Monthly Archives: July 2016

Marriage for Murder – C.A.M. Donne (1937)

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sascoverMaxie’s Magic Manhood Moss[1] is just one of many potions Maria purchases from Maxie Werner to land a fella.  The fact that she needs so many makes me think a Fitbit would be a better investment.

That is not the case, though.  Matt Rhodes, in Maxie’s shop to borrow money at a usurious rate, notices “beneath her thin white dress, the firm lines of her lithe body were exquisite.  Her small breasts, untrammeled by any brassiere thrust outward against the light fabric.  Her face was extraordinarily pretty with soft mouth and eyes, and proud nose and chin.  She was 18 or 19, he guessed.”

Apparently San Juan is a pretty small town, or Maxie’s is a really big shop.  As Maria turns to leave, she runs into Sylvester Jarvis, her former love interest who just married an older woman — for money, because MILFs had not been invented yet.  Like an episode of Lost, it just so happens that Rhodes knows Jarvis — he needs to borrow the money because Jarvis cleaned him out at the poker table.

When Jarvis suggests they should continue fooling around, Maria whips out a stiletto. Rhodes is a pretty good sport and grabs Maria from behind, and takes the knife from her, saving Jarvis.  Maxie loans him $30 and a good luck charm to use next time he decides to throw his money away by gambling.  He escorts Maria back to casa de Maria where she gives him a drink . . . dosed with Maxie’s Magic Manhood Moss!

As they are making out, Jarvis’s new wife Margaret shows up outside with a pistol — both are loaded.  She screams for her husband, thinking he is both inside Maria and inside with Maria.  She breaks in and mistakenly shoots Rhodes in the shoulder.  After he is conked on the head, he awakens to find Margaret dead, a stiletto in his hand, and Maria gone.  He suspects Maria framed him.

Maxie the full-service loan-shark stops by and tips off Rhodes that the police are on the way.  He has some ‘splaining to do about that useless-ass good luck charm too.  Maxie helps him to escape, but Rhodes realizes Maxie is just trying to set him up too, so he doubles back to the shop.  Sneaking into the cellar, he feels around in the dark until he finds Maria’s breasts.  She is tied up, and admits to killing Margaret, but says it was Maxie’s stockboy Vincenzo that conked Rhodes on the head.

Jarvis and Maxie were in cahoots.  Vincenzo, having a crush on Maria, tried to intervene. Rhodes ends up in control of the situation and forces Jarvis to write a confession, even to the murder that Maria actually committed.  He sees the two teens are crazy — and I mean literally loco — for each other, so let’s them go off together.

He does actually suggest they don’t keep any stilettos in the house.  No, really.

Post-Post:

  • [1] It would be far too disgusting for me to mention that this sounds like the debris from manscaping.[2]
  • [2] Except for [1] where I just mentioned it.
  • First published in March 1937.
  • Also that month:  H.P. Lovecraft dies.

The Veil – Girl on the Road (1958)

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An Edsel cruises by a sporty little number by the side of the road.  Her stalled car is also pretty sporty [1].  John Prescott takes a look under the hood.  Not seeing a big on/off switch, he is as baffled as I would be.  Unlike my typical situation, however, the first words out of Lila’s mouth are not “I have a boyfriend.” Thinking maybe she is just out of gas, he dips a stick in her gas hole. He finds it bone-dry so pushes her car literally an additional 2 inches off of the road, crumpling her license plate.[2]

They head over to the Roadside Inn for a couple of martinis.  When Lila sees the bartender making a call and hears the name Morgan Debs, she tells John they have to leave.  She makes him drop her off at a garage, but tells him to meet her at Lookout Point at 9:00.

That night, John parks at Overlook Point.  Soon, Lila emerges from the trees.  She tells John she has always loved this spot.  “It is here that I brought all my problems, here that I came to celebrate my small triumphs.[1]”  But one night something terrible happened, she says. Just then, wheelchair-bound Morgan Debs (Boris Karloff) rolls up.  He’s in a car, but veilgirlroad18he still rolls up; just not in the wheelchair.

John goes to Debs’ car.  Debs tells him the woman he was to meet here will not show up; that she agrees John should go on his way.  John tells the old man that Lila is here with him now.  When he looks back at the car, though, it is empty.  John dutifully goes to the police station. The sheriff is no help, so John goes to see the mechanic where Lila took her car.  He also knows nothing.  The trip isn’t in vain though as John gets clubbed senseless.

When he awakens the next morning, he takes the inn-side road back to the Roadside Inn.  He roughs up the bartender to get Lila’s address.  He goes to her home and is welcomed in by Lila’s mother.  She says Lila is in her room upstairs and goes to get her.

While waiting, John looks at a photo of Lila.  He is shocked when he sees Morgan Debs roll in to the living room; although less shocked than if he had been in the car again. Debs admits he ordered his chauffeur to beat him.  Then he reveals that Lila has been dead for three years.  She drove her car off Lookout Point killing her and leaving Debs in a wheelchair.  veilgirlroad08Debs produces some old newspaper clippings that describe Lila’s death.  Judging by the 5,000 point font, she is apparently the only person ever to die in this town.

