Unlike the previous entries in The Early Show pieces, this one is strictly 1940s, the decade when movies were taking a darker turn, and TV was starting to seem like it just might be here to stay. Whether the latter was a good thing is still debatable. Let's pull back the curtains...
THE SOUL OF A MONSTER (1944): Ann Winson, finding no luck with God, prays to hell to save her dying husband George. Moments later, a mysterious woman named Lilyann Gregg appears at the Winson home to heal him. By morning, George is alive and well... and, over time, starts turning from the kind, generous doctor he used to be and into a cynical, angry man who's not above killing his barking dog. Lilyann seems to possess George's soul, ordering him to murder one friend, the religious Fred Stevens, only to be disappointed when the doctor stops himself at the last second. She has better luck, though, when convincing him to leave his wife and allow his assistant, Dr. Roger Vance, to die after she runs him down with a car. As George finally puts 6, 6, and 6 together, he decides it's time to put Lilyann back where she belongs -- but how does one kill evil?
By the 15-minute mark, The Soul of a Monster had its hooks in me -- so much so I thought This better not turn out to be a dream or I'm going to be really pissed off. Lilyann makes her screen entrance surviving getting hit by a car. An electrical wire snaps off a pole and burns as she passes by. Her hair resembles the stereotypical devil's horns. George kills his dog. The wife prays to hell! Everything about The Soul of a Monster sets it apart from other B-pictures of its time. Whether it's the violent thunderstorm during a performance of "The Mephisto Waltz" or Lilyann's calm sense of evil, a genuine creepiness runs through its entire running time. (The piano recital and George's stalking of Fred seem to be as long as they are just to get the movie to 66 minutes.)
Rose Hobart is aces as Lilyann, a real devil woman with a heart of coal and a black pit for a soul. If Satan wants a man to do his bidding, this is the way. Character actor George Macready, sporting a real scar across his right face, inhabits Dr. Vinson as much as his evil companion. His suave speaking style makes him scarier than he already is -- it's difficult to picture Vinson as the altruistic medico he supposedly was before Lilyann stepped into his life. The moral of The Soul of a Monster seems to be "Better to die than trust a healer without a good referral."
BONUS POINTS: The finale makes it just plausible enough that this whole thing wasn't a dream. At least that's what I say.
BLACK ANGEL (1946): When nightclub thrush Mavis Marlowe is strangled to death,
her married boyfriend Kirk Phillips is wrongly arrested and convicted. His two-timed wife June convinces Mavis's barfly ex-husband Martin Blair to help her find the real killer. Posing as a singer and pianist, June and Martin start working at the nightclub owned by a suspicious character named Marko, whom Martin saw going up to Mavis's apartment the night of the murder. Just as they seem to get the goods on him, Police Detective Flood, who arrested Kirk, steps in to disrupt what seemed to be an airtight case. So who really is the killer? And, more importantly, where did Martin get his super-cool fedora?
The powerhouse trio of Dan Duryea (Martin Blair), Peter Lorre (Marko), and Broderick Crawford (Capt. Flood) elevate Black Angel to the level of "very good", with occasional flashes of "great", mainly at the climax. Martin, having fallen in love with June, goes back on the sauce when she rebuffs his advances. A long night of barhopping leads him to a heretofore missing clue, igniting a woozy flashback montage that unlocks his memory as to what really happened the night of the murder.
If only the rest of Black Angel were as good as the climax. There's nothing wrong with the actors -- although June Vincent and Constance Dowling as June and Mavis look so much alike, I took them for the same actress. But Dan Duryea is always better as an outright slimeball rather than the guy trying to solve a mystery he is here. As for the costars, Peter Lorre was born to play creeps, while Broderick Crawford, only 35, gives a preview of his Highway Patrol cop role, a decade before the booze, smokes, and food turned him into a human gargoyle. Eighty minutes in length, Black Angel is definitely worth a look, but works best if you keep your expectations just this side of low.
BONUS POINTS: Nobody but nobody can keep a cigarette dangling from his lips as long as Peter Lorre. What a great creep.
NIGHT EDITOR (1947): Over a late-night poker game with some reporters, Daily Star night editor Crane Stewart recounts the story of Police Detective Tony Cochran. A good cop, Cochran threw his marriage and career out the window after not reporting a murder he witnessed, thanks to being in a compromising with the equally-married high-class floozie Jill Merrill. As he "investigates" the crime, Cochran gets himself deeper by not arresting the killer, respectable bank president Douglas Loring, due to a lack of physical proof (outside of seeing him do it, of course). When his conscience finally gets the better of him, Cochran drops by a party Jill and Loring (now a couple) are attending to make an arrest. Sap that he is, Cochran succumbs to one last kiss from Jill, not knowing she's making ready to literally stab him in the back.Like I Love a Mystery and the Whistler movies, Night Editor was a Columbia B-picture based on a radio series. While the program is forgotten, the movie should be much better known than it is. All the noir elements are in the recipe -- combine a fool, slut, ugly murder, and plenty of shadows. Baste with a heavy dose of guilt for just over an hour. Serve with a side of tragedy.
BONUS POINTS: Familiar character actor Frank Wilcox plays against type as the killer, while perennial Three Stooges adversary Vernon Dent has a two-line, 10-second appearance -- just one of his 449 movie roles. Gotta keep those Columbia contract players earning their pay!
FIREBALL FUN FOR ALL (July 5, 1949): Television was still running second to radio in the middle of 1949, but it wasn't for lack of trying. And few programs were more trying than Fireball Fun for All, sponsored by Buick and hosted by the proudly lowbrow comedy team of Ole Olsen & Chic Johnson, the creators and stars of the anarchic Broadway revue Hellzapoppin. Olsen & Johnson believed in "anything for a laugh". Today's viewers won't laugh at anything here. This show might have aired in 1949, but the jokes had already fossilized by 1849. And if you need to know where the punchline is, the team will obligingly laugh when you don't. They and their cast replicate Hellzapoppin's interactive experience with the live audience, which doesn't translate well to television, as it makes the "spontaneity" look very much planned. For entertainment archeologists like me, Fireball Fun for All is the Lascaux Cave of primitive TV, only in black & white and even more mold.
Broadcast live from the International Theater in Columbus Circle, the episode exploits the heatwave then enveloping New York City by opening with 15 minutes of hot weather jokes, sight gags, and a chorus singing, what else, Irving Berlin's "Heat Wave". Of the non-weather-related material, one sketch that plays fairly well for its shock value involves Olsen & Johnson as babysitters who intend to care for their little charges with a whip, revolver, a box of razor blades, and matches. When one of the brats acts up, the portly Johnson throws him on the couch and sits on him before later hanging him on the wall. (Don't worry, the kid is actually a midget little person.) While the sketch is entertaining in its own crude way, everything else on Fireball Fun for All will leave you in gales of agony.
BONUS POINTS: The sole Buick commercial appears at the midway point with a real, live Roadmaster Convertible on the stage. In addition to its Fireball 8 engine, the Roadmaster has automatic windows and a front seat that can move back and forth! What will they think of next?
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