How to Murder Your Wife

So there seems to be a go-to move when a comedy wants to delve into that whole marriage thing. What to do? Hen-pecked husbands, evil and manipulative wives. It paints quite a picture for marriage, don't it? Well, I caught one I'd never seen before courtesy of MGM-HD. I'd heard about it but was never able to track it down, 1965's How to Murder Your Wife. Yes, it is a comedy.

Living in an epic townhouse in New York City, Stanley Ford (Jack Lemmon) is a well to-do cartoonist without a care in the world. He tries to enact his own strip, Bash Brannigan, a James Bond-like secret agent, while living the ultimate bachelor's life. At his side is his butler and friend, Charles (Terry-Thomas), who helps him at every step. It's a perfect, unmarried, bachelor life...or at least it was. At a friend's bachelor party gone awry, Stanley drinks far too much and in an absolute state of feeling no pain, marries the dancer/stripper, (Virna Lisi). He of course doesn't remember any of this until the next morning when a hungover Stanley wakes up next to his new bride. His bachelor life is about to be thrown for a loop, especially when his wife absolutely refuses to get a divorce. Okay, so what now? Well, Stanley may only have one option left.

Well, this was an interesting one for both good and bad reasons. From director Richard Quine, it is a polished, funny, stylish comedy with an obviously pretty dark story basis. I think the biggest thing going for 'Murder' is that it is different. It tries to be different, and that's more than you can say for a lot of 1960s screwball comedies. Now that attempt at being unique does provide some uneven moments and some plot holes, but the end result is worth it. Quine films in New York City for some cool backdrop shots with Stanley's man cave of all man caves -- his posh NYC townhouse -- providing the main set. The camera zips in and around the maze-like rooms and floors, giving 'Murder' a unique visual look. This is no one camera set-up. The comedy is there, but that's not all. It's the rare comedy that's fun to actually just look at and watch.

Quine's dark comedy sets the tone early with a great opening sequence that keeps you guessing as to what exactly is going on. Thomas' Charles -- ever the English gentleman -- wakes up Stanley and they whisk off to another "crazy caper." What follows is Stanley enacting all the future adventures of Bash Brannigan with hired actors filling out all the parts from the damsel in distress to the dastardly villains, Stanley playing Bash with Charles taking pictures so Stanley can use them later for inspiration to draw the strips. It's a great opening sequence, one that is equal parts fun and mysterious while also showing off the close friendship Stanley and Charles have. Things are off and running from there with a story that covers a lot of ground, some sequences working better than others but always seemingly getting back on track.

With each passing movie, Jack Lemmon climbs higher and higher on my favorite actors list. Comedy, drama, he does it all. With parts that could easily be overdone, he finds ways to keep it funny without trying too hard. His Stanley (and his quasi-Bash alter-ego) finds himself in quite the predicament but because it's Lemmon you never completely turn on him. He has some great laughs with Thomas' Charles and his chemistry with the very beautiful Virna Lisi is spot-on too, especially as his unnamed wife -- only Mrs. Rogers -- reveals she only speaks Italian. Now that's a morning wake-up call! Also look for Eddie Mayehoff as Stanley's lawyer who's shrill wife, Edna (Claire Trevor), has quite the impact on the new to marriage Mrs. Ford in the manipulation department. Sidney Blackmer and Max Showalter also have key supporting parts.

If there is a weakness in the 1965 dark comedy, it's in the last 30 minutes (a 118-minute total running time). When Stanley finally brings up the idea that maybe murder is his best option, I thought things were heading in the right direction. There are some laughs as his plan is put into play, but we're never quite sure what he's up to. Does he really intend to kill Mrs. Rogers? Is it a plan for something else? It all plays out in a goofy, over the top courtroom sequence that feels forced and too gimmicky. Basically, all the things you'd expect out of lesser screwball comedies.

Still, as a whole, it's definitely worth a watch, especially for Jack Lemmon, Virna Lisi and Terry-Thomas.

