O.S.S.

“O.S.S.” (1946) is a real pip of a WWII espionage thriller, with a strong cast and several genuinely suspenseful situations. What’s most interesting is its screenplay credit, an early credit for Richard Maibaum, who went on to write 13 James Bond films. There’s quite a bit here that looks ahead to the later 007 films.

I mean, you have the hero Alan Ladd sporting a pipe that turns into a revolver, and sculptress/agent Geraldine Fitzgerald using molding clay that also doubles as plastic explosive. Not to mention a Gestapo colonel (John Hoyt, a terrific performance in his film debut) who, thanks to a run-in with the OSS agents, sports a white, not a black, eye patch, that looks ahead to Maibaum’s gallery of deformed Bond villains.

“O.S.S” is presented, at first, in that semi-documentary style so popular after the war. This one tends to lean more towards melodrama than realism, despite the seal of approval at the beginning by OSS founder William “Wild Bill” Donovan. OSS stands for Office of Strategic Services, and was a forerunner of the CIA.

Supposedly based on actual OSS case files, I suspect that only the germ of actual OSS incidents found their way into the finished script. When the film was made, the war had been over for only a year, and I’m sure many top secret files stayed that way for years, if not decades, after.

“O.S.S.” follows a team of agents code named Applejack placed into France to help pave the way for the invasion of Europe. We follow the agents as they learn their cover stories and the local customs, such as using a fork in the left hand European-style, not right-hand American style.

Philip Masson (Alan Ladd) doesn’t like the idea of working with Ellen Rogers (Geraldine Fitzgerald). He doesn’t think women can be relied upon. But they form a team whose assignment is to blow up a key French railroad tunnel. How to smuggle explosives into that heavily guarded section of France?

I won’t spoil it for those that haven’t seen the movie, but it’s very clever. When the team completes this assignment, the movie is barely half over. There’s still the problem of laying low in France, while obtaining whatever information they can on troop size and their movements, all while evading the Gestapo who are after them for blowing up the tunnel.

The firm was produced by Paramount Pictures and directed by the intriguing Irving Pichel. Starting out his career as an actor, and arguably best known for his role as the manservant Sandor in “Dracula’s Daughter” (1936), Pichel also was known as a voice actor and later as a director. He directed the nifty noirs “They Won’t Believe Me” (1947) and “Quicksand” (1950) and some of “O.S.S” plays like a noir in spots, with the foggy, darkened streets of Paris harboring Gestapo threats around every corner.

 

No starlet type, Fitzgerald was one of the more intelligent actresses of the era and it’s a pleasure to see her using her intelligence and wits to finesse her way out of countless situations. She’s a good foil for Ladd, who may not be among the cinema’s great actors, but had a terrific screen presence and possessed charisma that many more respectable actors would kill to have.

Despite the 007-like touches I mentioned earlier, and the impressive performance by Fitzgerald, the movie offers other surprises. Just when you think its over, and Ladd and Fitzgerald are awaiting in an empty field to be picked up by an airplane and taken back to England, they are asked – no, ordered - by their commanding officer Patric Knowles to stay for one last mission. In one of the best scenes of his career, Ladd, grits his teeth and tells Knowles to let someone else do it, they’ve done their bit and want to go home.

No gung-ho type, Ladd’s character is scared and doesn’t want to go the self-sacrifice route. (I suspect that if this was made during the war, he would have willingly accepted the assignment). The ending is somber too, and a good tonic to those who think all 1940s war movies end on an upbeat, patriotic note.

 

Alas, “O.S.S.” has yet to be released on DVD, and its been a long time since its been shown on television. I was fortunate enough to snag a used VHS copy during a recent trip to the local Half Price Books, where the VHS tapes were being sold for fifty cents each. In what can only be termed an Alan Ladd goldmine, I also grabbed VHS copies of “China” (1943) and “Two Years Before the Mast” (1947) for the same price.

I do hope that a company like Olive Films releases it on DVD, or it shows up on TCM. It’s a terrific film, with more than a few very suspenseful sequences. It deserves to be better known. For a WWII espionage thriller, “O.S.S.” is one of the best.

The Black Cat (1941)

Many horror film fans are dismissive of “The Black Cat” (1941) and it’s easy to see why. It’s not a horror film, but more of a mystery/comedy thriller with an emphasis on comedy. The fact that the comedy is provided by Hugh Herbert grates on a lot of people. Bela Lugosi is wasted in a red herring role as a gardener, and star Basil Rathbone isn’t given much to do. Plus it shares the same title with a 1934 horror epic starring Lugosi and Boris Karloff, which is one of the highest regarded and best loved films in the Universal horror canon.

But I enjoyed “The Black Cat” for several reasons. For one, I’m a sucker for old dark house mysteries where a group of characters gathers at a mansion for a reading of the will. So the fact that it’s a mystery movie rather than a horror film doesn’t bother me. There’s still enough rainstorms, secret passages to explore (by candlelight, naturally) and corpses falling out of closet doors to keep one entertained.

What I liked most about the film is the cinematography. Man, this is one beautiful looking film, and no wonder. The film was photographed by Stanley Cortez, who also shot “The Magnificent Ambersons” (1942) and “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), which boasts some of the most beautifully atmospheric black and white photography of all time.

“The Black Cat” may be a “B” mystery drama, but it’s a beautiful film to look at. A scene where a character catches fire and runs screaming through the corridors makes a fine impression, as do scenes of the murderer toting a body through the shadow-drenched hallways.

