The Round-Up: August 6—12

 How to Marry a Millionaire

Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall bring the glamour and comic chops.

Films about young women or sometimes men out to conquer the world have been a Hollywood staple since the silent era. The studios used them to showcase new talent, figuring if one performer hit it didn’t matter if the others didn’t. At times they would even pair an established star with the newcomers as box-office insurance. Jean Negulesco’s HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (1953, Criterion through month’s end), which should more accurately be called writer-producer Nunally Johnson’s HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, was designed to boost Marilyn Monroe’s rise to stardom by teaming her with 20 Century-Fox’s reigning blonde bombshell, Betty Grable. It also gave Lauren Bacall a shot at comedy (she’s good with wisecracks, but sometimes her timing feels off). They’re a trio of models who pool their resources to rent a posh apartment in hopes of finding rich husbands. To keep up the ruse, they even sell the furniture that comes with the place. Today, the rampant materialism feels rather atavistic, and Bacall’s plot, in which she repeatedly fights her attraction to Cameron Mitchell because she thinks he’s poor, is particularly unlikable, even though the film hedges its bets by revealing he’s a millionaire early on. When her story takes over and turns into soap opera (will she marry wealthy William Powell even though she doesn’t love him, and he can act her off the screen without batting an eye?), the picture starts feeling very long. But Monroe is funny as the woman trying to hide her near-sightedness, and this is one character for whom that forced diction works. Grable is charming, but she’s got some weak material casting her as a stock dumb blonde. Why Johnson didn’t attempt to capture the real Grable in all her bawdiness and warmth is a mystery. For Negulesco, the film marked a turning point as he switched from the stylish films noirs he had directed for Warner Bros. and other studios to over-stuffed Cinemascope extravaganzas. This was the first film shot in that wide-screen process (though it was released after THE ROBE), and at times the characters are so far apart you’d think they’d need bullhorns to communicate. But he manages to use the image to showcase the three stars (and later their boyfriends) to good effect, and when Bacall lounges in an easy chair with her outstretched body filling more than half the screen, it’s a lot more satisfying than watching vast natural vistas or endless Roman armies.

The Pit and the Pendulum

Daniel Haller supplied the sets, and Barbara Steele and Vincent Price had fun eating them.

Maybe it’s the acting teacher in me, but Roger Corman’s second Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961, Criterion) feels like two movies. The one I like is about 16^th century Spanish nobleman Vincent Price’s guilt over wife Barbara Steele’s sudden death. The two of them hit just the right level of scenery chewing without going so far over the top they make us feel they find it funnier than we ever could. The real surprise here is Anthony Carbone, a member of the Corman stock company playing the family doctor, who seems surprisingly comfortable in the period clothing and also matches their style. They’re ably backed by Daniel Haller’s imaginative art direction, some great color camera work by Floyd Crosby and Lex Baxter’s eerie score. Then there’s the other film, with Luana Anders drowning in her period costumes as Price’s treacly sister and John Kerr as Steele’s sullen brother, visiting the castle to find out what happened to her. Both actors could be good in contemporary stories, but they seem lost here. And they have to fall in love because they’re the only people boring enough for each other. As long as Price is mourning for his wife or following her voice through dank corridors, the film is great fun. But it keeps stopping for scenes with the two young lovers. By the time Kerr got strapped into the eponymous torture device, I was rooting for the pendulum. Fortunately, that’s another great set by Haller, and then the film ends with one of the most chilling final shots in the genre.

Glitch: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia

Be honest, Scott Rogowsky was the main reason most of us played HQ Trivia.

