My Name is Julia Ross (1945, Joseph H. Lewis)

The funniest part of My Name is Julia Ross is when May Whitty, just after having local vicar Olaf Hytten visit, says son George Macready needs to kill Nina Foch before a doctor shows up because while they might be able to convince no-nothings like the vicar, a doctor would be able to tell she’s not mentally unwell.

Whitty’s worried a doctor might listen to a woman, which would foil their plans, and obviously, a vicar would not. If ever there were a moment for Whitty to mention she wore a mask during the influenza pandemic.

Ross is the tale of Foch’s very bad job placement. She’s a single girl living in London; her landlady, Doris Lloyd, is a mean jerk, and the building’s maid, an enthusiastic Joy Harington, is a mean jerk who’s also a thief. The film opens with Foch back from another unfruitful job hunt. She finds a letter awaiting her—a wedding invitation from former co-lodger Roland Varno. He’s off and gotten married, even though Lloyd thought Foch would seduce Varno away from his fiancée. There probably ought to be a pin in that detail—and there’s sort of a half-pin—but Ross only runs an hour and five minutes, so there’s no time for subplots.

Besides the wedding invitation, Foch also finds an advertisement in the newspaper for an employment agency she’s never visited before. So she hurries off and has such a great interview with Anita Sharp-Bolster (who’s not in Ross enough; in fact, she inexplicably disappears around the halfway mark) she gets the job on the spot. Well, after Sharp-Bolster can bring Whitty and Macready in for the final interview.

See, the employment agency is a sham. Whitty and Macready are looking for someone to replace Macready’s absent wife, but just in body. Can’t collect on life insurance without a body.

Before Whitty and Macready can drug Foch and whisk her off to the seashore for the main part of their scheme, Foch has to go home and see Varno one more time. His fiancée dumped him at the last minute for moaning Julia Ross at inappropriate times. The scene where Varno explains it to Foch is somewhat painful, as the film flexes Varno’s confusion at the fiancée’s problem. It also reveals Varno’s going to be a weak link in the cast. Foch has to hold their slight scene up entirely.

It also might not help Varno’s next scene is during some of the film’s day-for-night shooting, which looks terrible even on the backlot. Burnett Guffey’s photography is usually one of the film’s strongest technicals, but the day-for-night’s bad. Luckily it’s only a couple scenes throughout. Ross is technically solid—especially for a B picture—with director Lewis having some strong scenes. Editor Henry Batista doesn’t seem to know how to cut them, though, so there aren’t any breakout scenes.

Most of the film consists of Foch in her prison—a seaside manor house—where maid Queenie Leonard can’t figure out why Foch isn’t happy to be married to a rich guy; she’s got such nice clothes, after all. Leonard’s not in on the scheme, so Foch is usually trying to convince her to help. But Leonard’s also not going to be believing any women, especially not over upper-crust Whitty’s say-so.

Throw in regular implications Macready is uncontrollably violent, and they’ve got a reasonably compelling hour-long mystery.

It doesn’t pay off in the finish, with the finale being particularly contrived, but it’s an okay B suspense thriller. Whitty’s good, but not singular. Ditto Macready, who Lewis knows how to direct… while Macready doesn’t understand how Lewis is directing him. It’s a peculiar situation. Finally, Varno’s a lukewarm, slightly damp towel (at best).

And Foch’s okay. She’s never not successful in the part, but never anything more.

My Name is Julia Ross is okay. It’s a suspense thriller told from the perspective of the people causing the suspense, not the person experiencing it, which isn’t a sound narrative structure; it’s also only sixty-five minutes.

The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942, Joseph H. Lewis)

I spent the first fifteen minutes of The Mad Doctor of Market Street wondering why the movie didn’t have a better reputation. Yes, the title’s bad even before it was marginally ableist, but director Lewis has been rediscovered; why not Market Street. It starts as a traditional, albeit modern Universal horror picture with “pseudo” scientist Lionel Atwill killing some unwitting dope. Atwill wasn’t trying to kill the guy; instead, he used invermectin to put him in suspended animation, then revive him later. And it didn’t work.

So Atwill shaves his sinister guy beard into a mustache, puts on a dinner jacket, and gets mildly debonair on a cruise ship. He’s sailing to New Zealand under a false name, with detective Byron Shores also onboard, trying to sniff him out. Except Atwill’s shaved, so he’s basically invisible.

The movie then sets up its ensemble cast: leading lady Claire Dodd, leading man Richard Davies, Una Merkel as Dodd’s comic relief aunt, Nat Pendleton as comic relief lunkhead with a heart of gold, and John Eldredge as dipshit officer. Merkel’s going to New Zealand to finally get married, Pendleton’s going for a fight, Dodd’s accompanying Merkel, Davies is an M.D. working his way to an internship in Australia, and Eldredge doesn’t like Davies liking Dodd.

Thanks to Merkel and Pendleton, it feels like some weird MGM comedy, and for a while seems like it’ll be about the passengers finding out Atwill’s not what he appears.

Only, no, there’s a shipwreck, and they end up on a tropical island, and it turns out Market Street is a racist South Seas picture. Atwill saves Rosina Galli, one of the superstitious natives (who wear the latest swim trunks), and declares himself “the God of Life.”

It’s real bad—everything with the natives. So the reason Market Street has never been rediscovered is it isn’t some early moody, low-budget suspense thriller from Lewis; it’s just a cringe-worthy mess of racism.

Though there’s a surprisingly affecting scene later between Galli and Atwill when she thanks him for resurrecting her, something the film never quite explains.