How to Murder Your Wife (1965): ***/****

Pushover

As I mentioned in my review of Billy Wilder's The Apartment, I have a hard time seeing Fred MacMurray as anything but the star of Disney movies like The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog or on the TV show My Three Sons. An all-American Dad if there ever was one so I have trouble going along with his darker roles like in 1954 film noir Pushover. 

Working a case, middle-aged police officer Paul Sheridan (MacMurray) meets Lona (Kim Novak), the girlfriend of a gangster, Wheeler (Paul Richards) who's recently robbed a bank, escaping with $210,000 but killing a bank guard in the process. Bored with his life, Paul falls for her hard even when she figures out he's a cop. Upset with her situation of an absentee boyfriend, Lona similarly falls for Paul. Paul's precinct is working a stakeout in hopes of catching Lona's boyfriend, putting Paul in an interesting predicament. He comes up with a plan though, leaving his whole life behind him, taking the money if Wheeler shows up, and starting life over with Lona. Nothing comes easy though.

As a film noir, this has all the requisite pieces from the shadowy setting to the femme fatale in Novak to the anti-hero looking out for himself. Making her film debut, Novak is a bright spot as Lona McLane, the gangster's girlfriend frustrated with her situation. The 21-year old beauty was always gorgeous, but director Richard Quine shoots her like an angel....albeit one with a manipulative streak. Drop dead gorgeous came to mind anytime she was on the screen. Also a positive is the opening bank robbery, a silent sequence interrupted by gunfire. The early portions of the movie are especially good, MacMurray and Novak getting away with some risque scenes (for the time at least).

But as things start to develop with the gangster, the girl and the cash, my problems with MacMurray arose once again. I just don't buy him as a bad guy. Check that. He's not a bad guy, just a weak good guy who makes some epically bad, stupid decisions. The reviews pointed out that Novak manipulates MacMurray's Paul into stealing the stolen money, but I didn't see that. He is attracted to a younger, beautiful woman and sees a whole new life through her. The Paul character is still too much of a weakling though, and I had trouble buying him in the lead role. The other police officers include his partner, McAllister (Philip Carey), who's looking for a wife, Lt. Eckstrom (E.G. Marshall), the officer in charge, and Dolan (Allen Nourse), the veteran cop nearing his retirement and pension.

Once MacMurray's plan hits the fan, the story picks up to a pretty breakneck pace. It is 1954, and the Hollywood movie code still dictated that bad guys got their due. So in other words, once Paul starts making bad decisions, there's no end in sight. One mistake rolls onto another one, especially when Lola's neighbor (Dorothy Malone) sees Paul coming out of her apartment. It's only a matter of time before Paul's flimsy house of cards comes tumbling down, and when he does it is epically bad.

I should mention one thing though that ranks up there with MacMurray as some major issues in this 1954 film noir. A stakeout isn't exactly an exciting visual experience. Instead of spicing it up, Pushover actually shows it in all its excruciating detail. In an 88-minute movie, we get uninterrupted shots of policemen looking through binoculars, officers walking to a car and changing positions with other officers, that sort of thing. Pretty exciting, huh? Yeah, you bet. On the whole, the movie is pretty decent, but the negatives are hard to avoid.

Pushover <---TCM trailer/clips (1954): ** 1/2 /****

Bell Book and Candle

Working together in Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 classic thriller Vertigo, co-stars James Stewart and Kim Novak showed off an impressive chemistry that helped make the movie what it was. Stewart was Hitchcock's flawed leading man and Novak the icy blonde. So what's the natural progression as the two worked again later that year? Naturally from a murder thriller to a romantic comedy, 1958's Bell Book and Candle. 

A modern-day witch, Gillian Holroyd (Novak) does her best to hide the fact that she is in fact, a witch. With her brother, Nicky (Jack Lemmon), a warlock, and aunt and fellow witch, Queenie (Elsa Lanchester), Gillian is limited by what she can do without revealing herself. Running her little shop of voodoo and primitive art, Gillian has developed a bit of a crush on Shepherd Henderson (Stewart), a big-wig publisher who lives in the building. Well, sort of a crush, it can only go so far with witches. When she sees that he's engaged, she puts a hex on him, one that makes him fall in love with her. As things develop though, can Gillian tell him the truth? Can she develop feelings for just a regular old human being?

