but here we are with a clunky suspense movie. It should be noted that Lombard absolutely did not want to do the film, apparently having a low view of horror. This is a movie involving theories about people's strong will even in death and body possession (with thicker makeup!) at the near end of a movie that isn't even 70 minutes long. The movie tries to present a female killer (strangles three men), body possession, fake mediums, spirits around the people, and oh my goodness, pick one idea! This is bottom-of-the-barrel mediocrity, one that only seems to fit the bill of being watched when you wonder just what else there can be for really old movies and "horror" when the word seemed to mean "oh, that one shot sure looked scary" more than anything. Lombard may have been a "swell" actress for timing, but she can only go so far for a movie that has her play puppet for a chunk of its time. Scott actually was a leading man in a variety of genres (including Murders in the Zoo that same year for horror), but one would be forgiven for just associating him as a Western guy, which is basically a way of saying his performance here inspires no notes of positivity. Osbourne is meant to inspire a bit of curiosity (playing the soon-to-be-dead killer) and the third word of that sentence is making a great deal of lifting. Dinehart at least as some huckster spirit in him, when compared to the astonishingly vacant Warner for a movie that begs to have something actually happen. This isn't a plea for a body-count (1 depicted is a count, I suppose?), this is just me stating that having a re-incarnated killer only really works when you have a whole film to make me care. Here, you have a film that only start to try and get interesting in the last 20 minutes, which manages to letdown the last remaining vestiges of hope for something less hammy. As a whole, the one-trick-pony status of Halperin and company in middle-of-the-road curiosity may not have been the biggest success at the time, but you can interpret for yourself what the fuss was about when it comes to the occasional scare (spiritual or not) that could occur for 1930s audiences.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Skippy.

Review #2064: Skippy.

Cast: 

Jackie Cooper (Skippy Skinner), Robert Coogan (Sooky Wayne), Mitzi Green (Eloise), Jackie Searl (Sidney), Willard Robertson (Dr. Herbert Skinner), Enid Bennett (Mrs. Ellen Skinner), Donald Haines (Harley Nubbins), Jack Rube Clifford (Mr. Nubbins, Dog-Catcher), Helen Jerome Eddy (Mrs. Wayne), and Guy Oliver (Dad Burkey) Directed by Norman Taurog (#421 - Palm Springs Weekend, #523 - It Happened at the World's Fair, and #1174 - Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine)

Review: 

The career of Norman Taurog really is a double-edged sword if you think about it. He was familiar with performances from a child as he entered that realm on the stage while being raised in his native Chicago. He appeared in off-Broadway for a number of years before he entered the film industry in collaboration with Larry Semon that saw him direct for the first time in 1920. He eventually graduated from shorts to features by the end of the decade with Lucky Boy (1929), which actually had a few portions of dialogue. By the time of Skippy (1931), Taurog was already a veteran of half-a-dozen films that clearly would serve him well as a recipent of an Academy Award. Yes, well, here we are with the film that saw him awarded one for Best Director that happened in the year of such films as Cimarron, The Front Page and Morocco (well, it only was the fourth ceremony held). As such, the film starred his nephew in Jackie Cooper for the title role after he had started appearing (read: dragged by his grandmother) in films at the age of 3, which resulted in a spell spent with Our Gang before Paramount borrowed him here. If you ever want to see just what kind of differences exist between the past and now when it comes to treating actors, Cooper shared just Taurog got him to cry, as related by his autobiography years later. When one sequence couldn't get the right amount of tears, Taurog chewed him out as a ham and called for the spare costume to be put on Robert Coogan. The next time that a scene was needed in tears, now again incurring the wrath of Taurog in not being able to cry on cue, decided to have someone take away Cooper's dog that he had with him on set. But that isn't all, he proceeded to have a security guard come up with a gun and make it seem like the guard shot the dog, which naturally led Cooper into hysterics; of course, if Cooper did the scene the way Taurog wanted in calmness, he could go see if the dog was possibly alive (well, the dog wasn't shot, but of course the real key to getting Cooper to cry a third time was far simpler: his mother talked him through the scene in why he would need to cry). Of course, Cooper has also stated that Taurog essentially was a contradiction: he called him both an effective director among the ones he could compare in making films but he also was a tough figure for a kid that basically suffered abuse from their grandmother. One would say, however, that Cooper thankfully ended up more fortunate than others of his time, which included a lengthy run on television, both as actor and director (coincidentally, Glamour Boy, made a decade after this film, saw him star as a has-been child star that even referred to "Skippy" for its promos). As for Taurog, by the time he retired in 1968, he had directed roughly 180 feature films, which included directing for stars such as Spencer Tracy, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, and beyond.

Amidst all of that is the fact that this was based on the comic strip of the same name, as created by Percy Crosby in 1923, which served as an inspiration for Charles Schultz's Peanuts (if you would like to fall down the rabbit hole of where Crosby ended up, well, try this out) As such, the film was written by Norman Z. McLeod and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (both future directors) in screenplay, while Don Marquis provides additional dialogue, and Sam Mintz provided the story. There was a sequel with many of the same people returning in Sooky in the winter of 1931. What it all boils down to for this film is a a film threatening to choke in schmaltz that thankfully is at least endearing enough in the overall result to make it more than just a dated feature. It packs a bit of a punch in melodrama that will at least make one not have to spring a defense of a silly children's movie being, well, "made exclusively for children".  It is Cooper who holds his own, a testament to solid timing and, well, the aforementioned treatment during production; the last crying scene (the one that wasn't conjured up with tricks) might actually be the most effective, showing just what really matters to a kid when they think about life that seems like it could go forever. Crosby once described the character as "the child in my soul", and it isn't hard to see how Cooper makes that seem engaging and useful for child adventure. A weaker presence would've been the last straw in an otherwise okay movie with characters that possess the amount of dimensions expected for such a simple-to-the-point story.  Coogan (brother of the noted Jackie) is, well, I can give slack for a six-year-old, so go with that (Green does some sort of goofy yodel on occasion that is, well, embarrassing for any teen). The adults are about what you'd expect in mild-mannered foils, so there's that. As a whole, what does one expect from a film about kids trying to deal with shantytown shutdowns and trying to raise $6 (adjusted for inflation, that's about $100 today) to buy a windshield and save a dog from death? Well, you will get a film that shows its age along with a heart on its sleeve with an ideal (if not semi-coerced) performance from Cooper to make it all worth a viewing for those into curiosity for this sort of film.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.