ROGUE

Michael Vartan

ROGUE (2007). Produced, written and directed by Greg McLean.

Pete McKell (Michael Vartan), an American travel writer, goes on a boat tour in the Northern reaches of Australia and gets a lot more than he bargained for. The pretty tour guide, Kate (Radha Mitchell), is heading back to their point of origin when she turns the boat around to investigate what might be a distress flair. Instead she and a boat load of panicking tourists encounter a huge man-eating crocodile that smashes into and incapacitates their boat. Seems they have inadvertently wandered into its territorial waters. The motley group is now trapped on an island that will be completely underwater when the tide goes up in a few hours -- and nighttime is coming. The crocodile can see in the dark, but they can't ... 

Radha Mitchell and Sam Worthington

Rogue is a stand-out in the monster movie sweepstakes. It has sweeping and often stunning cinematography (Will Gibson) of beautiful and eerie Australian vistas, rivers, mountains and jungle areas, not to mention underground caverns. The characters are much better developed than usual, and there's an atmospheric score by Francois Tetaz. Handsome Vartan, famous for the TV show Alias, and Mitchell give very good lead performances, and there is fine back-up from such as Sam Worthington as a wannabe boyfriend of Kate's and a host of good character actors. The final section of the film has Pete in the creepy underground den of the huge predator, fighting for his life against all odds. If the movie has one problem -- aside from a few slow spots -- it's that some of the sequences are under-lit, possibly to hide the fakeness of the animatronic crocodile. CGI appears to have been employed as well. 

Verdict: Suspenseful and very classy creature feature. ***.  

ROCKABILLY BABY

Virginia Field and Gary Vinson

ROCKABILLY BABY (1957). Director: William F. Claxton. 

Eleanor Carter (Virginia Field) arrives in the small town of Springdale with her two teenagers in tow: Cathy (Judy Busch) and Jimmy (Gary Vinson). It isn't long before the two youths are making friends in high school, including Linda (Marlene Willis), flirtatious Jackie (Sandy Wirth), and her boyfriend, Chuck (Charles Willcox), who lets Jimmy take his spot on the water polo team. Meanwhile Eleanor has managed to charm the new principal, Tom Griffth (Douglas Kennedy) and the wealthy town matriarch, Mrs. Wellington (Ellen Corby), who turns out not to be so dour after she has a martini or two with Eleanor. But the nasty Eunice Johnson (Irene Ryan, who played Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies) discovers that Eleanor has a secret -- she used to be known as stripper "Dixie West" -- what will the town say to that? 

Ellen Corby and Irene Ryan

Rockabilly Baby is an amiable picture with effective players and some pleasant if unmemorable tunes. An obese cellist scratches the life out of her cello; Marlene Willis sings a bouncy number and manages not to go flat too often; bitchy Jackie deliberately spills her drink on Linda then makes a play for Jimmy, who rejects her; and her boyfriend Chuck tells her off. Not exactly the stuff of great drama. Douglas Kennedy, who normally played villainous roles, is fine as the principal who is attracted to Eleanor. The real Les Brown and his Band of Renown shows up at the end to deliver some Dixieland-type jazz. William F. Claxton later directed the giant bunny monster movie Night of the Lepus.   

Verdict: Go, Granny, go! **1/2. 

APRIL FOOL'S DAY

APRIL FOOL'S DAY (1986). Director: Fred Walton.

Muffy (Deborah Foreman), a rich girl who is fond of practical jokes, invites several of her college friends to her family mansion on an island. An atmosphere of foreboding is created when there is an accident involving the ferry that takes the young people to the island. First Skip (Griffin O'Neal) disappears, and his body is found floating under the boards in the boathouse. Other people begin disappearing as well. Finally only Rob (Ken Olandt) and his girlfriend Kit (Amy Steel) are left, and they discover that their friend Muffy might have a maniacal twin sister. But the true explanation for what's going on is even stranger than that!

Surprise: Ken Olandt and Any Steel

When I first saw April Fool's Day years ago I groaned at the ending, which I thought of as an incredible cop-out without even the saving grace of a final twist. This time, knowing what was coming, I was able to enjoy it, although it will never be an especially memorable slasher film. The actors -- including Tom Wilson as the class clown Arch and Clayton Rohner as the resident freak Chaz -- are a spirited and capable bunch. There is one good scene in a well where bodies are discovered, and a funny sequence involving a supposedly severed head. You keep waiting for a pay-off that never quite comes. Fred Walton also directed When a Stranger Calls and its sequel, When a Stranger Calls Back. 