Just a couple months after reviewing Sunday in New York, here comes another well-written, well-acted, charming and even sweet romantic comedy from the 1950s and early 1960s. Where have they gone? They're just good movies. Sure, they are based in some sort of alternate universe where stories like this could actually exist, but that's part of the fun. The obvious influence this movie had is on the classic 1960s show Bewitched, a modern-day witch with her family trying to hide her "witch-dom." These aren't mean, cruel or vindictive witches -- for the most part, don't mess with Novak's Gillian -- but instead witches that are hiding who they are and struggling with it, seeing an easy way to easy cash and riches but unable to do anything about it.

The romantic pairing of Stewart and Novak might seem a little odd when you really look at it. This was actually Stewart's final role where he played a romantic interest because apparently he didn't think he was suited anymore for that type of role. He was 50 at the time while Novak was 25. So I'm no mathematician, but that's 25 years difference in age, right? For me, the age discrepancy was not an issue. If an on-screen duo has chemistry, that's great regardless of age. It can carry a movie, and here the age difference makes no impression at all. Stewart and Novak are great together, romantically, dramatically and in terms of the more obvious plays for laughs. The relationship is completely removed from the much darker Vertigo so it's fun to see two talented actors switch it up.

While I've always been familiar with her name, this was only the second movie I've seen Novak in, Vertigo being the other. She was only in 28 movies during her career, not many of them hugely popular or widely well-known. In 'Bell Book' Novak is the best thing going here. She is funny and smart and her voice is so perfectly sexy you can't help but fall for the character. Okay, well, I did. I don't care if you didn't. All I can say? I'll be looking for more movies with her starring roles. Yes, I kinda fell in love.

The rest of the cast looks to be having a lot of fun playing off the witchcraft hijinks. Lemmon and Lanchester are hysterical together, a warlord and witch quite content with their special "talents" and "abilities." Lemmon has some great scenes as the bongo band leader of a house band at the Zodiac Club, a den for witches and warlocks. Ernie Kovacs gets to ham it up as the drunken literary expert on all things mystical, including trying to write a book for Stewart's Henderson about witches in New York, not realizing what he's stepped into. Hermione Gingold is funny in a smaller part as Bianca de Passe, the higher-up of all witches, the woman to go to when some special powers are needed.

Funny, charming romantic comedy that I enjoyed from the start. Stewart is very funny, and it's a bonus seeing him do some physical comedy -- his facial expressions are hilarious -- while Novak plays off him well and is gorgeous so she's got that going for. Director Richard Quine has a real winner here.

Bell Book and Candle <---TCM trailer/clips (1958): ***/****

Synanon

Starting things off with a big generalization that I have no concrete facts to back up with, the 1960s have to be the most turbulent decade in American history, rivaled by the 1860s, the 1930s, and the 1940s among others I'm probably forgetting.  At the height of this turbulence was the drug culture that no doubt existed before, but really came to the forefront of people's minds during the time of Vietnam, hippies, and free love.  I have this perception of the average American home being oblivious to the drug culture. Were they? Who knows for sure, but some were aware.

The Synanon organization was devoted to drug rehabilitation, helping junkies and addicts kick the habit they'd developed.  Founded in 1958 in Santa Monica, California by Charles Dederich, the organization existed until the late 1980s before finally going under.  They were obviously doing something right to last over 30 years. Their success in the early 1960s was even parlayed into a feature film, 1965's appropriately titled Synanon. Made on location in Santa Monica at the Synanon Home where its patients went through treatment, the movie was made with the support of the organization, which made me wonder.  Why didn't they insist on a more positive story, or if nothing else, at least a better written script?

Coming off a heroin high one night on the boardwalk, ex-con and thug Zankie Albo (Alex Cord) finds himself in front of the Synanon House on the beach and checks himself in. At the lowest of lows though, being sober sounds like a good thing. When you're off your high, not so much, and Zankie has to convince the Synanon administration (Edmond O'Brien as Dederich, along with Richard Conte and singer Eartha Kitt) that he's on the up and up. Zankie goes back and forth but decides to stick around, partially because he's got an eye for another patient, Joaney (Stella Stevens), while also dealing with a fellow patient and person from his past, Ben (Chuck Connors). Going along with the program though and genuinely trying to get better, it seems only a matter of time before his demons get the best of him.