HQ Trivia debuted as I was entering retirement. With a mortgage to pay and a lot of charge debt, I fell into playing it to see if I could get rich quick. It was the same reason I bought a weekly lottery ticket. And I’ll have to admit, I thought host Scott Rogowsky was hot. But then I learned how hard it was to collect on winnings, which I never had anyway. I usually crapped out as soon as they got to questions about sports or pop music. And Rogowsky wasn’t turning up as often as I’d have liked (he left in April 2019). So, I fell out of the habit. Salima Koroma’s new CNN documentary GLITCH: THE RISE AND FALL OF HQ TRIVIA (2023, Max) traces the app’s history. Although it’s been accused of being one-sided (it was produced by former executives and basically tells Rogowsky’s version of the story), it still provides some fascinating tidbits about the problems that existed even before the launch. Rogowsky and the other interview subjects — former employees, media experts and one investor who was close to co-founder Colin Kroll — are all good story tellers. If there’s a flaw as entertainment, it’s that some of the visuals are repeated too much. It feels like a made-for-TV documentary, designed to be viewed in chunks between commercials. But there are clever touches, like HQ Trivia-style questions to introduce segments and clips from classic radio and TV quiz shows. It even takes time for some sentiment, as when Kroll’s friend starts to tear up while discussing the co-founder’s sudden death from a drug overdose. It would have helped had the surviving co-founder, Rus Yusopov, participated, as Rogowsky and some of the other employees slam him badly. There’s simply a slide stating he declined to be interviewed, though he told other sources he had declined because of conflicts of interest. I guess sifting through those different perspectives could be the topic for another documentary.

Kiss Me Deadly

The world ends with a bang, not a whimper for Maxine Cooper and Ralph Meeker.

In her film debut, Cloris Leachman says, “I could tolerate flabby muscles in a man, if it’d make him more friendly.” The film that follows is neither flabby nor friendly, but it’s one of the great film noirs with one of the bleakest endings in the genre. Contemporary critics didn’t care for Robert Aldrich’s KISS ME DEADLY (1955, Apple+), but it has grown in reputation over the years, particularly with Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard calling it the single greatest influence on the Nouvelle Vague. Ralph Meeker’s Mike Hammer is far from a crusading private eye at first. He’s lost his gun and his license and concentrates on setting up honey traps with his secretary/lover Velda (the wonderful Maxine Cooper) so he can blackmail cheating husbands. Then he picks up a near-naked hitchhiker (Leachman) who’s escaped from a mental hospital to which she was committed because she knows about “the great whatsit,” one of the best MacGuffin’s in film history. When she’s murdered, Hammer figures whatever she knew must be worth money. Then one of his few friends is murdered, and it gets personal. The corruption he encounters is everywhere, from the government to the kiss of a beautiful blonde. And Hammer is a part of it. Meeker does a marvelous job in the role, changing masks depending on whom he’s trying to manipulate and betraying a bit of glee in beating up attackers and recalcitrant witnesses. Aldrich and A.I. Bezzerides wrote some great punchy dialog for the film (and appropriated the phrase “the great whatsit” from 1932’s THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME), and Ernest Laslo createed some eerie visuals, shooting through objects and casting shadows to create an off-kilter, dangerous world. There’s a lot of good work in the cast, but it’s hard to believe Aldrich couldn’t find a better actress than Gaby Rogers to play the blonde femme fatale. Her tinny line readings sound like a bad imitation of Judy Holliday, or maybe Lina Lamont without the humor. The rest of the cast includes Albert Dekker as a crooked doctor, Paul Stewart as a mob leader, Juano Hernandez as a boxing trainer Wesley Addy as a police lieutenant who may be in love with Hammer, Marjorie Bennett as a landlady (one line, but she delivers it with aplomb), Percy Helton as a coroner, Fortunio Bonanova as an opera singer, and Jack  Elam and Jack Lambert as two dim-witted hired thugs.

The Dunwich Horror

Gidget goes satanic.

Daniel Haller’s THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970, Shudder) has been hailed by some as one of the most faithful screen adaptations of an H.P. Lovecraft story, but faithfulness does not necessarily result in a good movie. It sure doesn’t in this case. The script, whose collaborators include Curtis Hanson, adds a female lead to the story, with elder god worshipper Dean Stockwell hypnotizing graduate student Sandra Dee into serving as…well, something or other. It’s not clear whether she’s supposed to be the sacrifice that brings Yog-Sothoth into this realm or the vessel for a new generation of cult members. Maybe he’s hedging his bets and trying to have it both ways. Haller, who was art director for many of producer Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations, is the damnedest director. He’s great with nightmares, atmospheric landscapes and satanic rituals, but when he tries to shoot two people talking, it all goes flat with no clear sense of composition or framing. They’re just there, only there’s no there there. It doesn’t help that Stockwell, who’s supposed to have an hypnotic hold over Dee, seems hypnotized himself. Maybe he was still stoned from his hippie days. Maybe his dissatisfaction with the script resulted in his not even trying to act. But he just does nothing. By contrast, Dee at least has star presence. She’s supposed to be the victim throughout, but her passivity is so compelling you actually miss her when she’s not on screen. The film is primarily of note for containing an early performance from Talia Shire (billed as Talia Coppola) and featuring two members of the Corman stock company, Beach Dickerson and Barboura Morris. Morris is supposed to be a bitter farm woman, but at one point she turns to her dog, who’s being driven mad by the nearness of an otherworldly monster, and says, “What’s the matter, little lamb?” Her delivery has all the warmth she displayed in such under-rated gems as THE WASP WOMAN and BUCKET OF BLOOD (both 1959), and suddenly you’re reminded of how good low-budget horror films can be.

