Change Your Image
bwanabe
Reviews
Key Witness (1960)
only my most favorite movie ever!
Very rarely shown, I was fortunate to have seen it at its release.
Several dozen onlookers witness a daring gang murder, but only LA businessman Fred Morrow agrees to testify. His family is tormented by the youthful thugs, the police being unable to protect them from the gang's attacks and ever increasing violence. Will Morrow hang tough and perform his civic duty or will he recognize his mistake and develop amnesia, thereby allowing one of B-movie Hollywood's most brazen killers to go free? The theme music ("Ruby Duby Du"), written by Charles Wolcott, is absolutely haunting, and is far and away my favorite instrumental.
Jeffrey Hunter, Dennis Hopper, Pat Crowley, Johnny Nash and Susan Harrison make for a top-notch cast.
Four years after its release I met a person who likewise considered "Key Witness" his favorite movie. Forty-two years later we remain best friends.
Who Killed 'Doc' Robbin? (1948)
"Curly to the Rescue!"
I first saw this Hal Roach classic in '76, on local TV, one-half of an after-school double-feature. I don't recall the other movie but it was another "Curly." Enough to say I've been hooked ever since. And when I discovered a DVD copy in the dollar bin at Wal-Mart, I scooped it right up, giddy with serendipity.
Someone has murdered the reclusive Doc Robbin, a late night explosion destroying his laboratory. Dan, the local Mister Fix-it, is arrested and Curly and his gang set out to prove the elderly pensioner's innocence.
The cast is very excellent for the level of talent demanded: The little "gang-sters" are superb (little Ardda will steal your heart); the very lovely Virginia Grey plays the damsel in miss-tress, and George Zucco plays the heavy.
Think of "Our Gang" with candles in a haunted house, add color, and you pretty much have it.
My regrets to those who find overt racism in everything they see. i myself saw nary an example, overt or otherwise.
Missile to the Moon (1958)
This thing is so familiar you probably carry a copy in your wallet.
Five people--including a youthful pair of criminal escapees--blast off for the moon. But one of the five--the spaceship's designer--goes through his four pages of script a little too quickly and expires mid- journey. Trading their less than authentic moon rocket jumpsuits for even less authentic zero-gravity apparel, the surviving four narrowly escape ridiculously sluggard rock creatures on their way to b-movie sci-fi cave #26a where, after finding a burning torch and removing their oxygen masks, they are overcome by sleeping gas (aka smoke).
They fall awake on set "2" which, for this movie, has been transformed from a low-budget b-movie throne room into a... low budget b-movie throne room. Enter the Queen--excuse me the Lido. And after her the girls: Miss Nomer, Miss Treated, Miss Understood and Miss Shapen... you get the picture. And of course Alpha, played by Miss Congeniality.
Right here this b&w non-classic goes colour: Green with envy and seeing red, the lady who played Barbara Billingsley on "Leave it to Beaver" (here the token earth woman) gives a black-hearted Alpha the wedding bell blues. But backstabbing (literally) Alpha isn't about to give up Barbara's man without a fight--or in this case sentence of death, which was probably easier to write into the screenplay. And so Barbara is sent to the cave to face execution by spider-puppet. They must have shot this thing on a Friday as the guy who played Jack Web is conveniently on set to cut the spider-puppet's strings in plenty of time to effect the leading lady's rescue. (How did I not see that coming?) Don't expect the guy who played Frankie Avalon in "Bikini Bleach" to be in the sequel for, while trying to escape with a pair of kfc buckets filled with rock candy diamonds, his last scene has him struggling with the problem of deciding whether to drop his diamonds and escape with his life or to perish in a most horrific manner. A hormone-raging dropout with a natural affinity for stealing cars, he does exactly what any good 1958 audience would expect him to do and unwisely elects to die for the benefit of intelligent movie go-ers everywhere. Sunlight roasts off his flesh and pomade both; though perhaps not to any degree of loss, as his bad-to-the-bone skeleton clearly shows the carefully inked markings mapped for cranial dissection at Hollywood med school, and I am confident he went on to further b-movie work once this thing was in the can. Perhaps even as the notorious sword-fighting skeleton of "Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" fame. Now THAT was a movie!
I'm a sucker for b-grade sci-fi, and "Missile" earns three lollipops.