The biggest reason I watched this flick was the cast, no huge stars but actors who I'm always glad to see.  The performances though are more hit or miss.  O'Brien is a one-note character, the tough-talking administrative leader of the house, always glowering down at its patients with his tough love mentality. Conte plays a variation of so many of his performances, a condescending guy who thinks he knows everything.  Basically, that asshole everyone knows.  Kitt is okay but isn't given a ton to do.  Cord, Stevens, and Connors are the best thing going for the movie.  All three characters are deeply flawed individuals with their pasts looming over them.  What clicks together is that individually or as a group, there's nothing very redeeming about them, but they're still interesting to watch.  In the end, one character does get a chance to redeem themselves and move on to something better.

Now if I'm supporting a Hollywood feature film about my organization, I'm making certain demands about how things are going to be portrayed.  With an organization like Synanon, that can be trouble because you're dealing with drug rehab (albeit a seemingly white-washed version).  If you show it as it is, this is going to be one of the darkest movies ever.  If you censor it as it feels like in the film at times, you're not doing the story justice.  Director Richard Quine is trapped somewhere in the middle with moments of incredible darkness followed by moments of adoring adulation of the organization. Going back and forth like the story does, that's not the biggest concern. It's a reliance on story conventions that soap operas would be jealous of. Maybe it seemed innovative or ahead of its time in 1965, but now in 2011, it's all been done and seen.  Shocking then, but not so much now.

What aids the movie through its ups and downs has little to do with the actual story of this organization trying to aid patients in their drug rehab.  It's a very stylish, well-made look at Santa Monica, California, providing a bit of a time capsule for a really cool time period.  Filming was done at the original Synanon house on the Santa Monica beach although I'm guessing indoor scenes were filmed on a studio.  Other than though, as a viewer we feel like we're there at the house with the patients.  Quine shoots on the streets surrounding the house, in and around the seedy bars nearby, and uses some unique angles that take you out of a typical comfort zone. It's not an aggressive style, but it doesn't just settle to put the camera in front of the cast and let them go.  With a soft jazz score by Neal Hefti, 'Synanon' gives a window into 1960s California that transports you into the story.

Trying to look past the cliches and stereotypes the script relies on far too much, I was genuinely impressed with the performances by Cord, Stevens and Connors.  I've only seen Alex Cord in a handful of really average movies, but I've always liked him as an actor.  Besides the ridiculously odd but still cool name -- Zankie Albo -- the character is interesting even if I would have liked a little more background.  Stevens plays up her sex kitten image and then throws you for a twist the same way Connors does, shedding his Lucas McCain image from The Rifleman.  So overall, while the movie wasn't that good, some of the performances were good enough to give this a slight recommendation.

Synanon <--- TCM clips (1965): ** 1/2 /****

Drive a Crooked Road

Thanks to a heavy day of programming in late December with movies I'm interested in, I've been on Mickey Rooney overload over the last week or so. That's not a bad thing because as I've pointed out in recent reviews, he's one of my favorite character actors once he grew up into an adult actor.  The latest Rooney flick I reviewed, My Outlaw Brother, wasn't a great showcase for his abilities, but an unknown noir that's slipped through the cracks over the years, 1954's Drive a Crooked Road, certainly does. 

There's nothing about Rooney that upon looking at him screams 'I'm a movie star!' He stood only 5'3 and wasn't a classically handsome guy.  For me though, that's part of his appeal.  He was the anti-star who overcame an early career as a child star to become an adult star.  In this age of failed celebrities, how rare does that actually happen?  He was capable of humor (Mad, Mad World), drama, action, and combinations of the three like his parts in Ambush Bay or The Secret Invasion where he got to ham it up with scenery-chewing parts.  Of all the Rooney roles I've seen though, 'Crooked Road' may be the best.

