THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 35

Three Paramount pre-Codes, two John Carradine appearances, two stories involving soul transfers, and one Monogram B-picture. Is this heaven or what?

PICK UP (1933): Mary Richards (not the news producer in Minneapolis with the wacky friends) is let out of prison after serving time for an extortion racket -- which ended in a mark's suicide -- run by her husband John, who has three more years to serve. Having nowhere to go on a rainy evening, Mary ducks into a cab driven by Harry Glynn, who takes pity on her, invites her to move in with him, and gets her a job at the taxi garage as a phone operator. Mary, who hasn't told Harry of her unsavory past, urges him to pursue his dreams to open his own auto repair garage. Over time, they rise the up the social ladder. Just as Mary gets her marriage annulled, John breaks out of prison with the idea of killing Harry, who's fallen in love with a shallow rich divorcee. Mary manages to convince John to hit the road with her in order to save Harry's life. Tell it to the judge!

Pick Up has plenty of pre-code moments, starting with references to "the badger game" (where a woman entices a man to a phony romantic liaison, only to have her husband break it up and force the victim pay hush money). Because Mary is still married, she and Harry shack up for three years; while they're never seen in bed together, you get the idea they're not just roommates. The subplot of the wealthy woman who strings along a "caveman" for her own amusement was typical of the time, as was her horselaugh when the sap proposes marriage. (Pre-codes were often down on rich people, who do stupid things like throw parties where guests dress like children, play on see-saws, and drink out of baby bottles as they do here.) Even the typically sleazy opening theme by the Paramount orchestra promises a good time. 

So why is Pick Up just kind of meh? Other than the slow pace, the fault ultimately lies with George Raft as Harry. An actor's flat, low-key style can often be interesting, drawing you in, making you wonder what makes him tick. All you wonder about Raft is if he would have even gotten a movie contract had he not been best friends with Bugsy Siegel. A pro like cutie-pie Sylvia Sidney, as Mary, leaves him in the dust in every scene they share. In fact, everyone in Pick Up outshines Raft, whose one moment of drama -- hiring a lawyer to defend Mary when she runs off with John -- sounds no more emotional than ordering a new set of tires. Hell of a shiny head of hair, though. (If you're going to watch Pick Up, stick with it 'til the end just for its ludicrous only-in-the-movies courtroom climax.)

BONUS POINTS: An outrageous phallic symbol is provided by close-up of Harry's fuel pump overflowing into Muriel's gas tank. Honest.

SUPERNATURAL (1933): Supernatural's poster promises a great time, and by and large delivers, well, a good one. One doesn't expect a dish like Carole Lombard in a borderline-fantasy/horror movie, where she plays Roma Courtney, who has inherited her late brother's fortune. Desperate to know how he died, Roma falls for the promises of Paul Bavian, a sham psychic who tries to worm  his way into her heart money. His plans are interrupted by Dr. Carl Housan, who has revived the spirit of executed killer Ruth Rogen. Guess whose body she decides to park in? By the end of Supernatural's 65 minutes, Bavian learns the hard way that you don't want to get involved with a woman whose soul has been hijacked by a very unpleasant dead murderer.

Supernatural, a Paramount Picture influenced by Universal's horror shows, is unique by offering two views of the fantasy world. It presents psychics not just as scammers, but criminals -- Bavian kills his landlady when she threatens to spill the beans on his phony baloney. Yet it totally accepts the possibility of the revival of a dead person's soul. (You may recall Man With Two Lives passing off a similar idea as a coma-induced dream.) Perhaps to make sure audiences knew Dr. Housan wasn't a nutty scientist like Dr. Frankenstein, he's played by H.B. Warner, best known for starring in King of Kings six years earlier. How bad could he be if he played Jesus, right? 

Carole Lombard is quite good as the before-and-after Roma Courtney; her style -- even her looks -- change dramatically when becoming possessed by Ruth Rogen.  Roma is such an innocent that you kind of understand why she doesn't see through Alan Dinehart's Paul Bavian -- he has such a kind manner (for a murderer). Pre-cowboy Randolph Scott looks good in a tux, but it's difficult to picture Lombard falling for him. Supernatural is no classic, but it's an interesting change of pace from Paramount's usual sexy comedies and pre-codes. And from what I've read about the guys who ran movie studios then, they all could have used a soul transplant. 

