THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 29

Four dramas -- two American, two British -- made across the span of five years. Three are worth your time. The fourth... well, only to appreciate how good the others are.

SO DARK THE NIGHT (1946): It took me a while to discover that plenty of fine noirish mysteries came out of Columbia Pictures' B-unit in the '40s, and So Dark the Night ranks with their best. Henri Cassin, a middle-aged French police detective, goes to a country inn for a well-deserved rest. While there, he meets and falls in love with Nanette Michaud, 20 years his junior. The night before their wedding, Nanette's ex, Leon, threatens to destroy their happiness; as he storms away, Nanette follows him. A week later, their bodies are found. Cassin determines they were strangled to death. Soon, threatening notes appear at the inn. When Nannette's mother is murdered in a similar fashion, Cassin finds himself at wit's end. Only when he returns to Paris and discusses the case with his superior does he figure out who the killer is -- and that Nannette's father Eugene is next on the hit parade.

For the first couple of reels, So Dark the Night feels like it was meant to be the first in a series of movies about Henri Cassin. The story itself isn't necessarily remarkable, and the same set seems to stand in for both the inn and a barn where a body is found. But director Joseph Lewis elevates the movie's look by a factor of 50, thanks to his unerring sense of where to place the camera and how to light the actors. (The climactic moment when Cassin sees the killer in a window is damn near brilliant.) Unlike many B-directors who simply made sure the camera was in focus and printed the first take, it's clear that Lewis cared about his job and was determined that the result wouldn't just be filler for the bottom half of a double bill.  He's the kind of director who makes the kind of movie that the kind of fan like me delighted to share. (He would soon be responsible for the classic Gun Crazy.)

Presuming Lewis was responsible for casting So Dark the Night, he excelled there, too, filling it with mostly unfamiliar yet excellent character actors. Steven Geray makes Cassin more like a beloved, gentle older relative than a detective -- until the bodies start piling up, that is. Two characters are the obvious suspects, the first being the inn's maid who's in love with Cassin and jealous of his young finance. The second is the village hunchback (all European villages having one, if old movies are any indication) who happens to discover Leon's body. Pretty convenient! Or is it? Without giving anything away, So Dark the Night's final reel had me reeling with shock. A terrific movie deserving of a revival.

BONUS POINTS: Theodore Gottleib, who plays the hunchback, would later become famous/notorious on talk shows as Brother Theodore, the explosive, pseudo-philosophical alleged monk who appeared perpetually on the edge of going mad. His clash with Jerry Lewis on The Merv Griffin Show is worth a watch: (4) Brother Theodore & Jerry Lewis- Interview/Argument 1966 [Reelin' In The Years Archive] - YouTube)

THE SHOP AT SLY CORNER (1947): Descius Heiss is a gentle antiques dealer, whose daughter Margaret is a classical violinist. He's also an escapee from Devil's Island and a fence for jewel thief Corder Morris. Heiss' loathsome employee Archie Fellowes uses this information for blackmail purposes. When Archie eventually decides he's going to marry Margaret, Heiss murders him, and gets Corder to help dump the body outside the city. A police investigation ensues, leading to a car chase which kills Corder.  Without any definite proof for the cops to go on, Heiss feels pretty good -- until Maragret's upstanding boyfriend Robert learns what's up. 

The Shop at Sly Corner --pretty good title, that -- must have been a big deal in the UK back in the day. Starting in 1945, the stage version ran over two years. It was made as an early TV movie in 1946; this theatrical version a year later; and a live TV broadcast of the play in 1948. What all these had in common -- and was likely the key to its success -- was co-star Kenneth Griffith as the incredibly creepy Archie, a character who's bad enough on paper. But when brought to life by Griffith -- who looks nutty to begin with -- he doesn't just make your skin crawl, he seems to rip it straight off your bones. If he wasn't so scary, he'd be hateful. Wait, he is hateful. 

Part of that hatefulness is due to his emotional torture of Heiss, played sympathetically by Oscar Homolka. Sure, Heiss was found guilty of murder in his youth and is fencing hot goods today. But he's a good father, fair to his customers, and wants to move to a farm and raise chickens. You like the guy. When he kills the horrible Archie, you want him to get away with it. And he does, kind of, sort of -- that is, he's never arrested. Still, it's not like he's going to see his daughter's music career take off the way it's predicted to, either. As with similar movies, The Shop at Sly Corner could have been elevated a few notches with Alfred Hitchcock at the helm, although makes for a decent viewing as is. Just be prepared to hate Kenneth Griffith.