Working as a mechanic in a Los Angeles garage, Eddie Shannon (Rooney) leads a quiet life.  He rents a small apartment and lives alone, sometimes entering road races on the weekend for some extra cash.  Eddie has a scar across his forehead from an incident in his past, one that clearly troubles him as he goes through his lonely life.  One day, he meets the very beautiful Barbara (Dianne Foster) when she brings her car into the garage Eddie works at.  He can't explain it, but for some reason Barbara is interested in him, and they start seeing each other.  It all seems too good to be true, and it is.  After several weeks, Barbara introduces him to two friends of hers, Steve (Kevin McCarthy) and Harold (Jack Kelly) who have a business proposition for him. Steve has planned the perfect robbery, and all he needs is a skilled driver for the getaway. Torn about what to do, Eddie balances out his feelings for Barbara with the knowledge he's going down a road he can't return on.

If you're not familiar with Rooney or any of his roles, or you are familiar with him and didn't think much of him as an actor, check this movie out.  As Foster's Barbara describes Rooney's Eddie, he is a 'lonely, little animal' who is just looking for some sort of happiness.  His facial scar is left unexplained for the most part other than a throwaway line explaining it was 'part of a car accident.' Maybe that line is truthful, but there is something more to it that we never find out about it.  Was someone else in the car with him, someone he cared or loved about very much?  His Eddie Shannon character doesn't have a mean bone in his body, going about his business quietly even as co-workers (including Jerry Paris, Paul Picerni, Harry Landers and Dick Crockett) poke fun at him.   

What takes this character to another level is his relationship with the very pretty Barbara, someone he clicks with right away.  You can tell through his interactions that he's somewhat skeptical about the developments.  He's burn hurt in the past somehow and isn't quite ready to open up to someone new, even if he does have strong feelings for her.  The tragic character description comes through when Barbara introduces him to Steve and Harold, and you start to question what her motives were all along.  Was it as a favor to old friend Steve, or at any point were there genuine feelings involved?  Pushed too far and already head over heels, Eddie continues because he genuinely cares for her and thinks this is what she wants him to do. Rooney does a fabulous job bringing this character to life, a vulnerable but kind-hearted man just looking for some sort of normalcy, some sort of happiness. He sees his shot -- however slim -- in getting to that point in a relationship doomed from the start.

Something appealed to me about this movie that I can't quite put my finger on, even now a day after finishing it.  Director Richard Quine doesn't do anything too spectacular here, nothing out of left field, but everything from casting to locations to story is handled professionally and capably.  The movie is shot in black and white giving the Los Angeles locations an old nostalgic feel of a time long since passed.  Foster is the femme fatale, the female character you're just not sure of.  She seems perfect early on, basically the ideal woman even though later we find out everything isn't as it seems.  McCarthy plays the impossibly smooth friend/crook who gets Eddie involved in the heist while Kelly plays his partner and heavy doomed to meet a nasty fate.  The heist itself is nothing special and is more of a vehicle to the end than anything else although Eddie's getaway across a desert road is a highlight.

So what worked so well?  All the little pieces add up nicely, but the selling point here is Mickey Rooney.  With a B-movie, a noir like this, I think it would have been hard for Rooney to get anything in the way of recognition from the Academy Awards, but I feel safe saying he certainly deserved a nomination here.  It's an understated performance that doesn't get caught up in theatrics, and credit to Rooney for that.  Like many heist/robbery movies, the heist is actually the easy part, it's the fallout that causes the problems.  It's there where the movie goes into tragic territory. A great part, a moving, heart-breaking ending, and a movie that has been wrongfully forgotten in the years since.

Drive a Crooked Road <---TCM trailer (1954): ****/**** 

Sex and the Single Girl

One of my all-time favorite actors, Hollywood legend Tony Curtis died September 29 from a heart attack in Las Vegas.  Someone I've always thought of as an underrated actor, Curtis did it all in his career, and I've reviewed a fair share of his movies in the last two years.  He could do a screwball romantic comedy while also pulling off an epic historical period piece at the same time.  Comedy, drama, action, and anything in between, Curtis was an underrated, very versatile actor who I'll always like.  But of all his movies, he may most be remembered for his comedies where his natural charm translated well.  Everyone knows about Some Like it Hot, but add 1964's Sex and the Single Girl to the list of interesting flicks to check out.