Verdict: A slashless slasher film that still manages to be a bit -- a small bit -- of fun. **1/2. 

NOT FOR HIRE

Ralph Meeker

 NOT FOR HIRE (1959 tv series). 

Sgt. Steve Decker (Ralph Meeker) works as an investigator for the CID, the Criminal Investigations Division of the Army. Meeker, who radiates a certain degree of charm while also making you think he's going to deck someone with extreme nastiness at any second, is perfect for the role. The half-hour series lasted for only one season and 39 episodes. With most of these old forgotten series, especially the ones that don't turn up on DVD, more and more episodes keep turning up on youtube. With Not for Hire, it's just the opposite, as some episodes that were once available on youtube and the internet archive have now disappeared. You are left with three episodes to choose from.

Meeker with Lisabeth Hush

Smuggled Wife has Decker going off to find an AWOL soldier who is desperate to see if he can get his wife out of Hong Kong. She's pregnant and he hopes that his child will be born in the U.S. but authorities suspect the woman of espionage. Nora Hayden guest-stars as a pretty lady -- not said wife -- who is not on the side of the angels. 

In The Fickle Fingers Decker finds himself with a real puzzle. A soldier has been found dead but his corpse has the wrong fingerprints. Decker tries to find out if this was a simple mistake, or if the fellow faked his death and that's somebody else's body in the morgue. 

The Fall Guy has Decker investigating what at first seems to be an open and shut case: a soldier apparently stabbed his girlfriend to death. However Colonel Madge Turner (Lisabeth Hush) is convinced that the man is innocent and starts her own investigation to Decker's initial annoyance. However, charmed by the woman and impressed by her persistence, he takes a hand in the case. Hush is appealing and adept and Barbara Stuart makes an impression as a nasty femme fatale of sorts. 

These three episodes, while not exactly classic television, still whetted my appetite, and one can hope that the full series will one day find itself on DVD. These episodes have also been colorized (!) and can be found on youtube. 

Verdict: Meeker scores in an interesting crime show that is a little different than usual. **1/2. 

TALK'S CHEAP, ACTION'S EXPENSIVE: THE FILMS OF ROBERT L. LIPPERT

TALK'S CHEAP, ACTION'S EXPENSIVE: The Films of Robert L. Lippert. Mark Thomas McGee. BearManor; 2014. 

This is a very entertaining look at the output, life and career of Robert L. Lippert, a prolific producer of mostly B movies from the forties to sixties. The book is divided into four chapters or sections -- Screen Guild, Lippert Pictures, Regal Films and Associated Producers, Inc -- which examine different periods in Lippert's career. Genre films Lippert produced include The Lost Continent, Unknown World, The Quatermass Xperiment, The Fly (one of his most famous and successful pictures), The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, The Earth Dies Screaming, and The Horror of It All with Pat Boone; he also did non-genre films such as The Steel Helmet and The Baron of Arizona, also with Price, and many westerns. Lippert started out in the business by owning a chain of theaters, then decided to fill the theaters with his own productions. He entered into an association with 20th-Century Fox to make black and white cinemascope productions that didn't carry the Fox name and were released under the Regal banner. His various companies also released many films that were major money-makers, such as Rocketship X-M. Margia Dean [Sins of Jezebel], who appeared in many of Lippert's movies, was apparently cast so frequently because she was his mistress. Lippert frequently claimed that he gave audiences what they wanted and was more concerned with profit than artistic merit. Still, he was responsible for some memorable films throughout his long Hollywood career. Appendices list every film that Lippert had any kind of association with. 

Verdict: An engaging and informative trip down B Movie Memory Lane. ***1/2. 

JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION

the cast face dino-danger

JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION (2022). Director: Colin Trevorrow. 

Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) of Jurassic Park are reunited by the threat of very large and fearsome-looking locusts who seem to have been engineered by Biosyn, the company that helped bring dinosaurs to the 21st century. Lots of dinosaurs have escaped captivity and bred in the wild, and trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and his girlfriend, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) of Jurassic World, look after some of them while being parents to young Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). Maisie is apparently the daughter of a deceased scientist who somehow reproduced asexually and grew her own clone in her womb (don't ask).

Escaping a voracious raptor

When Maisie is kidnapped by the evil Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) of Biosyn, Owen and Claire go after her even as Ellie and Alan infiltrate the company's huge HQ to get evidence of what they've done with the yucky locusts. Eventually the two couples meet up, hooking up with the delightful pilot Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), helpful Biosyn executive Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), and, of course, Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) of the original film. Naturally there are chases, dinosaurs galore, pterodactyls smashing planes, and many exciting and thrilling moments along with the superior special effects. 

I found Jurassic World Dominion, which got many bad reviews, to be a big improvement over Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which was awful. Admittedly I had lowered expectations, but I wasn't bored for a second during this rather long movie, and especially enjoyed several topflight sequences: the raptor chase through the streets of Malta; an attack on Owen and Kayla on a frozen lake by a weird and hungry bird-like lizard; a huge pterodactyl tearing apart a plane; and so on. Many viewers have complained about the pseudo-scientific aspects of the film, the moments of illogic and plot contrivance, and so on, but for Pete's sake, this isn't meant to be taken any more seriously than a Saturday afternoon cliffhanger serial, and on that level, the movie works. Ugliness is kept to a minimum, although I would rather have seen a vicious assassin-type lady get swallowed whole by a T-Rex than a perfectly innocent bystander in the square in Malta. BD Wong of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit appears as a remorseful scientist who worked with Maisie's mother; he's fine. There's also a nice score by Michael Giacchino. Although there were hints in Jurassic Park III that the Alan Grant character had a boyfriend, he hooks up with Ellie in this film and the boyfriend is nowhere to be seen. So much for LGBT diversity (although it's possible Kayla is a lesbian)! 

Verdict: Fun, fast-paced picture that still engenders some awe! ***. 

THE GOLDEN MISTRESS

THE GOLDEN MISTRESS (1954). Director: Joel Judge (Abner Biberman). 

In Haiti Bill Buchanan (John Agar of Bait) is behind in payments for his boat. He is beloved by some of the people for bringing an anti-toxin to them and saving lives. A scoundrel named Carl Dexter (Abner Biberman) has stolen an idol from natives and wants to team up with Bill to find a lost treasure. Carl sends his daughter, Ann (Rosemary Bowe), to talk to Bill and he winds up dumping her in the ocean. Eventually, after her father's death at the teeth of a shark, Ann and Bill do team up to see if they can find the treasure on a mysterious island that may not even exist. But there's no guarantee that either of them will come back alive. 

John Agar and Rosemary Howe (Stack)

The Golden Mistress is a 99 cent item filmed in Haiti, and for much of its length it resembles a travelogue with some interesting locations. Soaking up local color is one thing, but Mistress doesn't know when to end a scene and move on to something more entertaining. The picture meanders -- it's full of incident but the story isn't told in a compelling fashion, and after awhile you may lose patience. There's a brief flurry of excitement at the very end, but this doesn't last long.  John Agar gives a charismatic and solid performance as the captain, who like most men in these old adventure movies, is chauvinistic. Rosemary Howe was a former model who in this is barely passable as an actress. (She has trouble showing emotion when her father is eaten by a shark.) She gave a much better performance in The Big Bluff but wisely married actor Robert Stack the following year and left the business. 

The supporting cast is of more interest. Jacques Molant is Ti Flute, a likable teen native who is the cabin boy or first mate, depending on who's asking. Andre Narcisse is Iznard, the Houngan or high priest whose son, Christofe (Kiki), is saved by Bill when the boy's foot is caught inside a clam. Abner Biberman, who plays Carl Baxter, also directed the film under a pseudonym. His credits were mostly in television. Considering the location, some of the native cast members and other elements, it's a shame that Golden Mistress doesn't emerge as a more memorable motion picture. 

Verdict: Not much more exciting than a bad Jungle Jim movie. **. 

RESURRECTION (2022)

Rebecca Hall

RESURRECTION (2022). Written and directed by Andrew Semans.

