Category: Directed by Stuart Heisler
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After a strong build-up, mostly thanks to Jack Palance’s great lead performance, this heist picture implodes in the third act. He’s an ex-con, sprung (by a delightful Lon Chaney Jr.) to knock-off a resort hotel’s jewelry vault. If he can get his young punk sidekicks in shape for it, which seems questionable with Shelley Winters…
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One of Storm Warning’s failings is its attempt to carefully navigate the story content so I’m just going to be lead-footed and get right to things, which probably would’ve helped the movie though not the ending. Storm Warning is about Ginger Rogers visiting sister Doris Day and witnessing the Ku Klux Klan murdering someone. Rogers…
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Along Came Jones gets by on its gimmick and its charm–it’s got a lot of charm, both from the cast and Nunnally Johnson’s screenplay, which is good as director Heisler doesn’t bring any. Jones is a lower budget Western, lots of rear screen projection, lots of boring setups from Heisler. He prefers medium long shots,…
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The Glass Key‘s a murder mystery, but its solution–and even its investigation–is incidental to the rest of the picture. From about seven minutes in, director Heisler defines Key as something quite different. Leading man Alan Ladd isn’t a detective, he isn’t even particularly interested in solving the murder. Seven minutes in is when Ladd has…
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Both critically and popularly, Chain Lightning gets classified as one of Bogart’s lesser, late 1940s films. While the film certainly is a star vehicle for Bogart, it’s only “lesser” if one compares it to Bogart’s stellar films (basically, the ones everyone remembers). On its own, Chain Lightning is far from perfect, but it’s a fine…
The Stop Button 