BONUS POINTS: The bizarre, montage-heavy prologue featuring Ruth Rogen testifying in court and newspaper headlines playing up the trial. The rest of the movie doesn't live up to its promise, but it's a nice opening.

THIS DAY AND AGE (1933): So connected is Cecil B. DeMille to Biblical epics that it's a little stunning to stumble across his early pre-Code talkies, especially This Day and Age. A beloved tailor named Herman Farbstein is gunned down by gangster Louis Garrett for not paying up for a protection racket. After Garrett is found not guilty, three high school seniors look for proof of his crime, leading the gangster to murder one of them. Fully expecting that Garrett will once again get off scot-free, a bunch of the victim's friends decide that vigilantism is their only choice. But don't worry -- before they string him up, they'll make sure he gets a fair trial with a jury of every blood-hungry teenage boy in town. Wait, don't they know females are allowed to serve, too?

With a climax almost-embarrassingly influenced by Fritz Lang's M, This Day and Age plays on the crime-weary audience's disgust with pesky things like law, evidence, and guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Perennial heavy Charles Bickford plays Garrett as such an evil guy that you really don't mind seeing him lowered into a huge hole of hungry rats. Don't ask me to recount the name of the high school kids or the actors who play them -- most of them are interchangeable pretty boys who dress more like legal interns than highschoolers. 

There's enough spectacle and violence here to keep modern audiences alternately entertained and shocked. (The murders are particularly brutal, while a teen girl essentially volunteers to be possibly raped by Garrett's bodyguard in order to distract him from his job.) Per usual with DeMille pictures, every dollar of the budget is onscreen, with hundreds of extras, large sets, and handsome cinematography making This Day and Age an unusually impressive-looking Paramount production. 

And don't worry about the girl and the bodyguard. When he learns that she's a virgin, he shakes his head and mutters, "I like my olives green, but I don't pick 'em." See, he's a nice guy after all!

BONUS POINTS: The brief role of the extraordinarily articulate school Vice-Principal is credited to John Peter Richmond, who would soon change his name to John Carradine.

VOODOO MAN (1944): It's an adage first spoken by Aristotle: a movie doesn't
have to be great to be a great movie. Exhibit one: Voodoo Man, wherein two fellows named Nicholas and Toby are kidnapping young women in order for their boss, Dr. Marlowe, to transfer the right soul into the body of his wife who's been dead 20 long years, yet kept in excellent condition somehow or another. Plenty of people would like anybody's soul transferred into their living spouses, but that's another story entirely.

A major studio would have made a B-picture like Voodoo Man an utter bore thanks to writers, directors and actors who were ashamed of the assignment. But the behind-the-scenes folks at Monogram knew exactly how to excite the audience and find the right actors who could sell the product. And in this movie, Bela Lugosi (Marlowe), George Zucco (Nicholas), and John Carradine (Toby) not only sell it, they offer a money-back guarantee if you aren't entertained. 

As usual, Lugosi plays it totally straight, putting memories of his stage days in Hungary out of his head for the sake of the movie. Zucco is hilariously out of place as the owner of a gas station (where the women are kidnapped) who doubles as a boogity-boogity-chanting shaman during the attempted soul transfers. The relatively young (38) whippersnapper Carradine successfully goes to toe with these two legends, channeling Lennie from Of Mice and Men as the IQ-deficient Toby, running around with his arms stiffly at his sides with his mouth agape like the Bryce Canyon. Movie snobs who go gaga for Godard or run tout suite for Truffaut don't know what they're missing by turning up their snooty noses at Voodoo Man. It even features a subplot about a screenwriter named Ralph who's trying to solve the mystery of the disappearing women in order to write a movie about the disappearing women starring Bela Lugosi! That's kind of Fellini, isn't it?

BONUS POINTS: The legendary director William "One Take" Beaudine lives up to his nickname when the gas-ration sticker on a car windshield changes from shot to shot.

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