BONUS POINTS: I have no idea what kind of sports car Archie buys with his blackmail money, but I want one. 

DAUGHTER OF DARKNESS (1948):  The women in the Irish village of Ballyconnen have it in for Emmy Baudine, the parish priest's servant girl, believing her to be an evil influence on the menfolk. Under pressure, the priest gets her a new servants job at a family farm in England. One of the farm residents, Bess Stantforth, gets the same weird vibes from Emmy as the Irish women did, despite the girl seeming so innocent and shy. Bess' intuition jumps to 11 when her sister's boyfriend puts the moves on Emmy... and a couple of other guys in town are mysteriously murdered... and the barn burns down... and an abandoned German Shepherd can't stop baring his fangs around her... 

Daughter of Darkness is evidence primo that some movies live or die by the lead actor. And while the whole cast is up to par, Siobahn McKenna knocks it out of the park as Emmy, the strange young woman who initially seems to be the victim of petty small-town jealousies of nasty old women. Yet with a glance of her eyes or a twitch of her mouth, it gradually becomes obvious there's something... off about her. Nothing you can put your finger on, just a feeling. McKenna's performance is all about subtlety; you can't tell if she's under some satanic spell or just cray-cray. Whatever it is, you almost feel guilty for hoping she gets what's coming to her by the end.

Not that one guy isn't asking for it. Dan (played by Maxwell Reid) is a boxer in a travelling carnival who tried raping Emmy in Ballyconnen, and tries again when passing through the village she now lives in. She actually might have found some sympathy if she hadn't gone ahead and deliberately seduced another guy in order to kill him, too. (It's possible that today Emmy would be considered an extreme feminist hero.) Siobahn McKenna's brilliant performance makes Daughter of Darkness a strange, discomforting experience, yet one worth watching to remember how terrifying a character can be with just a tilt of the head. Watch it with a woman who doesn't know what it's about, just to see how long it takes her to get creeped out by Emmy. (Two different YouTube pages uploaded it, but this one is in the correct screen ratio: Classic Thriller Movie 1948 📽️🍿🥤Crime, Drama, Suspense. Anne Crawford Maxwell Reed George Thorpe (youtube.com)

BONUS POINTS: Co-star Barry Morse went on to greater fame in the U.S. as David Janssen's relentless pursuer Lt. Philip Gerard on The Fugitive. I knew he looked familiar!

RADAR SECRET SERVICE (1950): The A-bomb provided Hollywood with a whole new kind of criminal: the atomic materials thief. FBI agents Bill Travis and Static (no last name) are on the trail of a gang headed by Michael (another no last-namer), who have stolen a cache of Uranium-238 (because Uranium-237 isn't good enough, I guess). The usual investigations, chases, fist fights, and double-crosses follow, along with a couple of floozies with upswept peroxide-blonde hair providing alleged sex appeal. 

The story, which isn't much more complicated than that outline, takes second place to Radar Secret Service's vaguely science-fiction angle. In what would put New York's traffic cameras to shame, here the Feds have a communications tower/radar combo that can track any vehicle within a hundred miles or so from the office. Not only that, it relays live images to a desk-size monitor so that the license plate can be read. Then there's Travis and Static's souped-up police car, which, with the tracking device on its roof, resembles a proto-Google Earth car. Only they didn't realize the freaking thing is really easy to see in the rearview mirror of anyone they're tailing. 

Thanks to a plethora of fedoras and thin moustaches, it takes a while to tell the Feds from the felons. Sad sack Tom Neal plays a bad guy for a change, which actually helps his performance; his stilted delivery is better suited to the wrong side of the law. Sid Melton is a gang member named Pillbox (he's a hypochondriac, in case you couldn't guess). There's no explanation as to why such a dodo is part of this crew other than providing comedy relief, which criminal gangs usually don't need. Ralph Byrd is Static, a comedown from his 1940s Dick Tracy movies. (He even makes a crack about Tracy, which isn't so much an in-joke as it is a bad one.) Keene Duncan, a future member of the Ed Wood movie ensemble, appears near the end, while Adele Jergens and Myrna Dell prove that dames can be criminals like their boyfriends. There's a heck of a lot of actors in Radar Secret Service's 57 minutes, all of whom do their best to take this nonsense seriously. Oh, and at no time are we told who the uranium thieves are selling the stuff to. I bet they're commies!

BONUS POINTS: The Feds' model-360 Hiller helicopter is way too cool-looking for a B-movie like this, and probably took up most of the budget.

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