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piaions on Current Productions; Exploitips for Selling to the Public<br />
FEATURE REVIEWS<br />
I<br />
The Brothers<br />
Univ.-Int'l (- -) 90 Minutes Rel.<br />
Drama<br />
Jinx Money<br />
Monogram (4717)<br />
69 Minutes<br />
Comedy<br />
Rel. July '48<br />
fi<br />
A grim and powerful tale is told amid the magnificently<br />
photographed backgrounds of Scotland's hills and rough<br />
seacoast. A British-made release by U-I's Prestige Pictures<br />
unit, it should be a strong draw in art theatres where its<br />
players have become well known through previous British<br />
Although Patricia Roc's name has some boxoffice value<br />
films.<br />
in the neighborhood duallers, it's too dour and realistic for<br />
juvenile patrons. The happy ending seems sudden and incongruous.<br />
Among the scenes which are memorable for their<br />
cruelty and terrific suspense are the death of a helpless<br />
informer by attacking seagulls, the rowing contest between<br />
feuding clans which continues until all but one man drops<br />
from exhaustion and a gruesome bit in which the hero cuts<br />
off his thumb held tight in a crab's claw. The musical score<br />
is splendid. Directed by David MacDonald.<br />
Patricia Roc, Will Fyffe, Maxwell Heed, Finloy Currie, John<br />
Laurie. Duncan Macrae, Megs Jenkins, Andrew Crawford.<br />
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Yet another in the tried-and-proven series featuring the<br />
Bowery Boys, the booking niche for this one is predetermined<br />
and showmen who have such a niche long since have learned<br />
the effectiveness of the films as supporting fare. This entry<br />
assays a few cuts higher than average, which appraisal is<br />
applicable to production values, story, performances and<br />
direction. Nonetheless the general aura and technique<br />
obtains, with just a little less emphasis on slapstick. The<br />
gang of heart-of-gold roughnecks herein finds $50,000 in hot<br />
money. Attempts of gangsters to recover the loot leads to a<br />
series of murders which keep the boys, the police and all<br />
concerned hopping until the mess is cleaned up. Also adding<br />
to the film's stature is the supporting cast, better than usual<br />
in both name values and delineations. Directed by William<br />
Beaudine.<br />
Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Benedict. David Gorcey. Benny<br />
Barllett. Gabriel Dell, Betty Caldwell, Sheldon Leonard.<br />
Dear Murderer<br />
Suspense<br />
Drama<br />
Campus Sleuth<br />
F<br />
Comedy<br />
Univ.-Int'l (658) 90 Minutes<br />
Rel. May '48<br />
It has frequently been set forth that in the manufacture of<br />
films in which suspense and crime are the principal ingredients,<br />
our British cousins have the magic touch. Herein, however,<br />
they seem to have lost it. The subject begins engagingly<br />
enough but shortly deteriorates into a labyrinth of<br />
melodramatic situations culminating in a highly-hoked-up<br />
climax which rings down the curtain without satisfactorily<br />
resolving the plot. Performances are generally fine but the<br />
English players will mean little or nothing on the marquee<br />
and the film's destiny in U.S. bookings appears to be as the<br />
lower half of a double. Its best asset, probably, will be the<br />
provocative title. The slayer so affectionately addressed is<br />
a husband who discovers his wife is unfaithful, plans the<br />
perfect crime in revenge, and falls into his own trap. Directed<br />
by Arthur Crabtree.<br />
Monogram (4713) 57 Minutes<br />
Rel. Apr. 24, '48<br />
An unfortunate departure from the formula heretofore employed<br />
by entries in the 'teen-agers programmers from Monogram<br />
results in this chapter emerging as one of the weakest<br />
to date. The basic, and by this time, overworked, story line<br />
about a group of adolescents trying to stage a school play<br />
is there. But all mixed up with it is a murder mystery, which<br />
is far from suspenseful and which fails comparably in its<br />
attempts at comedy. Further, the specialties engaged to<br />
bolster the work of the established cast—to wit—Bobby Sherwood<br />
and his Orchestra and Gerri Gallicm and his Piano<br />
are inferior to those utilized in predecessors. Musical interludes<br />
had to be lessened and shortened to allow footage<br />
for the whodunit phases. The best that can be expected<br />
is that it will get by on subsequent double bills. Directed<br />
by Will Jason.<br />
Eric Portman, Greta Gynt, Dennis Price, Maxwell Reed. Jack<br />
Warner, Hazel Court, Andrew Crawford.<br />
Freddie Stewart. June Preisser, Warren Mills. Noel Neill.<br />
