Chapter 3 of Mandrake the Magician (1939) picks up where Chapter 2 left off—well, this is a serial, so that's pretty much SOP. Mandrake and Lothar are duking it out with the Wasp’s henchmen when they’re both knocked unconscious and trapped in a room filling up with live steam. (It’s all fun and games until someone gets an eye put out.) To add insult to injury, Professor Houston’s daughter Betty (Doris Weston) insisted on tagging along and now she’s trapped in a falling elevator with one of the bad guys; but fortunately, everything comes out in the wash. I noticed at the IMDb that Ms. Weston’s acting career was pretty spotty and from what I’ve witnessed of her work in Mandrake it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why. (If you’ll forgive me for being catty for a moment, I believe her role in this film resulted from the old “casting couch”—if you know what I mean, and I think you do.)

Mandrake and Company capture the bad guy, Brown (Ernie Adams), from the elevator and the magician plans to interrogate him to get details on where Professor Houston is being held hostage. Mandrake has a little fun with this guy, engaging in a series of mind games in order to disorient him—but the rest of the gang is on to him (the professor’s lab is bugged, something of which the good guys are blissfully unaware) and a thug (Eddie Foster) posing as a window washer dispatches Brown with a dart from a blowgun..

Finally, the Wasp sends a hypnotist named Regan (Sam Ash) to pose as another hypnotist named Professor Frederick Leland to pay Mandrake a visit; our magician hero is on to him, however, and pretends to let Regan “hypnotize” him, hoping to be taken to the Wasp. But the Wasp has another trick up his sleeve, luring the useless Betty (who needs rescuing more times than Olive Oyl) to radio station WRBS where he plans to destroy its towers with the…radium energy doo-hickey he’s swiped.

If all this sounds confusing, you ought to try watching the damn thing. Tomorrow: Chapter 4—The Secret Passage!
9:05:56 PM    comment []  trackback []  

“For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are those ‘It might have been’…”

I’m off for the next two nights, and since I’m a political junkie at heart most of my free time will be spent watching the Democratic convention on TV. However, I managed to squeeze in a glance at one of my newest Netflix rentals, starting with The Lavender Hill Mob (1951).

In this classic Ealing Studios comedy, Sir Alec Guinness is Henry “Dutch” Holland, a mousy bank clerk who yearns to break free of his stifling, humdrum existence by planning to rob an armored truck of its booty of gold buillion. With the help of Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway), a manufacturer of trinkets and gewgaws (“I propagate British cultural depravity.”), and a pair of professional (and henpecked) crooks in Sidney James and Alfie Bass, the criminal quartet melts down close to £1,000,000 in gold and disguises it as souvenir Eiffel Towers, which they will successfully smuggle out of Britain and into France. Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and men…

The Lavender Hill Mob is an enjoyable comedy—not a kneeslapper by any means but a must-see for those people who prefer their humor gentle and mellow. Guinness and Holloway make a truly sublime team, and I’ve always been a fan of Sid James from his radio work (Hancock’s Half Hour), movies (he was in many of the Carry On films) and TV (Bless This House). The climactic, Keystone Kops-like chase is usually singled out by fans of the film, but I personally enjoy the sequence where Guinness and Holloway must make a mad dash down the steps of the Eiffel Tower. Directed by Charles Crichton, whose film career included The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) and A Fish Called Wanda (1988), The Lavender Hill Mob’s screenplay was written by T.E.B. Clarke, who deserved snagged an Oscar for Best Screenplay at the 1952 Academy Awards. (Don’t miss a brief bit by Audrey Hepburn at the beginning!)
10:21:18 AM    comment []  trackback []