Reviews

Viewers who were not born in Indiana, or have never lived there, will find a few things about "Hoosiers" a little puzzling. But, that's often the case when a story takes one into unfamiliar territory -- even in one's own country.

Yes, we Hoosiers are more attached to our farms and corn fields, our small towns, our narrow back roads. But the pastime everyone here -- well, ALMOST everyone -- is fascinated with, is BASKETBALL.

And the movie "Hoosiers", based on a small town's winning the state championship in 1954 (yes, it really happened) portrays our state love affair with basketball better than any other I've ever seen. The game was invented in Massachusetts -- but it grew up in Indiana. The fit was better here.

And, to wind up this short review with a big surprise, today I got to meet and shake the hand of the man who, as a starting guard for the Milan Indians, scored the field goal that snatched a victory for them from the Muncie Central team to win the 1954 state championship. I was only 9 years old when he made that shot, but I finally got to shake the hand of Bobby Plump, the hand that made that shot, 68 years later!

Stan and Ollie were the best comedy team in movie history, in my humble opinion. The Marx Brothers usually got that title from the professional film critics -- with Charlie Chaplin as the "best single comic" -- but I think that was a mistake based on opinions which were shared around like doughnuts.

And of all the numerous feature-length movies Laurel and Hardy starred in from the middle to the last part of their careers, I vote for "Babes in Toyland" as the best. It has a wonderful musical background, for one thing. Especially the song early on, titled "Never Mind, Bo Peep," which I think has the most beautiful melody to its verse as any song I've ever heard. "The boys" are at their best in this fairy tale, and all the other actors play their parts well, without a trace of "snicker" or "wink, nudge" about being characters in a story which couldn't have happened in real life.

The wind-ups in the cave, with the Wooden Soldiers about to chase the villain and his bunch out of Toyland, couldn't have been better, or more typical of a Stan and Ollie finish. I first saw this movie on TV when I was 8 years old, and I've loved it from that day to this.

This early Gene Autry Western is much better than most of the other reviewers are willing to admit. Gene's acting is mostly serious in this tale of the murder of an old miner who had discovered gold in his hidden mine, and of Autry's and Smiley Burnett's efforts to find and arrest the killer. This contrasts greatly with Gene's casual, semi-comic performance in the movie filmed just before this one, "Melody Trail." But then, Gene Autry's movies were not all alike -- despite what some of these reviewers would like you to think.

Some have criticized the early scene where Champ, Autry's magnificent horse, supposedly stumbles and falls, sending his master tumbling a short way down an incline (but with no injury to the rider). But they seem not to realize that some horses can be taught to deliberately "take a spill" like that as part of a scene. Note that Champ scrambles up again quickly, apparently also not injured.

And the last scene of the film, after Gene and Frog have frustrated the bad guys, and seen to it that that the elderly miner's mine has been registered to his young, beautiful granddaughter, who has been gradually falling in love with Gene, shows how a rumor about Autry's movies became a "fact" to so many of his fans.

"Gene never kissed the girl in his movies; he always kissed his horse." Well, actress Barbara Pepper sits close to Gene as he sings, "Ain't no woman gonna marry me, as long as I have my horse ..." And just as he starts to say "horse," to end the song, Pepper jumps up into his face and plants a big French kiss on his lips! Then the camera switches to Frog, who looks a little embarrassed at having witnessed it, then puts his arm around Champ's neck, and kisses "the world's wonder horse." This was the first of several of Gene's early movies where he DID kiss the girl -- or she kissed him -- just before the final fade-out.

But Gene NEVER kissed Champ. Not on camera, anyway. A very entertaining Western. Give it a look!

This 1941 Gene Autry Western deals with a more detailed and complicated plot than most, and the climactic scene may disturb you, and even make you cry. There are moments in the film that reveal the genuine emotion of a young girl over her dad's being in mortal danger that you seldom see in movies of this genre.

Having said that, I'll add that in my opinion it's one of the best Westerns that Gene ever starred in, just a year or so prior to his leaving Hollywood to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.

Gene and Frog (Smiley Burnette) are watching the parade through their Western town of the performers from a showboat that has landed in town, when two evil men rob the local bank, taking $140,000, which includes money Gene had encouraged some of his fellow ranchers to invest there instead of wasting it on things they didn't really need.