Screwball comedies are pretty hit or miss typically for me, but I give most the benefit of the doubt depending on the talent involved.  The talent here made it worthwhile and caught my eye from the start.  The premise is not surprisingly pretty ridiculous with some digs at sex, affairs and some necessary miscommunication and confusion as to who everyone is.  It is 1964 so it can be pretty tame although gasp, 'virgin' is said once but never again.  Pretty scandalous stuff, right? But despite a really stupid ending that pushed my limits, I still liked the flick almost in spite of itself, even as stupid as it is at times.

A managing editor for Dirt magazine (think TMZ but dirtier and in print), Bob Weston (Curtis) is the best at what he does; trashing celebrities with blatant lies that readers eat up.  His next target? Dr. Helen Brown (Natalie Wood), a sex and relationship therapist who has gained fame from her best-selling book about how a single woman should live her life. Unfortunately for Bob, there's no easy way to prove that the very pretty Dr. Brown is living what she preaches.  Has she even been in a serious relationship with a man?  He finds his way in though, posing as his neighbor (Henry Fonda) who after 10 years of marriage is constantly fighting with his wife (Lauren Bacall). But in looking to reveal her as a fraud (surprise, surprise), Bob falls for her hard.  Can he still win her over, admitting what he's been trying to do?

Like a lot of the 1960s screwball comedies I've seen, there's something a little off, a little disturbing with the story.  Weston is basically trying to figure out if Helen is a virgin, and he's going to lie, cheat and steal his way into finding out the truth, at one point even resorting to just getting her drunk.  The 1960s weren't as classy as I figured I guess.  Thankfully, Weston develops actual feelings for her before he drunkenly takes advantage of her.  The whole thing seems tame at times and oddly inappropriate at others.  It never goes too far though because a movie where Tony Curtis takes advantage of Natalie Wood just doesn't seem quite right.

Finding that nice middle ground, director Richard Quine allows his actors to do their thing in getting the most laughs possible out of the story. Curtis treads that fine line between being a completely disgusting chauvinist and an overly charming ladies man.  I've always thought of Wood as more cute than out of this world hot, but she really turns it on here.  Maybe its the innocence of her character, but she's great in the part and looks gorgeous.  In the 1960s, few actresses had as much comedic talent (dramatic talent too), and with Curtis you've got quite a pair together.  Their scenes together are dialogue heavy, but it's great seeing them go back and forth with some really snappy exchanges.

Now as perfect as Curtis and Wood are together, I was surprised by the names I saw in the opening credits, especially considering I was just about to watch a screwball comedy.  Henry Fonda and Lauren Bacall, really?  The joke was on me I guess because they create the perfect subplot that at times is funnier than the main plot.  Fonda is a hosiery salesman who looks at womens' legs for a living, and Bacall as his wife objects thinking he's just a pervert who likes looking at women's legs.  They fight constantly, and Curtis' Weston has a source for information that he can turn around and pose as a husband in a troubled marriage.  For two actors like Fonda and Bacall who typically stuck with drama, it's great to see them branch out.  Are they great parts?  No, not at all, but seeing talent like that work in a comedy is always worthwhile.

Because they can't all be winners, we have the third and final act of 'Sex and the Single Girl.'  With mistaken identity that I Love Lucy would have been jealous of, all these different people cross paths and start chasing each other on the expressway outside Los Angeles in a variety of different cars.  Look for Larry Storch in a laughably bad part as a motorcycle cop caught up in the craziness. The humor leading up to all this wasn't exactly high-brow, but this chase reminded me of the lowest kind of slapstick, almost like a chase you'd see in The Monkees or maybe Scooby Doo.  The movie limps into the finish line because of the ending, but I'll still give it a mild recommendation.

Sex and the Single Girl <---TCM trailer (1964): ** 1/2 /****