A little housecleaning

The blog has been fallow for a few days, so I regret the lack of activity...but as we were welcoming in July I received a notice in the mail that Oglethorpe County requested my presence as a Superior Court “traverse juror” the week of August 7.  Yes, it’s the time-honored practice of drawing jury duty;…

From the DVR: Guns, Girls and Gangsters (1959)

You may recall that on Sunday (though it seems so long ago—doesn't it?) I did a post here on the blog that briefly described my happy dance over our free Epix movie channel weekend.  Meanwhile, at the paying gig, I wrote up an anniversary essay on The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, which made its radio debut on June 17, 1947. …

Grey Market Cinema: Casbah (1948)

Jewel thief Pépé Le Moko (Tony Martin) is wanted by the French police...for obvious reasons.  Pépé is the mastermind of a gang of no-accounts that operates out of The Casbah in Algiers (Casbah translates as "fortress" or "citadel"), an area where he can apparently move freely without being molested by the gendarmes.  Algiers' police commissioner…

“I’m innocent, I tell ya—innocent!”

In the 1935 comedy short The Biffle Murder Case, deliverymen Benny Biffle (Nick Santa Maria) and Sam Shooster (Will Ryan) arrive at a stately mansion with a large crate: ROOSEVELT (a butler): Yes, gentlemen—may I help you? BIFFLE: We got a delivery… ROOSEVELT: Indeed…and whom might you be? SHOOSTER: Whom might we be?  (Pointing to…

Menjou En Gros

The recent VCI/Sprocket Vault DVD release of Hal Roach Forgotten Comedies could just have easily been titled “Adolphe Menjou at Hal Roach” because the three features in the collection—The Housekeeper’s Daughter (1939), Turnabout (1940), and Road Show (1941)—all star the actor known for both his sartorial splendor (he was voted “The Best Dressed Man in…

“Why bring that up?”

The end of October brought forth another volume in Alpha Video’s Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies series, and friend of the blog Brian Krey was good enough to aim a screener for Volume 4 screener in the direction of Rancho Yesteryear.  “A collection of six racy, hilarious, and often politically incorrect shorts from the anything-goes pre-Code era!”…

So this is Harris

Alpha Video’s Brian Krey—the individual who should take a bow for providing a lot of the product that I review on this here blog—mentioned to me in an e-mail a while back that the company was preparing a collection of two-reel shorts along the lines of their successful “Ultra-Rare Pre-Code Comedies” releases.  The kicker was…

Mr. Bojangles

Southerner Jean Stratton (Anise Boyer) is willing to go to any lengths to find work in Harlem—even making a wish under the legendary “Tree of Hope” (the story goes that an actor did this under the same tree and learned upon returning to his boarding house a producer had a part for him).  Unfortunately, a…

Buried Treasures: It Ain’t Hay (1943)

When Universal Studios Home Entertainment began releasing the cinematic oeuvre of Bud Abbott & Lou Costello to DVD in 2004—ultimately resulting in four separate volumes, many consisting of two discs featuring eight movies—one of the duo’s Universal romps was conspicuously missing: 1943’s It Ain’t Hay.  Hay was based on a short story by Damon Runyon, “Princess O’Hara,”…

“Well, I like it—I don’t dig it…but I like it.”

In Guide for the Film Fanatic, movie historian Danny Peary describes the 1978 biopic American Hot Wax thusly: “Floyd Mutrux's affectionate facts-out-the-window tribute to the late Alan Freed, regarded as the first white deejay to play black music, has as flimsy a storyline as those fifties "B" rock 'n roll movies in which Freed appeared.”  Go, Johnny Go! (1959) was…