The two thieves not only rob the bank, but they also kill the owner. And the down-on-his-luck father of a young, talented singer from the showboat cast, played by Mary Lee, foolishly has gone in with them, feeling that he needs money so bad that he has to.

The thieves escape (Mary's father doesn't go with them), despite Gene's chasing them unsuccessfully on Champ. Gene and Frog then talk the owner of the showboat into hiring them as entertainers in the cast, so they can keep an eye on the foolish father and his daughter.

Of course the young girl singer is loving and protective of her father, even after he flees with the loot that the thieves have left in his hands. She is hostile to Autry for being suspicious of her father, until one evening she accidentally falls overboard from the boat, and Gene has to dive in and rescue her. It's obviously him (and her) in the water, too, despite the fondness of some who review his movies on here of implying that Gene had stuntmen to fake being him for anything more difficult than walking across the room.

Anyway, the climax of the movie includes some very hard riding, a big gunfight, Gene fighting it out with the two bank robbers (and doing his own stunts there, too), and finally the crooks shooting and killing poor Mary's father. Mary's weeping and screaming as Gene tries to comfort her sounds very genuine. Mary Lee was a fine actress.

As I said before, I enjoyed this movie tremendously. There was a lot of great music included in it, too. I highly recommend it.

This late-'50s drama starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine was filmed in my home town of Madison in southern Indiana, and gives one a very interesting look at the clothing styles, prevailing moral standards, and other social parameters of the late Eisenhower era. All of these may look a little odd to younger people who happen to watch this movie today, but that is true of many movies filmed many years before one's own era.

Sinatra does a creditable job playing former GI and supposedly failed writer Dave Hirsh who has returned to his home town of Parkman. MacLaine, who is in love with him, follows him there on the Greyhound bus, and his brother, a successful local merchant, welcomes him home -- sort of. The brothers are obviously not close, and clash in various ways throughout the film.

Hirsh's pursuit of a lovely college professor, played by Martha Hyer, does not work out, and he finally winds up marrying MacLaine. But later the same evening, a jealous suitor who has followed her there from Chicago, shoots them both, killing MacLaine. Her burial in a cemetery beside the Ohio River is the final scene in the movie.

Sinatra's performance is reasonably good, although he often seems bored and annoyed by the plot. Martin does a much better job as his professional gambler friend, and MacLaine's performance is outstanding.

The movie gives one a glimpse of what my hometown looked like in 1958 -- the photography is excellent. A good "period picture."

My only major criticism of "Some Came Running" is this: The interactions between Sinatra and MacLaine in the movie are convincing, and show how much she loves him. Then, he finally marries her, and it's the happiest day of her life -- until she is shot and killed as the two walk through a night-time street carnival. When MacLaine hits the sidewalk, that's it -- she's dead. Sinatra, wounded, holds her in his arms, staring with stunned unbelief at her composed features. It would have been such an excellent place for her to speak some memorable last words to her new husband. But the director just let that chance pass.

In my opinion, he made a big error there.

This movie was based on a book by Bellamy Partridge, who doesn't seem to have been given any credit AMONG the credits. Anyway, my mother had a copy of the book, which I read as soon as I learned to read, about 1951-52, when I started school. I became fascinated by antique automobiles. So when "Excuse My Dust" came to our home town, of course my parents took me to see it.

And I loved it! Red Skelton as Joe Belden (a takeoff from "Bellamy,") is trying to get his horseless carriage to run properly in his small Indiana town. As Skelton was born and raised in Vincennes, Indiana, and I'm a born Hoosier, too, it's no wonder it grabbed me as it did. Old-time cars, one-cylinder, steered with a tiller-like lever (no steering wheels yet), with a top speed of maybe 12 miles per hour!

Belden and his girlfriend (Sally Forrest), and Macdonald Carey as the "bad guy," sort of, who wants to steal her away, spar back and forth throughout the movie, which includes some pretty good music and dancing. At the climax, Belden, Carey, and several other owners of these horseless carriages participate in a slam-bang race for a first prize that must have seemed like a fortune in 1895 America.