Margaret (Rebecca Hall) has a daughter, Abbie (Grace Kaufman), who's just about to turn eighteen. Margaret reencounters a man, David (Tim Roth), with whom she had an abusive relationship many years before, and is afraid he might be out to harm her or her daughter. Apparently David murdered their baby boy, Ben, and Margaret let him get away with it. However, things take a surreal turn when she tells a colleague, Gwen (Angela Wong Carbone), that David ate the baby and Ben is still alive inside him. Huh? 

Carrying a baby? Tim Roth

Obviously Resurrection can not be taken literally, and the slender characterizations further distance the viewer from what's happening on screen. Resurrection might have worked better as a half-hour short, but stretched out to nearly two hours it doesn't work at all, although it begins well with an initially intriguing premise. However, the whole movie is really just an acting exercise for Hall and Roth, both of whom are excellent (although in a long monologue talking about David, Hall seems to be merely acting in the technical sense rather than feeling the role). You can take this film as an abstract study of the effects of abuse and control, or of a woman who is slowly losing her mind, or preferably, not take it at all. I choose the latter. Rebecca Hall was the executive producer. While I can see what attracted her to the project -- it's a starring role with juicy acting prospects -- she should still choose her projects with more care in the future. 

Verdict: At least I didn't have to pay to see this. Too weird for its own good. ** for the acting and cinematography. 

ROARING CITY

Hugh Beaumont and Joan Valerie

ROARING CITY (1951). Director: William Berke.

"He was with me all night." -- Gail.

"That's not an alibi, that's just bad taste." -- Denny O'Brien. 

Troubleshooter and boat renter Dennis O'Brien of Pier 23 gets involved in two cases in this last of three flicks featuring Hugh Beaumont as O'Brien. First O'Brien finds himself mixed up in a boxing match fix in which one of the fighters dies and both the other fighter, Lundy (Greg McClure), and the crooked promoter find themselves on the wrong end of a bullet. In the second and more interesting case, a blonde named Irma (Joan Valerie) hires Denny to pretend to be the husband of her step-daughter, Sylvia (Wanda McKay). Sylvia's angry boyfriend shows up, and her real husband is found dead in a box along with an unconscious O'Brien. 

Beaumont with Richard Travis

Once again as he did in Pier 23 Hugh Beaumont proves very adept at the hard-boiled style in his on-target portrayal of the unlikable, borderline immoral and not-terribly-bright Dennis O'Brien. His interplay with Inspector Bruger (Richard Travis, who is also quite good) is sharp and well-played --Beaumont and Travis make a good team --  and the script has lots of good dialogue. Edward Brophy is some fun as O'Brien's pal the "professor" and there are some decent supporting performances; Greg McClure is notable. However, neither Joan Valerie or even Wanda McKay make much of an impression as two of the shady ladies. A third, the oddly-named Rebel Randall, who plays Gail in the first story, is slightly better. 

Verdict: Fun to watch "Ward Cleaver" as an anti-hero. **1/2. 

WICKED (1998)

WICKED (1998). Director: Michael Steinberg.  

Ellie (Julia Stiles of Orphan: First Kill) is a 14-year-old high schooler who has a sick crush on her own father, Ben (William R. Moses of Perry Mason: The Case of the Poison Pen), a crush that he does little to discourage -- and worse. Ben is having an affair with the housekeeper, Lena (Louise Myrback), even as Ben's wife, Karen (Chelsea Field), is having an affair with neighbor Lawson Smith (Patrick Muldoon). So when Karen is bludgeoned to death, Detective Boland (Michael Parks) has no dearth of suspects. Once Karen is out of the picture, Ellie starts acting just like Ben's wife, until Lena comes back onto the scene. Something will have to be done about that. 

Wicked is not a very good movie, but it holds the attention and is well-acted. Stiles was 16 at the time and comes off a little older. Moses, always an appealing actor, is good in a very unsympathetic role, but Muldoon doesn't quite make the most of his part as the sleazy, sexy neighbor. Michael Parks of The Idol and Bus Riley's Back in Town offers a quirky performance that never actually seems real. There are some credible supporting players, such as Linda Hart as another neighbor who winds up falling for Parks. 

Verdict: Not good enough to be a trash wallow but the players are interesting. **.