Bay of Blood

There are so many killers in Mario Bava's BAY OF BLOOD,

I can't remember who's spying on which victim in this shot.

As Stelvio Cipriani’s lush romantic music plays on the soundtrack, the camera takes in the area around an Italian bay. Then an older woman (Isa Miranda) in a wheelchair rolls herself to a window to look out on the scene. As she leaves the room, the music stops as someone wraps a noose around her neck and pushes the wheelchair out from under her, killing her by strangulation. In the first few minutes of his BAY OF BLOOD (1971, Freevee), aka TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE aka CARNAGE aka BLOOD BATH, director-co-writer Mario Bava subverts expectations. He does it again when he reveals the killer immediately and then has him murdered by an unseen assailant. From that moment, you know that anything can happen, and it does in a film with 13 murders at the hands of five killers and one of the most deliciously absurd endings of any giallo. It’s all about who will possess the bay formerly owned by Miranda and sought after by architect Chris Avram, whose firm wants to turn it into a luxury resort. Early on, however, the film seems to abandon that plot as four young people joyride into the area and party in a house they’ve broken into. Their story eventually connects to the plot in a way that leads to their murders in a sequence thought to have inspired the slasher sub-genre. They’re stalked and killed in a series of shots from the killer’s point of view. At one point, the unseen killer gazes around the house where two of them are making love, taking in the many possessions there. That’s fitting in a film in which materialism trumping humanity. There isn’t a single healthy relationship in the film, with even the most appealing character (a drunken spiritualist played very well by Pasolini’s muse, Laura Betti) stuck in a loveless, contentious marriage. And some of the killers turn to murder without any agonizing whatsoever. Killing another human being is a matter of expediency for them rather than a moral issue. It’s all about what they own, which they think includes all the lives around them.

Tension

Audrey Totter taunts husband Richard Basehart because he's all laughed out;

that Cyd Charisse, in the dark (as usual when she had to act),

 watching Barry Sullivan and William Conrad arrest Basehart.

A saxophone slides into the notes of Andre Previn’s score to mark Audrey Totter’s entrance as Clare Quimby, one of film noir’s most despicable femmes fatales, in John Berry’s TENSION (1949, TCM). It’s a powerful performance, as she snarls out insults at her husband, druggist Richard Basehart, or turns on the charm with lover Lloyd Gough and police detective Barry Sullivan. When she has to share a scene with good girl Cyd Charisse, she shows up how shallow the dancer’s creamy non-acting often was (I think it’s the style studio acting coaches created for acting-challenged performers). Totter is already cheating on Basehart when the film starts. Within minutes she’s left him for Gough. So, Basehart plans the kind of convoluted revenge that only happens in the movies. He creates a fake identity so he can kill his rival. But then he makes the mistake of falling in love with the new identity’s neighbor (Charisse). The film takes a sudden swerve halfway through when the focus shifts to Sullivan and partner William Conrad as they investigate Gough’s murder. It’s easy to guess whodunnit, and Sullivan does a marvelous job of playing on the various suspects to ferret out the killer. Cinematographer Harry Stradling gets some great atmospheric shots, though there aren’t as many as in films noirs made at studios that didn’t emphasize glamour as much. MGM’s main concession to the genre’s grittier side was putting the cast in clothes that seem to have come off the rack at a discount store. The picture doesn’t even have a credited costume designer. Previn’s score, his first, is quite fine and particularly impressive given that he wrote it at the tender age of 20.