Red is a little more restrained than usual for him in his comedies, but then again, this one isn't a Three Stooges. Milder, more musical. More -- Hoosier. Well worth watching!

This was one of Gene Autry's earliest movies, less than one year into his series that he filmed, almost without pause, between 1935 and his entry into the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942. But his riding, and his acting, already are looking more natural, and he's looking more comfortable doing them.

His best acting probably comes when one of the bad guys, Tom London, emerges from the saloon through a window he and henchman Charlie King have shot out, to confront Gene over the fact that London's warned him to be "out of town by 5 o'clock," and Autry has failed to comply. Gene is presiding at that moment over the sales of Dr. Parker's (Earle Hodgins) "magic tonic" at the medicine show that Parker operates. Instead of running scared of London, or trying to "out-draw" him, Gene begins an advertising spiel for the tonic -- available for one dollar a bottle. Speaking directly to London, Autry finally tosses him a bottle of the stuff. "One dollar, please." London glares at Gene, and his hand moves slowly -- toward his gun? Gene's right hand slowly makes the same move. But finally London reaches into his pants pocket instead, pulls out a silver dollar, and tosses it to Gene, who catches it effortlessly (don't forget, Autry once got a chance to sign with a minor league baseball team, but decided to turn it down), gives London a grin and a nod, and the tense moment passes.

London and King's boss is a local big shot who expects to "make $100,000" using illegal ways to move a big cattle herd. J.P. McGowan plays that "biggest bad guy," and his sons Dorrel and Stuart McGowan wrote the screenplay. The McGowan brothers wrote some of the best of Autry's early screenplays.

All ends well -- as usual -- with the bad guys in jail, and Gene and the leading lady, Dorothy Dix, driving the medicine show wagon off into the sunset. And if you want to see a funny ending, watch Smiley Burnette take a big swig of Dr. Parker's Painless Panacea -- and then see what happens within seconds. All in all, an excellent Autry B-Western of the early sound era.

I'd not watched "White Christmas" for a long time, and my (faulty) memory had it not quite rising to the level of "Holiday Inn," the other Bing Crosby Christmas musical from 12 years before. Happily, when I saw "White Christmas" yesterday at my local theater, it proved to be far superior to what I had recalled.

Capt. Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) and Private First Class Phil Davis (Danny Kaye), both serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, starring in a musical comedy show for the troops in their outfit, lead a big good-bye show for Gen. Waverly (Dean Jagger), their commander, who is returning to the states. After the war is over, Wallace and Davis form their own singing-dancing duo and begin scoring well in live theater in the New York City area.

They meet two other musical and dance performers, Betty (Rosemary Clooney) and Judy (Vera-Ellen) Haynes, who are sisters, and, naturally, a double romance begins to brew. The four wind up at a "holiday inn," so to speak, in Vermont, and discover that the owner is none other than (retired) Gen. Waverly, whose bankroll is rapidly "getting small" because of no snow (in Vermont?!) and few customers.

After several songs, both on stage and well-placed within scenes, Wallace gets in touch with a TV producer back in New York City, who agrees to set up a live TV show from the inn, which will be designed as a big tribute to Waverly (who must be kept "in the dark" until the trap is sprung).

After some additional plot twists in which Betty gets mad at Bob because she thinks (incorrectly) that the show is going to be designed to poke fun at Waverly; and Judy tries to lure Phil into announcing a phony engagement between the two to try to get Betty and Bob back together; the movie finally climaxes with a giant Christmas show in the big dining hall at the inn, with many, many of Waverly's former subordinates from his Army career there with their wives; and the two show business couples finally falling into each other's arms. Good flick; good characterizations, although not terribly deep.

Now: A few minor quibbles that kept me from giving it 10 votes:

The opening scenes near the "battlefield" in France wouldn't have fooled a 5-year-old; the sets were very obviously in a Hollywood studio.

Crosby's and Kaye's characters' names -- Bob Wallace and Phil Davis -- come on, guys! How Whitebread can you get? They needed a little more pizazz than that.