Donald MacBride. Monte Collins, Stan Ross.<br />
Whirlwind Raiders<br />
Columbia (963) 54 Minutes Rel. May 13, '48<br />
The Durango Kid really gets around, but always in the<br />
great open spaces and before law and order came to the<br />
west. In this little action picture Charles Starrett is Steve<br />
Lanning, ex-Texas Ranger, when he wears a light shirt and<br />
rides a dark horse. Then more of the old presto-change-o,<br />
and with a dark shirt and riding a white horse he is the<br />
Durango Kid, hot on the trail of those Texas State Police who<br />
replaced the Rangers for a time and turned out to be crooks<br />
themselves. Smiley Burnette ambles along as an itinerant<br />
tinker, handier with a tune than with tools. There is a passel<br />
of villains, headed by one of the local big-wigs, who are all<br />
rounded up before Durango rides on to make way for the<br />
next in this series. Should please action houses and Saturday<br />
matinee patrons. Vernon Keays directed.<br />
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Monogram (4715) 71 Minutes Rel.<br />
Intended as straight melodrama and with a basically sound<br />
cops-and-robbers yarn as the framework, the film is cursed<br />
with an incredibly trite screenplay which rambles around<br />
considerably more than do the wandering girls with which<br />
it is concerned. The dialog so abounds in time-worn cliches<br />
that it at times becomes serio-comic and renders helpless<br />
the dogged efforts of a capable cast to put the point across.<br />
Judiciously exploited, the theme— girls who go to the big city<br />
and turn up missing—may engender some interest, but even<br />
in the supporting feature niche, the best spot it can hope for,<br />
the revenue prospects are not too bright. The involved plot<br />
concerns the efforts of Audrey Long to track down the murderers<br />
of her runaway sister. She and the police do so only<br />
after she masquerades as a nightclub entertainer and lures<br />
the killers into the trap. Directed by William Nigh.<br />
Charles Starrett, Smiley Burnette, Fred Sears, Nancy Saunders,<br />
"Little Brown Jug," Jack Ingram. Philip Morris.<br />
Kane Richmond. Audrey Long, Coiuad Nagel, Ralph Byrd.<br />
John<br />
Gallaudet. Anthony Warde. Pamela Blake.<br />
Voyage Surprise<br />
Comedy<br />
Duke International 80 Minutes Rel.<br />
A novel and engaging theme has been handled in heavyhanded<br />
slapstick fashion in this nonsensical French-language<br />
picture. The sheer absurdity of the antics of a group of<br />
uninhibited people on an unscheduled bus trip will get<br />
laughs but not enough to make it suitable for general audiences.<br />
Best spotted in art theatres. The story is a combination<br />
of Mack Sennett and 10-20-30 melodrama and Director<br />
Pierre Prevert has handled it in the fast-moving, jerky style<br />
of the early two-reelers. The characters include an elderly<br />
bus tour owner, delightfully played by Sinoel, and his<br />
assorted passengers, a spinster, a bride and groom, a stout<br />
matron and her little boy, a disgruntled travel agency<br />
employe and others. They become fugitives from the law,<br />
spend a night in a house of ill repute and are mistaken for<br />
a theatrical troupe. Duke International is at 18 West 55th<br />
St., New York City.<br />
SinoeL Marline Carol, Jacques Henri Duval, Claire Gerard,<br />
Max Revol, Pierre Pieral, Cecilia Paroldi.<br />
TI^<br />
936 BOXOFHCE May 22, 1948 935<br />
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Blonde Ice<br />
^ilm Classics ( )<br />
73 Minutes<br />
F<br />
Melodrama<br />
Rel. June '48<br />
Produced by Martin Mooney, a long established master in<br />
writing and making constables-and-crooks subjects, this modestly-budgeted<br />
offering tells whodunit from scratch and then<br />
depends for its suspense and excitement upon efforts of the<br />
police to hang the rap on the guilty gal. The modern touch<br />
finds further manifestation in the fact that the title character<br />
is a thorough-going rotter who marries and kills husbands<br />
for wealth and position. For motivation the film leans rather<br />
too heavily on dialog with resultant sacrifice of the action<br />
so dear to the hearts of most patrons of the type of house<br />
where the picture will be booked. Good performances and<br />
the able direction of Jack Bernhard, however, go a long way<br />
in glossing over the paucity of movement and over-all consideration<br />
wins rating as satisfactory supporting fare.<br />
Robert Paige, Leslie Brooks, Russ Vincent, Michael Whalen,<br />
James Griffith, Emory Parnell, Walter Sande.
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