I like a lot of the cast members. True, Rathbone seems unengaged throughout and Lugosi is wasted, but there are other compensations. I’ve always liked Broderick Crawford, Gale Sondergaard is on hand as, what else, a housekeeper. There’s also Gladys Cooper (one year before her immortal mother from Hell role in “Now, Voyager”), Alan Ladd (one year before he hit big time stardom in “This Gun for Hire”), Anne Gwynne (one of the prettiest and most appealing of 1940s Universal starlets) and Claire Dodd (one of the prettiest and most personable of 1930s actresses.) That’s a very likeable cast. And then there’s Hugh Herbert.
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Now, I like Hugh Herbert a lot, so seeing him is always a treat for me. (This is not a commonly held opinion by most people.) For definitive Herbert performances check out his work – comedic gems of the highest order – in the Busby Berkeley musicals “Dames” (1934) (as eccentric millionaire Ezra Ounce, driving family members crazy with his desire for his “medicine” Dr. Silver’s Golden Elixir) and in “Gold Diggers of 1935” (an eccentric millionaire again, this time T. Mosley Thorpe III, an avid collector of snuff boxes). If you don’t like Herbert in these films, you won’t like him in anything. He drives a lot of people nuts. Me, I find him very funny.

“The Black Cat” only runs 71 minutes. It’s no great shakes, but a more than agreeable viewing experience, especially with that cast and that gorgeous black and white photography on display.

Rating for “The Black Cat”: Two and a half stars.

A Weekend of Movie Viewing

I enjoyed a four-day weekend last week, which allowed me to catch up on a few movies. In two cases, films I had remembered turned out differently from my old memory.

Since my most recent blog was about “The Sundowners” I thought I would watch another 1960 release, “Home from the Hill”, a piece of Southern-fried soap opera also starring Robert Mitchum, though as a very different kind of father from the loving one presented in “The Sundowners.” In this one, Mitchum plays a wealthy landowner with two sons, one legitimate (George Hamilton) and one illegitimate (George Peppard). I was going to be clever and point out the differences between Mitchum’s father portrayals in the same year. I’d only seen “Home from the Hill” once before, but I remember it as being a pretty good movie, with Mitchum terrifying his role as the Southern patriarch who pits his two sons against each other.

Well, it’s nothing like that. He’s actually a sympathetic father to Hamilton, who is shy and in awe of his father. He takes him hunting and prepares him on the road to manhood. He admits he’s made mistakes, and is anxious to forge a strong relationship with his son. Circumstances prove otherwise.

It’s not very good. It’s long (150 minutes) and the character’s motivations seem contrived and confused. It’s adapted from a long novel but in adapting it all the I’s weren’t dotted and all the T’s weren’t crossed. Even Mitchum’s character seems to change depending on the scene. He’s fine in the individual scenes, but when it was over I never got a grasp of the character or where he was coming from. Still, Mitchum remains supremely watchable as ever. There’s also a nice score by Bronislau Kaper, with a majestic main theme that makes one wish one could live in a soap opera with a dysfunctional family, only if such a melody were present in the background.

Rating for “Home from the Hill”: A disappointing two and a half stars.

From TCM I watched “The Black Knight” (1954), starring, of all people, Alan Ladd, in the title role and set during the time of Camelot. I hadn’t seen it since grade school when it appeared on the 3:30 movie and the only thing I remembered about it was a scene where some Druids (or some other pagan representatives) were holding a human sacrifice outdoors at a Stonehenge-like temple. There were these giant wicker cages suspended in the air by ropes where Druid dancers were writhing around, kind of a like a medieval disco. It made quite an impression on me.

Unfortunately my memory was slightly skewed, as the wicker cages contained monks and priests, who are shown praying as the pagans practice their idolatrous ways. Oh, there’s still a sacrifice scene, and there are Druid dancing girls but they are on the ground and not up in the air as a precursor to the sacrifice. I admit to being somewhat disappointed that I didn’t see those Druid women writhing about in those cages. No doubt a psychiatrist can explain why.

The rest of “The Black Knight” is pretty clunky, and Alan Ladd looks as out of place in medieval England as Keanu Reeves would, but it’s entertaining enough, and boasts a nice villainous turn by Peter Cushing and a tuneful score by John Addison.

Rating for “The Black Knight”: Two and a half stars.

One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and easily the worst of the year, is “Transformers”, a monument to stupidity the likes of which we haven’t seen in years. There’s a cliché that director Michael Bay is the Antichrist of Hollywood, and represents everything wrong with contemporary Hollywood cinema and I’m afraid this is one cliché that is correct. Everyone connected with this pile of garbage should be ashamed of themselves. (And its, gasp, 144 minutes!)

Rating for “Transformers”: One star.

The most enjoyable movie I watched all weekend was “The Black Camel” (1931) found on Vol. 3 of the new Charlie Chan DVD set. Out of the first five Charlie Chan movies to star Warner Oland, only “The Black Camel” survives. It’s a good one, with Charlie investigating the murder of a movie star on location in Honolulu. There’s a colorful cast of suspects, including “Dracula” stars Bela Lugosi (as a swami) and Dwight Frye, an impossibly youthful looking Robert Young and beady-eyed C. Henry Gordon, who nine years later would be a suspect in “Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum.” Oland, in his second turn as the famous sleuth, has the mannerisms down pat, and he’s an absolute delight in the role, especially in his gentle put downs of an over-zealous assistant.

Fox took added expense to film on location in Honolulu, a rare occurrence at the time, and the scenes of 1931 Honolulu have an added charm. All this and a running time of only 71 minutes.

For years, “The Black Camel” was only available on bad looking black markets tapes, so I’m thrilled Fox put this out on DVD. It’s probably the DVD release of the year so far.

Rating for “The Black Camel”: Three stars. Thank you so much.