Burt Lancaster as Joe Collins in Brute Force (1947) dir. Jules Dassin

Driving along with such a dream doll beside me, I figured myself a pretty lucky guy.

JOHN HOYT and ANITA COLBY as Spencer and Flossie in BRUTE FORCE (1947) dir. Jules Dassin

The Rifleman (3.07 The Martinet, 1960).

A favorite episode from the original Twilight Zone:

Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up? (air date May 26, 1961). It featured John Hoyt as a three-armed alien from Martian and Barney Phillips and a three-eyed alien from Venus!

Robert Preston-Barbara Stanwyck-John Hoyt "Dirección prohibida" (The lady gambles) 1949, de Michael Gordon.

Doctor Boyce, Lieutenant Spock, and CPO Garrison on the bridge in first Star Trek pilot, The Cage.

BRUTE FORCE (1947) Grade: B

Really good action film for 1947. It's film-noir, but for 1947, they had to have wide eyes while watching Burt Lancaster be an amazing lead. The composition was also classic golden age Hollywood, love the depth and camera movements.

Bad movie I have The Munsters : Season One 1964

Brute Force (1947) Jules Dassin

July 23rd 2023

The Unfaithful

Warner Bros. tried to pass off Vincent Sherman’s THE UNFAITHFUL (1947, TCM) as an original script, but anybody with half an ounce of film literacy can spot it as a remake of William Wyler’s THE LETTER (1940), albeit one made by people who didn’t understand the original very well. That’s not to fault the cast, who do what they can with the reimagined material. Both films deal with a woman who kills a man and lies about the circumstances. In 1940, that gave Bette Davis the opportunity to deliver one of her greatest and most restrained performances, a burning portrait of sexual hypocrisy. Ann Sheridan plays a nicer lady, who strayed while the husband (Zachary Scott) she wed quickly was off fighting World War II. Nonetheless, when she kills her former lover in self-defense, she lies to protect her husband’s feelings, even when lawyer Lew Ayres advises her to tell the truth. In place of the original’s depiction of racism and the colonial mentality, this film offers some cursory considerations of class and a more persuasive comment on the war’s effect on marital relations. By the time the script gets to Sheridan’s trial, it’s almost persuasive, though the last scene twists itself into pretzels trying to shoehorn its plot within the confines of the Production Code. Sheridan has some very good moments until the final scene, which I don’t think even Davis could have saved. Scott is OK as the husband, though playing a decent man robs him of a lot of his sexual mojo. Ayres works well, though you may wish they’d dropped the other shoe and made his character gay (forbidden under the Production Code, of course). You also get John Hoyt as the police detective on the case, Jerome Cowan as the apoplectic prosecutor, Steven Geray as a blackmailer (in this version instead of an incriminating letter it’s a bust of Sheridan made by the dead man) and some great views of Los Angeles in the late 1940s. The real performance honors, however, go to Eve Arden, whose role as Scott’s cousin has the most intriguing character arc in the film. I’m tempted to say she’s the only one with an arc. She starts out as a flighty society type, dropping one-liners as she tries to pick up all the dirt she can on the crime at her cousin’s house. But the case changes her and reveals a serious, reflective side Arden rarely got to play on screen. If they’d really wanted to transform the material, they’d have made a film about a wise-cracking gossip who grows up when her cousin’s wife is accused of murder. That’s a movie I’d like to see.

WHAT A CHACRACTER! 11 - Morning Edition

WHAT A CHACRACTER! 11 – Morning Edition

Hello friends. I have the honor of kicking off the 11th iteration of the What a Character! Blogathon. Although I say this every year, we truly have a fantastic list of characters in store with tributes by some of the best bloggers around. A heartfelt thank you must go to each and every one of them for making this such a special event. And, as always, kudos go to Turner Classic Movies (TCM) for…

View On WordPress

Our first weird Western and it comes to us from Universal Pictures: It's CURSE OF THE UNDEAD (1959), directed by Edward Dein and starring Eric Fleming, Michael Pate and Kathleen Crowley!

Will our small town preacher fight off the gunslinging vampire? Listen and find out!

Context setting 00:00; Synopsis 15:26; Discussion 29:18; Ranking 38:37

The Time Travelers (1964)

Anita Colby-John Hoyt "Fuerza bruta" (Brute force) 1947, de Jules Dassin.

Lieutenant Spock just heard that they’re serving fresh plomeek soup in the galley.