Anyway.

After becoming the local deity, Atwill decides he will need to take a bride, and Dodd’s the lucky girl. It’s just as Dodd and Davies start getting cozy. So, lots of drama, fisticuffs, and bad wisecracks from Merkel.

Market Street becomes a screwball thriller, at least in how Lewis and cinematographer Jerome Ash shoot it. Lots of characters in static, very long medium shots, bantering and reacting. The ship sequence is well-directed and inventive with budget. The island stuff is mind-numbingly middling. It’s the identical setups and stagings, over and over again.

Atwill starts the movie as a caricature and then becomes its subject, not its lead, which works. He’s unpleasant to be around, in a good way. Also, in a bad way, when he’s running the island and bossing around chief Noble Johnson.

The cast is almost entirely likable. Eldredge is too much of an asshat, but otherwise, even Merkel eventually becomes sympathetic. Some of her problem is lousy timing from director Lewis, who doesn’t know what to do with humor. There’s one moment where Pendleton delivers a witty retort to Merkel, and it ought to be great, but Lewis is entirely confused.

Given it being a racist South Seas movie, however, it’s better there aren’t many pluses. There’s also something to be said about pre-World War II Hollywood racist characterizations being very similar to the mid-sixties mainstream sitcom ones.

In other words, Market Street’s a messed up three-hour tour. Even without the racism, it’d be a mess, though it’s one of those stories you can’t do without the racism.

Icky bad.

But also not a terrible movie. Just a surprisingly disappointing and mortifying one.

Gun Crazy (1950, Joseph H. Lewis)

We don’t see John Dall court Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy. We get to see them meet cute when Dall—back home after the Army (and reform school before the service)—and his pals go to carnival and see Cummins’s shootist act. Dall was in reform school for breaking into a store to steal a pistol and has been obsessed with guns his entire life. He won’t kill anything—there’s an exceptional flashback sequence while young Dall (played by a wonderfully tragic Russ Tamblyn) is in court and everyone testifies about his love of guns and his abhorrence of violence. He’d never use them to shoot anyone, everyone tells the judge (a very good Morris Carnovsky), he just wants them around all the time and maybe to, like, shoot the channel switcher on a TV someday.

But never to kill anyone.

The film never addresses Dall’s military service in that regard and is able to avoid it because right after Dall becomes bewitched with Cummins, he joins the traveling carnival as another shootist. He quickly starts romancing Cummins, running afoul of carnival owner Berry Kroeger who’s been blackmailing Cummins into his company and has no plans on letting up. Kroeger is the one who gives the insight into what the courtship must look like—they look at each other, Kroeger complains, “like a couple of wild animals.” Thanks to Kroeger, the whirlwind courtship ends with Dall and Cummins married and jobless. They try to make an honest go of it, but once the money runs out—they try to beat Vegas (Cummins is a British expat and in some ways more naive than the very naive Dall) and fail—Cummins gives Dall an ultimatum.

Either they start sticking places up for cash or she’s leaving him. It doesn’t take Dall much thought. It takes him a little bit of thought and we get to see it on his face and we get to see Cummins waiting for his decision because director Lewis is all about how the couple is experiencing their tragedy. But pretty soon they’re sticking up everything from hotels to banks, but never hurting anyone because Dall says no killing.

There’s eventually a great conversation between Dall and Cummins about the no-killing thing, which turns into this great contrast of their respective naiveties as well as a fine character development reveal for Dall. The film’s got a very simple, very linear plot with director Lewis and screenwriters MacKinlay Kantor and Dalton Trumbo focusing on the character relationship between Dall and Cummins when they’re not sticking up the joint, rather coming off the high.

Towards the end of the film, we get to see what Kroeger was talking about with the wild animal looks. At least from Cummins; we’ve seen them some from Dall, who’s usually the one trying to keep the couple from breaking apart under the stress, but the scene where we finally get to see Cummins gazing hungrily on Dall. It is indeed a little scary. It’s closest to the terrified look Cummins gets when she’s feeling cornered and like she needs to shoot her way out, not worrying about who or what the bullets are going to hit. But Dall’s not in the same place as Cummins, who’s alone, a stranger in a strange land; Dall’s got loving big sis Anabel Shaw and his hometown pals, cop Harry Lewis and reporter Nedrick Young. The film occasionally checks in with them during the montages to show how Dall’s life of crime is affecting the loved ones who never gave up him for being, you know, Gun Crazy.

Dall and Cummins keep trying to get stable financially but something always goes wrong and they always need to pull another heist, leading to some exquisite chases sequences, both in cars and on foot. Lewis, cinematographer Russell Harlan, and editor Harry Gerstad are always inventive with how they present Dall and Cummins in rooms versus outdoors versus in cars. They’re trapped together in rooms; outdoors they’re free, in cars they’re hunting and hunted. Lots of extreme close-ups, perfectly lighted, perfectly cut, lots of very particular composition where the actors work together in an unbroken shot. Lewis perfectly balances the showiness of the characters with the intimate. The character development in Gun Crazy is one of its reassuring successes—the film implies it’s going to stick with it, even after it could get rid of it—for a movie called Gun Crazy, it’s not particularly sensational in how it depicts Dall and Cummins (outside when they’re running around dressed in Old West outfits). Lewis and the writers always make sure the film’s an endless fount of empathy and compassion… all while making no promises about hope or redemption.

It’s an exceptional film with singular direction from Lewis. He makes it all happen. I mean, the script does quite a bit, but Lewis (and his crew) make it magic.