#03 - The Man Who Had Influence (1950)

Feature number three in the Dark Crimes collection is brought to us by way of Westinghouse Studio One, a hybrid radio-television anthology series created in 1947 by Fletcher Markle for CBS Productions.

Produced for television in 1950, The Man Who Had Influence is a by-the-numbers melodrama starring Robert Sterling as David Grant, a charming but irresponsible playboy who finds himself accused of manslaughter after a drunken night out culminates with the death of the coat check girl with whom he'd left the bar.

Enter David's father, J.C. Grant, played by Stanley Ridges. J.C. is a political fixer who is accustom to getting what he wants, when he wants it. In the wake of his son's arrest, J.C. sets out to ensure that the Grant family name remains nice and shiny, regardless of who he has to plow over to achieve this goal.

I've got to be honest here, I'm not entirely sure why The Man Who Had Influence is a part of the Dark Crimes collection. Nothing that happens in the story screams "Film noir classic!" The premise is about as straight forward as it gets. I kept expecting a third act twist that never came, which is especially weird given how heavily the story plays up David's inability to remember what happened after he left the bar. Character motivation is implicitly stated but somewhat questionable, and the whole situation is wrapped up exactly as you'd expect: with David giving an impassioned speech to the court, and the judge being fair.

This wasn't a gritty film noir, it was a melodramatic morality tale about taking responsibility for one's actions. That's all fine and well, but tonally, it doesn't really fit with the theme of the collection. There's also a slight problem with pacing. Given that it was made for TV, there are a lot of spots where it fades away for a commercial break. This wouldn't be a problem, except the DVD has retained several of the Westinghouse advertisement bumpers. It's kind of interesting to see how they went about advertising kitchen appliances in the 1950s, but it really kills the forward momentum of the show.

The film's cast is a mixed bag. Robert Sterling gives a perfectly serviceable performance as the charming-yet-disgruntled David Grant, and his interplay with King Calder's Jimmy O'Rourke is the highlight of the film. There's a playfulness to O'Rourke's interactions with Grant that masks a darker undercurrent; a justifiable hostility that comes bubbling through in the final act. Whenever these guys are on screen together, it's easy to forget just how dry and stiff the scenes between Stanley Ridges and Robert Pastene are.

Speaking of Stanley Ridges, I'd be remiss not to comment on just how poorly he delivers some of his dialog in this film. There's a stop-and-start jerkiness to the way he reads his lines that is further exacerbated by the many times he stumbles over the dialog entirely. I realize that old school television often had to make do with long, unbroken takes, but it's surprising just how often he drops the ball here. It stands out a mile against the rest of the cast, who are far better at spitting out the massive amounts of dialog they've been given. Considering his importance to the overall plot -- he is The Man Who Had Influence -- it's a real shame that his performance is less than stellar.

The direction is occasionally weird, too. Being a fan of classic Doctor Who, I understand how a lot of these studio-based productions were blocked and shot. But director Franklin Schaffner seems to have a passion for filling the foreground up with things that obscure the main action. For example, he shoots a conversation through the rails of a stairway banister, and then later shoots another conversation through the bars of a jail cell. In theory this is fine, but he never seems to be able to get his actors to stand perfectly in frame. At least one of them tends to be obscured from view by the foreground business. It's really distracting.

"A little further stage left, Stanley. Easy... easy does it... perfect!"

 Moving on to-- 

Say. Does anyone else have a powerful fierce desire to buy a Westinghouse refrigerator? If not, then you will in a moment. Check it out: it's the only one of its kind with a genuinely frost-free freeze chest! You never have to defrost it yourself, because it never allows frost to build up!!

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And hey, when you visit your local Westinghouse dealer and purchase this state of the art waffle iron, your dividend item is this handsome electric percolator! A $3.99 value, yours for the asking while supplies last!!

--hrmph! That was weird. Not sure what that was. Where was I? Oh, right. The technical side of things.

It has to be said that The Man Who Had Influence is a mixed bag in the audio/video department. Given that this is an old episode of a CBS anthology series, I wasn't exactly expecting a restored presentation, but there are moments when the story can be hard to follow due to wacky audio problems.

About midway through the movie a repetitive clicking sound begins to overtake the soundtrack -- it's like you can hear the projector running away in the background -- and at one point it even begins to sound like someone's running a water hose onto a concrete floor at the back of the studio.

There are also instances when the dialog drops out entirely, and given how much of it there is in the film, that's bad news. It even happens during David's big speech at the end, and that's a shame because he delivers it with gusto.

It's pretty much a given that picture quality also leaves something to be desired, but unlike The Red House, it's not an utter train wreck this time. There's little in the way of damage to the film print, but it has the look of something that's been passed down through multiple generations of video tape. Given that it was probably shot on video to begin with, that's not surprising. The picture is fuzzy, there's the occasional dropped frame, and the lighting sometimes blooms around the actors in a way that creates cavernous clouds of darkness, but instances of this are few and far between.

So is The Man Who Had Influence worth watching?

Yeah. I suppose so. If you enjoy staged melodramas, you'll probably enjoy this. There are some decent performances and it runs under an hour, so it's a serviceable way to kill a little time while you're waiting for the pizza delivery guy to show up with your third annual cheat-day meal. I wouldn't suggest going out of your way to hunt it down, but I see no reason for you to avoid it altogether.

Star Rating: 3/5

#02 - The Red House (1947)

Film number two in the Dark Crimes collection is The Red House, a 1947 adaptation of a novel by the same name written by George Agnew Chamberlain. The plot revolves around high school chums Meg (Allene Roberts) and Nath (Lon McCallister). Nath is in need of part time employment due to a decrease in business at his mother's shop, so Meg encourages him to come work for her adoptive father, Pete (Edward G. Robinson).

