The Captive City (1952)

During the '50s, Hollywood spent considerable time and effort producing these strange corruption dramas about little cities across America gripped by crime syndicates and commies. They tended to have stalwart protagonists on a solitary mission to rid Anytown U.S.A. of the nefarious hoodlums who had secretly and insidiously taken over. I watched one of these tonight - The Captive City directed by Robert Wise and starring John Forsythe and Joan Camden – and was struck by how odd these morality tales play out 50 years later. It isn't a great film but it does represent something of the mindset of the day, making it worthwhile if only to glimpse into the lives of a previous generation.
In 1952 the paranoia of the cold war was in full bloom, the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) blacklisting of the famous Hollywood Ten had occurred a few years earlier, WW2 had been over for 7 years and Canfield would be born 7 years later. Anxiety ruled Hollywood. One of the offshoots from all this mass psychosis was a tendency for studios to green light scripts with a puritan bent and crime-does-not-pay message. It was a kind of defacto self-censorship and propaganda exercise meant to cleanse the movies of their apparently commie overtones. The corruption drama was born.
I won't dwell on the plot of The Captive City, except to say that Forsythe plays a newspaper editor investigating the syndicate, who are running the bookie operations in town. The more interesting elements are the film are a completely unusual cinematography style that has the entire depth of field in perfect focus throughout giving the film a weird “everyone is watching” feel and a strange little moral message from some senator who was leading a municipal corruption investigation tacked on to the ending. I was reminded of another (and notably superior) film from 1955 called The Phenix City Story directed by the ever-excellent Phil Karlson which has the strangest openings of the era, a 15 minute documentary about the Alabaman Sin City on which the movie is based. The doc is awful but the film is great.
These dated be-a-good-citizen, crime-is-a-slippery-slope morality plays are fun to watch all these years later and help explain our grandfathers a bit better. They're perfect little time capsules and make one consider what films produced today might look like to people 50 years hence. I wonder if they'll seem as alien and quaint as the '50s corruption drama does to us? Probably.

Mister Cory (1957) Directed by Blake Edwards

Mister Cory was Tony Curtis' 16th film but it still served as a bit of a breakout picture for the then 32-year-old Curtis. It marked the first in a string of excellent leading roles (Sweet Smell of Success, The Vikings, Kings Go Forth, The Defiant Ones, culminating with Some Like it Hot 2 years later.

Mister Cory is also a relatively early film for director/writer Blake Edwards. The story is deceptively simple - a Chicago kid from the wrong side of the tracks desires all the trappings of the good life using his good looks and perchance for gambling to get there. It rises above its melodramatic plot with the inclusion of a rock-solid Curtis in the lead role and a stellar cast of charactor actors. Mister Cory is engaging and satisfying (surprising for a film that doesn't rate terribly well).

It's a little lightweight at times but the story arc and the performances more than compensate. On a side note, the perky and stunning Kathryn Grant who plays the younger sister married Bing Crosby a year later and returned to acting only sporadically thereafter. Too bad, she nearly steals this picture.

A solid 7.2/10 for Curtis, the strong cast, and deft direction from a young Edwards.

The Peking Medalion (1967) Directed by James Hill

A very obscure adventure thriller with Robert Stack and Elke Sommer (zero chemistry) trying to keep a medalion with the key to an ancient buried Chinese treasure from various bad guys. It's looney and mostly silly but develops a bit of momentum and will likely keep you engaged. As usual, Stack is awful but the rest of the cast manages to keep this one on track. I gather it's set in Hong Kong. Elke and Nancy Kwann keep the steamy quotient high. Bond-light. Also known as The Corrupt Ones

5.9/10 mostly for sheer exuberance.

Puppet on a Chain (1971) Directed by Geoffrey Reeve

Sven-Bertil Taube, a Swedish actor who I can't say that I've ever seen before, plays an American cop sent to Holland to trace the source of heroin shipments in this pretty cool Alistair MacLean penned detective thriller. The film's highlight is a spectacular boat chase through the Amsterdam's canals that bears comparisons to the car chases in Bullet and The Seven Ups. Notwithstanding a few groan-moments of the era's typical cinematic excess, I completely enjoyed this rather poorly reviewed film. The score is excellent and Taube makes for an engaging and very watchable leading man. He's a bit of a cross between Alain Delon and Jan Michael Vincent.

6.2/100 The boat chase alone makes this a decent recommendation.

The Big Sleep (1978) directed by Michael Winner

Robert Mitchum reprises his role as Raymold Chandler's Philip Marlowe in this odd remake of the '46 Bogie classic. More a curiousity piece than anything else, the setting is moved to England and the script reworked from the original plot of Chandler's novel. Mitchum fared better in Farewell My Lovely from a couple of years earlier but holds his own in this uneven and convoluted flick. The juiciest role is Oliver Reed's wacko gambling house owner and generally unsavory type Eddie Mars. At times the production takes on the look of a '70s porno.

5.5/10 - Worth a look but you'll spend most of the time wishing you'd just watched the original Howard Hawkes version again.