Reviews

This was the movie which John Ford remade as his classic My Darling Clementine. Here, Randolph Scott plays Wyatt Earp and Caesar Romero plays Doc Holiday, but there are no Clantons or Earp brothers. Instead, John Carradine plays a bad saloon owner heading a gang that is trying to take over Tombstone.

Of course, this movie can't directly compare to My Darling Clementine, but it's a pretty good western in its own right. Its one of Randolph Scott's better early roles.

Many of the classic scenes in My Darling Clementine were taken directly from this movie, and it's very interesting to compare the two. This version of Frontier Marshal was a remake of an earlier 1933 version, and, of course, this story has been told many times since.

The Maltin Guide gives it three stars. Check it out if you're a western fan, or just a fan of My Darling Clementine.

This movie is based on the novel 'The Devil in Vienna' by Doris Orgel. The book was written for young adults, and in diary format as told by Inge a young Jewish girl of 13 living in Vienna just before the Nazi takeover of Austria.

The movie is true to the story and the spirit of the book, and tells how these events impact Inge and her best friend Lisette (who is Catholic) and their families. The girls vow to maintain their friendship no matter what happens -- even though Lisette's father and brother are ardent Austrian Nazi's.

The girls are believable in their roles, and Ed Asner stands out as Inge's grandfather. This movie should be enjoyed by girls, as well as people interested in this time period. It especially gives interesting details on how early Nazi laws impacted schools and day to day Jewish lives in Vienna.

This is one of the very best of the WWII battle films made during the war. It has excellent action sequences, and is full of the very intense emotions that were felt during that time. It's also one of Errol Flynn's best roles, as the captain of a parachute squad sent to blow up a Japanese radar station as a prelude to the allied re-conquest of Burma. Unlike many of the war films of the same era, this one is shot almost exclusively outdoors, and a considerable effort was made to make the shoot look and sound like it was actually in a jungle.

Considering the film's age, the picture quality of the DVD is very good. A few of the sequences have a lot of scratches and grain, but that was because the film makes good use of real jungle war footage.

A must see for fans of WWII films, or of Errol Flynn fans who want to see him in one of his best roles.

This movie is seldom shown, but it's one of William Holden's most underrated pictures. The flying sequences are excellent, and well integrated into the overall story (much more so than many other movies about flying/test pilots). Holden gives a fine performance as a former test pilot who cracked under torture as a North Korean prisoner, and is searching for redemption from his peers and from himself. Highly recommended if you like this sort of film.

The recently released DVD of the movie has a surprising amount of extras that reveal several interesting things about the movie. These extras include a scene specific commentary edited from several tracks including Julie Christie, Ray Bradbury, as well as the film's producer and editor. Also included is a brand new 45 minute documentary, and 10 minute interview with Ray Bradbury discussing the origins of the novel.

One of the most interesting things revealed was that the emotionless, simple dialog of the film was deliberate because it was felt that a society without books would contain inarticulate people. Another is that the Bradbury and the film makers did not think of the work as science fiction, and they felt this was one of the reasons that the film was not well received when it was released --namely that viewers went expecting a sci-fi story, and got a social commentary piece instead.

All and all, a worthwhile DVD and a movie definitely worth a second look!

Bette Davis and Jimmy Cagney had been teamed once before in "Jimmy the Gent", also a comedy. That picture and this one are two of the relatively rare Bette Davis comedies. Jimmy the Gent was pleasant and fast moving, and featured the two stars relatively early in their career's. Here, they are both at the top of their game, and they elevate the mediocre material into something fast paced, fun, and easy to watch. It's a real pleasure to see two of the screen's greatest stars together. Nothing great, but definitely worth seeing for fans of the stars or of screwball comedies of that era.

One would expect that a movie with Bette Davis, Paul Muni, Claude Rains, John Garfield, Gail Sondergard, and Donald Crisp would have many things going for it, but you'd be wrong.

Paul Muni's Juarez is, to quote Pauline Kael, "like a heavy dose of medicine". John Garfield is badly miscast as a mexican general, and despite her co-star billing, Bette Davis really has only a supporting role with a few strong scenes.

The movie as a whole is laden with talk and lacks any real energy or political point of view. Bette Davis fans who want to see her in a costume historical epic would do much better to watch the Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.

Granted, this version of the Maltese Falcon pales in comparison to the 1941 classic, but there is still much to like here. This version plays the story with a comic tone, much like the tone of hugely popular 'The Thin Man'. If you view the film on it's own merits, and try not to compare it to the 1941 version, then this comic mystery works pretty well -- It tells the story in a breezy 75 minutes, so it doesn't overstay it's welcome.

Bette Davis is always worth a look. Here, in Mary Astor's 1941 role, she manages to be both comic and tough at the same time.