Debs says this happened once before.  She appeared at the site of her death, then disappeared.  He says he had hoped this time would be the end of it.  Well how does he know this isn’t the end of it?  Lila’s mother was driven mad by her daughter’s death. That explains why she claimed Lila was upstairs.  Having the crazy-lady live in a 2-story house with her caretaker in a wheelchair seems to be just asking for trouble.  “I’ve fallen and you can’t get up.”

John describes the Triumph that Lila was driving.  Debs confirms that was her car, but says it has been lying at the base of Lookout Point for three years.  John goes to see for himself and finds the Triumph with the same crumpled license plate; though covered by cigarette butts, whiskey bottles and used condoms.

Pretty dull outing made entertaining by the lovely Eve Brent.  Sadly her scenery-chewing co-star Tod Andrews gets much more screen time.  She really is something special though, as is the TR3.  Otherwise, it is just another retelling of the old urban legend. Maybe not so old at the time, but that won’t help current viewers.

veilgirlroad57

There was also a dude in this episode

Post-Post:

  • [1] A 1955 Triumph TR3.
  • [2] Lila’s license plate is LK-333. For such a random set of characters, it shows up in a lot of places: Swatches, toilet brush wallmounts, hand lotion dispensers, art, real estate, and padlocks.
  • Written and directed by George WaGGner, screenwriter of The Wolf Man.
  • IMDb and YouTube.

Lust to Kill – Jose Vaca (1937)

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sascoverCollins leaned against a ruined doorway and retched in the early Spanish dawn.

In the doorway across the street, a brown abused body of a young woman half lay, half sat.  Clothes had been ripped from her.  A bayonet still clung in the hideous wound between two cold breasts, the butt of the heavy rifle causing the body to sit half-erect.  Rigor mortis had set in long ago.  The nude corpse swayed grotesquely.

Well, this is a new kind of story for this collection.

Ken Collins, the one-eyed soldier-of-fortune is surveying the bombed out town square, but only in 2D.  When three men drive up, Collins goes a little nuts and immediately fires on them.  As two lay dead, he recognizes one of them as his commanding officer, General Gonzalez.  D’oh!

Two women haul the distraught American out of the street just before the man who escaped brings a group of soldiers to seek revenge.

Something just really turned me off on this one.  Maybe it was the knife between the cold breasts, maybe it was our hero murdering his commanding officer, maybe it was the war-time setting.  It just wasn’t the breezy romp with scantily-clad living babes that typifies this collection.

Meh.

Post-Post:

  • First published in March 1937.
  • Also that month:  HP Lovecraft dies.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents – The Morning After (01/11/59)

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ahpmorningafter02I was immediately befuddled on this one.  Ben Nelson and Sharon Trotter pull up in front of her mother’s apartment.  Maybe this is one of those things like the riddles that reveal what a sexist pig you are.

Seeing Sharon on the driver’s side [1] my first thought was great, another bloody English episode.  Still not prepared to accept a woman driver, my next dopey thought was Holy crap! There’s no steering wheel in front of that guy — what a dumb oversight by the prop department.

My brain finally accepted that Sharon is driving.  In my defense, however, that was probably pretty rare in chivalrous 1959.  I would also submit to the jury that it makes no sense for her to be driving.  They are arriving at her mother’s apartment where she is going up to have dinner alone with Mom.  So why is Ben there at all if not to drop her off?

Anyhoo, skipping the first 3 seconds of the episode . . .

Ma sees Ben and Sharon out of her window.  She disapproves of their relationship because Ben is married.  Probably also because he is 21 years older than her daughter, and only 3 years younger than her.  Or maybe because he foolishly put all his assets in his wife’s name.

ahpmorningafter13When Ma expresses some sympathy for Ben’s wife, Sharon continues, “His house, his factory, his invest-ments, everything.  And she’s not going to let go of it.  Now do you understand what kind of woman she is?”  [sexist remark redacted — maybe that riddle was right!]

The next day, Ben is surprised to get a visit at work from Sharon’s mother. She asks Ben to stop seeing her daughter because he is ruining her life.  He says he thought she was old enough to make her own decisions, and that he wants nothing more than to marry her daughter.

That night, he rats out Ma’s visit to Sharon.  Sharon is starting to get nervous now as they have been dating for a year and Ben has done nothing to free himself up.  She worries about losing him “because she has no protection.”  You know, like the assets they want to bilk his wife out of.

Ma then goes to see Ben’s wife.  Mrs. No-Name Nelson [2] is pretty accommodating to this stranger who has taken a long bus trip to see her for reasons unknown.  She pours them a couple of glasses of ice tea in pilsner glasses.  Mrs. Nelson recognizes Sharon’s name, but doesn’t seem to know about her husband’s cheating.  Ma finishes wrecking the home that Sharon was working on.

ahpmorningafter11That night, Mrs. Nelson confronts her husband.  She is willing to give Ben “his freedom” but nothing else.  Turns out the aforementioned assets were left to her by her father, so the fact that they were in her name makes sense.