Clooney's "lady in a snit, if you don't know why, I'm not gonna tell you" attitude when she thinks she has uncovered an unpleasant angle to the show being planned by Crosby. Why didn't she just tell him? Oh, I know why: It would have untangled the plot twists too soon.

All in all, though, an excellent classic movie.

Gene Autry and Pat Buttram pursue some bank robbers, who are French Canadian, from Montana up into the Canadian Rockies. They wind up meeting a French Canadian family named Duval, the father of which is in league with chief bad guy Pierre LaBlond. His daughter, Marie, is kind and law-abiding, while his teen-age son, Jack, hates Mounties and has a big white dog who is hostile to strangers.

Gene befriends the dog after extracting a large thorn from the animal's paw. When Gene sings a song while sitting at the Duval kitchen table, the dog rears up and puts its front paws on the table, the better to hear. Gene can now do no wrong, in the dog's eyes.

Later, when Autry has tracked the LaBlond gang to their hideout in the woods, and has defeated LaBlond in a knock-down, drag-out fight (doesn't appear that doubles were used, either), LaBlond's henchmen seize Gene, and LaBlond knocks him out. They leave him lying on the ground, roped and woozy, while they move away to plan their next robbery.

The big dog has followed Gene to the scene, and he sneaks over to his new friend, licks him affectionately, and goes and fetches his steed Champion as directed by Gene. Rider, horse and dog all manage to escape the outlaws.

In the climax of the movie, as a village burns to the ground, both LaBlond and the senior Duval, who has turned on him in disgust, die a horrible mutual death (not caused by Gene or Pat).

The movie is unique to my eyes because of the obvious excellent chemistry between Autry and the big canine. An excellent film, with plenty of action.

British film studios have not been known for turning out large numbers of first-rate musicals. But "Oliver" is a HUGE exception.

The 1968 version of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist," based generally although not slavishly on his original story, absolutely sparkles with great music, very fine acting, and some lessons about life, and people, that many of us may not notice the first or second time we see the film. Which is a good reason to watch it several times -- as I have, over the years.

Oliver Twist is a little boy in a British orphanage, where the unfortunate youths are forced to perform hard manual labor all day, and are fed almost solely on thin gruel by the miserly managers of the place. Emboldened by his mates to tell the head whip-cracker, "Please, sir, I want some more!", poor Oliver is expelled from the orphanage and sold ("Payment upon liking," says his new "owner," a skinflint undertaker) as a virtual slave.

Events enable Oliver to escape the undertaker's cellar, where he has been cast down for "misbehavior," and he winds up in London, where a vagrant boy about his age, The Artful Dodger, introduces him to the "orphanage," so to speak, run by a criminal named Fagin, who teaches "his" boys to pickpocket, and fences goods stolen by a burglar named Bill Sikes.

It is worth noting that, while Fagin exercises strict control over the young boys living with him, he appears to feed them better, and to treat them with more respect, than the establishment orphanage bosses.

Oscar becomes the favorite boy of Sikes' beautiful live-in girlfriend, Nancy, and that eventually leads him into trouble. Sikes' first appearance in the film comes at a crowded pub, late at night, after he has pulled a very profitable burglary. Preceded by his large, ominous-looking shadow as he walks in, he is a tall, unsmiling thug -- someone who "you wouldn't want to mess with," as we would say in the U. S.

Sikes is good at bullying and intimidating elderly men (Fagin), women (Nancy) and boys (Fagin's wards at his evil orphanage). But in the disturbing climactic scene, as he attempts to escape the London bobbies and outraged citizens after killing Nancy, while holding Oliver as hostage, a policeman's gun proves to him that all bullies and thugs, eventually come to a bad end.

The music, and the dancing, in "Oliver," are absolutely superb. One extended music and dancing scene, which takes place in a circular plaza in an upper-class neighborhood, was so good that it caused me goosebumps.

Ron Moody as Fagin; Shani Wallis, as Nancy; Oliver Reed, as Bill Sikes; Mark Lester, as Oliver; and Jack Wild as The Artful Dodger, play their parts to absolute perfection. This film won five Academy Awards, and in my opinion, should have received more. If you're a Dickens fan, and you want to see a really great musical with a different accent than the usual Hollywood kind, go see "Oliver."