At the end of his first day on the job, Nath intends on taking a shortcut through the woods to quicken his journey home. Pete warns against it, spinning a tale of screams in the night; terrors unknown to the outside world. The Red House is out there, Pete tells Nath, and all who encounter it are sent fleeing into the night.

I really enjoyed The Red House. The basic premise is instantly intriguing, but as with The Mandarin Mystery, the tone initially feels cockeyed. When Nath announces his decision to venture into the woods, it feels more like you're watching an old-school horror film than a dark crimes thriller. The way dialog, music and sound effects are used to ratchet up suspense in those early scenes made me feel as though the Wolfman or the Mummy would come shuffling out of the woods. Talk about mixed messages.

Speaking of sound, the Mill Creek Entertainment version of the film features a disaster area where the audio track should be. For the most part I was able to follow what was going on, but there are moments scattered throughout when the dialog is completely indecipherable. This is particularly problematic when music and sound effects are being utilized at the same time. It's one thing for an elderly sound mix to be in rough shape, but it's another thing entirely for a third of your film's audio to sound like the blasting static you encounter on a portable radio while vacationing in Silent Hill. With a 100 minute runtime, this kind of audio quality can turn even the most engaging movie into an extremely long sit.

Picture fidelity isn't much better. The film print looks as though it was run through a briar patch on its way to be transferred to a digital format, and I suspect Mill Creek Entertainment used a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate. Scenes set at night tend to be much too dark, while daytime scenes look as though they were lit by the gentle, soft-focused glow of a nuclear explosion. I spent about two-thirds of the movie wondering why the skin wasn't painfully peeling from the actor's bones, as well as waiting for Ghouls, Super Mutants and Radscorpions to invade Pete's farm.

That's the grin of a man who hasn't yet realized the sun has exploded.

Having said all of that, there is a bright side: in 2012, a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack was released by Film Chest and HD Cinema Classics. The movie was restored using the original 35mm elements, which means that despite aggressive use of DNR to clean up film grain, the Blu-ray looks and sounds far better than the el cheapo DVD included in the Mill Creek Entertainment collection. These 50 movie sets tend to MSRP for around $10, so you get what you pay for.

Moving away from technical specs, I have to give a shout out to the film's cast. Everyone involved gives a fairly good performance, but special mention must be made of Edward G. Robinson. A performer known largely for playing mob heavies and gruff curmudgeons, Robinson gives a performance here that is equal parts tender and uncanny. I can't say too much without spoiling the plot -- that's right, I refuse to spoil a 67-year-old movie -- but he manages to flip from sympathetic to unnerving and back again at the drop of a hat. It takes a certain kind of performer to pull that off, and Robinson definitely fits the bill.

Allene Roberts also deserves praise for her turn as Meg. She easily embodies a character who is stoic yet vulnerable; reserved yet warm. When she smiles it lights up the screen, but when her demeanor shifts toward a broodier mood she takes on the icy stillness of a porcelain doll. She never smolders for the camera in the same way as co-star Julie London -- an actress who absolutely scorches the screen with her femme fatale allure -- but there's something extremely appealing about her nevertheless. It's kind of amazing that Nath never notices Meg noticing him. Teenage boys are dumb.

So that's The Red House, done and dusted. If you're into film noir and psychological thrillers, I suggest picking up the stand alone blu-ray version. I probably will, as it'd be nice to see the thing again with dialog that isn't about 30% incomprehensible.

Star Rating: 4/5

#01 - The Mandarin Mystery (1936)

Film number one in the Dark Crimes collection is The Mandarin Mystery, a 1936 adaptation of an Ellery Queen murder mystery novel of a similar name. The plot centers on young, amateur detective Ellery Queen (Eddie Quillan) trying to piece together the clues surrounding a stolen stamp and a double homicide.

The first thing that stands out about this film is the tone. I realize that the 1930s march to the beat of their own drum, but it really sends mixed signals when the first 10 minutes of your movie plays out like an overblown, rom-com meet-cute. Queen finds himself smitten with the beauty and charm of Miss Josephine Temple (Charlotte Henry), and much of the film focuses on his attempts to win her over. Queen is a walking one-liner generator, and the rest of the characters follow suit (particularly Queen's long-suffering father, the police investigator originally summoned to look into the case of the missing stamp).

Suffice it to say, this film is as much an oddball comedy as it is a murder mystery. Just about every line of dialog culminates in a quip. There's a particularly amusing exchange about midway through the movie in which Ellery Queen glibly makes requests about which penitentiary he would prefer to be incarcerated in. Nothing says sticking it to the man like requesting a stint at Sing Sing with a grin on your face and a bounce in your step. There's also a smattering of slapstick early on, and later a soundproof room is put to the test via WACKY SHENANIGANS.

The picture and sound quality is what you might expect from a collection of films that are extremely old and more than likely in the public domain. The film stock is trashed, there are dropped frames all over the place, and the dialog is muddy. But in a way this sort of adds a certain of-the-time charm to the whole thing.

The Mandarin Mystery isn't a bad little movie -- it runs 52 minutes, which is odd given the film's original run time was closer to 64 minutes -- but as the first film in a set titled "Dark Crimes", the tone is just bizarre. The mystery itself is only serviceable, but Ellery Queen and Miss Temple have a likeable rapport, and the humor still plays well when you consider that the film was shot 78 years ago. It's kind of a shame that there were no follow-up Queen films utilizing the same cast and tone. I'd have gladly watched more of them.

Star Rating: 4/5