Outside the Law (1930)

Director:  Tod Browning

Writer: Tod Browning, Garret Fort

Composer:  Cecil Arnold, Sam Perry, Heinz Roemheld

Starring:  Mary Nolan, Edward G. Robinson, Owen Moore, Rockliffe Fellowes, Delmar Watson, Eddie Sturgis, John George

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  The most powerfully thrilling underworld melodrama of all!

Plot:  Fingers (Moore) is planning a half-million-dollar bank robbery in gang boss Cobra Collins' (Robinson) territory. Fingers and his gal, Connie (Nolan), try to bluff Cobra into thinking otherwise.  Once the job is done, Fingers and Connie stay holed-up while Cobra, and the police, try to find them.

My rating:  6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Oh, boy!  It's an Edward G. Robinson picture I haven't seen before.  Oh, no, he's hardly in it.  I love that man's work but his earliest performances can be tough to watch sometimes.  But I think that a lot of it can be contributed to the early days of talkies and how rough they can be.  OUTSIDE THE LAW is a great example.  Tod Browning's camera doesn't move, the dialogue sometimes doesn't move smoothly between character exchanges and there's a noticable lack of music (except for the final act) is sorely missed, leaving scenes dragging.  Robinson is fine and my favorite moment of his is right at the start when he sees Fingers in a bank window.  His look is cold and menacing.

Now I'm intrigued!  What follows is a weak first act that gets too complicated for its own good.  Now that Fingers knows that Cobra is onto him, he gets his girlfriend, Connie, to join a sleazy sideshow-like job posing scantily in life-like recreations of famous sexy paintings for the horny male public just so she can get noticed by Cobra so she can seduce him or something to get him off the scent of Fingers.  Now that's a stretch!  What's great is Cobra is the fucking man and he's two steps ahead of them but they keep trying and failing.  Another neat thing about Cobra is you find out his mother is Chinese and the two speak to each other in Chinese.  It's a brief scene and it's a nice touch even though Cobra isn't referenced as being Chinese at any other point. 

After the robbery, the movie belongs to Fingers and Connie for most of the rest of the picture, holed-up in a small apartment.  That's where the dull stuff comes in.  Up to this point, actress Mary Nolan's been doing the standard tough girl act but now she's just a downright asshole to Fingers.  Part of it's because she's stuck with the stir crazy and happy Fingers.  But Nolan does this poorly and between her performance in these scenes plus the static camera, framing and slow dialogue exchanges, it's not interesting and drags the picture down.  Owen Moore, on the other hand, outshines Nolan and he's fun to watch, especially every time the kid (Watson) shows up.  He and the kid are great together. 

 

 

See?  She even makes kids cry!  Fortunately, things pick up considerably in the final act when the shit hits the fan when Cobra shows up and throws a massive monkey wrench into the works.  This is easily the best part of the picture.  A lot happens in a short period of time and one of them is Connie having to be nice for a change.  Suddenly Nolan shows some good acting chops and she's killing it!  After the tense build-up to the finish line, the ending is satisfactory and surprising.  It benefits from being made before the Hayes Code set in. 

It's worth a look for fans of Eddie G. but that second half hour in the apartment can by trying yet rewarding in a way.

Queen of the Amazons (1947)

Director:  Edward Finney

Writer:  Roger Merton

Composer:  STOCK MUSIC

Starring:  Robert Lowery, Patricia Morison, J. Edward Bromberg, John Miljan, Amira Moustafa, Keith Richards, Bruce Edwards

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  White Goddess of the Dark Jungle... She offered ECSTASY and DEATH!

Plot:  A woman's husband has disappeared on an expedition into the jungle. She hires a guide to take her into the jungle to find him. However, they discover that he has been captured by a savage female tribe.

My rating:  6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Nah.


For an hour long, low budget jungle adventure picture, this one's not bad.  There's enough jungle action to keep you entertained, the actors do a better job than you'd expect, there's a little bit of humor sprinkled in (although I didn't find any of it all that funny), there's a small monkey doing small trained monkey things (big plus) and the final fight is high energy and exciting.  This film isn't trying to be anything more than entertaining for, probably, the younger audiences and I think it succeeds better than it should have.  It makes for a fun time killer on a lazy afternoon.  Watch the whole thing above.

The Secret Invasion (1964)

Director:  Roger Corman

Writer:  R. Wright Campbell

Composer:  Hugo Friedhofer

Starring:  Stewart Granger, Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Edd Byrnes, Henry Silva, Spela Rozin, William Campbell

More info: IMDb

Tagline:  A Mad Major! A Master Criminal! A Demolition Demon! A Forger! An Assassin! Yet All Became Heroes When They Launched...

Plot:  In 1943, a group of hardened criminals is pardoned on the condition it accepts a mission to free a captive Italian general from the clutches of the Nazis.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I digs me those 1960s WWII action pictures and I was so ready for this one...that is until I saw Roger Corman's name in the opening credits.  He's the opposite of big budget all-star action movies.  But still, I'm open to new things.  The story gets right to the point from the get-go by assembling the team and presenting the mission in the first five minutes!  And in the next 6 minutes, they're off to the beautiful shooting location of Yugoslavia!  Corman does a quick job of getting this picture moving.  The scenery is gorgeous.  That helps the movie more than anything.  The cast does a good job with mixed results.  Granger does his standard down-to-business/I'm-carrying-the-weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders performance. Raf Vallone is easily the MVP here.  He's fantastic.  Mickey Rooney can be fun when he isn't over-doing it.  It's so easy for him to over-act and he takes advantage of that.  Henry Silva doesn't talk much.  He was probably hired for his unusual mug and not his thespian skills.  And William Campbell looks like the Tony Curtis they could afford but he does a pretty good job.  Overall, they make a good team of actors.

Some of what dragged the picture down were things like the dialogue not flowing smoothing, unnecessarily padded, longer scenes, idiotic solutions for some of the problems they encounter and a general low budget vibe in spots.  The whole snapping of the fingers bit was set up and executed awkwardly.  First of all, they weren't keeping strict time and they were supposed to, which was the whole point of doing it in the first place.  It was used like what you'd see in a heist movie where several people each have a job to do that hinges on everyone doing their job at precisely the right moment or it falls apart.  They're busting out of a Nazi prison with a plan that relies on a few thought out beats but the rest has them winging it so a fixed schedule was impossible.  It's that kind of silliness that hurts the picture.  I also got the feeling like the film makers started with some scene ideas without a fully fleshed-out way of linking them.  Plus, the story feels rushed.  This picture definitely would've benefited from spending more time on the story.   Oh, and the dubbing has some pretty bad spots, too.

Fortunately for us, Corman couldn't resist an exploitation-y opportunity!

LT. MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD...YARRRRRR!

There's a ballsy-as-fuck scene when Silva and Rozin are dangerously close to being discovered by German guards.  Her baby starts to cry and Silva covers its mouth to stop it.  Once the guards leave and they're safe, the baby isn't moving anymore.  THE FUCK?  They had the balls to kill a baby?  WOW!  NICE!!!  Hats off to Corman and writer Campbell!  I did not see that coming.

The often cheap feel is expected since that's what Corman was used to but he does a good job at times with elevating this to the level of what you'd expect from the film's big time siblings of the day.  The story is a bit reminiscent of the best of the "prisoners assembled for a secret WWII mission" sub genre with THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967).  Nothing comes close to that one as DOZEN is one of the all-time great films.  THE SECRET INVASION benefits by pre-dating DOZEN by three years.  If you're a fan of these types of pictures, you're going definitely going to want to see this but lower your expectations.  There are some nice things to be found here but overall, it's lacking.