Sensing that she can still do more damage that night, Ma goes to Sharon’s apartment. While Sharon is changing, Ma answers a call from Ben.  Not realizing he is speaking to Ma, he says his wife is dead and tells her the alibi she must give to the police to protect him.  She is to say he was in her apartment from 6 to midnight.

Ma tells Sharon about the call, saying that Ben spoke so fast, she didn’t get a chance to say who she was.  Sensing a way to protect Sharon, she relays the opposite message — that Ben wants her to say he wasn’t here all evening.

OK, that is a great twist, and certainly nails Ben — but how is Sharon so dumb that she doesn’t see the problem?  She is going to provide an alibi for a murder suspect by saying he was NOT with her at the time of the murder?  Don’t alibis usually work the opposite way?

This is a pretty somber affair, but has a few things going for it.  Although a little slow and talky, the story has a lot going on.  Yet, there is also a leanness to the simple story that makes it effective.  Robert Alda is great as Ben — yet another AHP poser who will get what’s coming to him.  I’d like to see some stats on how many wives were killed on AHP.

Jeanette Nolan was especially good as Sharon’s mother.  She had to be concerned for daughter, reluctant in visiting Mrs. Nelson, then distraught at the pain she has caused her, and conflicted at lying to Sharon.  Even as she is spreading the truth, she reflects a horror and self-loathing at knowing she is intruding, that this has hurt Mrs. Nelson and ultimately killed her, set the wheels in motion that led Ben to resort to murder, and denied Sharon the chance to be happy with Ben.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Things I will never remember if I live to be 100:  In a car, is the left and right from the driver’s POV or the guy about to be run over?  Also, which is ectomorph vs endomorph?
  • [2] Portrayed by Fay Wray who has a history of being involved with big apes.
  • AHP Deathwatch:  No survivors.
  • Title Analysis: No idea how they came up with this.
  • Dorothy Provine (Sharon) was in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World where, in a cast of thousands, she was the only one to have no funny lines.
  • There’s Got to Be a Morning After.
  • IMDb and Hulu.

Valley of Blood – Victor Rousseau (1936)

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sascoverGovernor Mynheer van Stent tells Jim Darrell that his plane cannot cross the mountains.  Two other such aircraft had tried and the pilot’s heads were delivered to the governor by Dyak tribes.  They are responsible for killing men, women and children just for the fun of it.  As usual, their leader is a golden-haired white woman.[1]

Her husband and daughter were killed, but somehow she became queen of the tribe.  She then ordered all other women in the tribe to be killed leaving her alone with 300 men.

Dr. Beyers met her when he was once captured and forced to do a minor medical procedure on her; and prescribe 2,000 cases of K-Y Jelly.[2]  The compassionate doctor says, “they should all be wiped out like wild beasts.”

Darrell doesn’t mention that he found a message scrawled on a leaf in blood:  I am an English woman, come and save me.  There was even a diagram of the mountain range and a crude representation of the path which continued on leaf D-8.

Darrell takes off in his plane with a bearer[3] to find the woman.  The Governor was correct and the plane stalls over the mountains.  Darrell does a controlled crash. Despite the fact that his assistant[3] has been standing on the goddamn wing holding a strut the whole time, both walk away without a scratch!

The two men are met by the tribe led by a woman “with a crown of the brightest hair which hung down to her waist.  A woman, nude but for a loin cloth.  Two breasts superbly moulded.”  The tribe brought spears to a gunfight, but still manage to take Darrell and his side-kick[3] hostage.

Back at the tribe’s HQ, the woman gets Darrell alone and tells him her name is Marian Curtis.  She says only two other white men have found her and she killed them both.  So after giving Darrell a “glorious gift”, she must kill him too.  Darrell has a little trouble getting in the mood since he is facing death afterwards.  Marian leaves him, but her daughter Mary Alice secretly brings him some water.  It was she who wrote the loose-leaf note.

That night, the men will drink a love potion and Marian will choose which ones to “favor”. Although with one woman and three hundred men, I doubt a potion is really necessary. As part of the ritual, Darrell will also be “favored.”  And then ripped apart.  Luckily Mary Alice has a plan for them both to escape.

The plan works and they run, chased by Marian and fifty Dylaks.  Just as all is lost, as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, they run into European forces which mow the brown people down with rifles.[4]

Meh, more of the same.  I’ll say this — the quality is pretty consistent.

Post-Post:

  • [1] I’m not sure whether it is racist or anti-racist that the villains in so many of the stories set in South America, Africa, Indonesia or the Middle East turn out to be blue-eyed, blonde white people.  1936, so I’ll assume racist.
  • [2] No Rx required, but it sounds better that way.
  • [3] Slave.
  • [4] Reviewing the clip, I see they were Indian, not European.  Well, under British rule, anyway.
  • First published in September 1936.