The Invisible Woman (1940, A. Edward Sutherland)

It’s entirely possible The Invisible Woman’s concept is a good one—instead of a horror movie, doing a screwball comedy where the female lead is invisible most of the time. Woman is—at best—indifferently acted, poorly directed, atrociously written, without even reasonable special effects. But the idea itself isn’t necessarily bad.

The film opens with suffering butler Charles Ruggles—he gets lots of jokes, they’re always terrible, he’s always bad. His bits are so universally bad, it seems like it has to be director Sutherland. Even Shemp Howard is occasionally amusing. He’s mostly godawful, but every once in a while, some gag won’t completely fail. Everything with Ruggles is a fail. Every single joke. And there are probably four Ruggles jokes every twelve minutes, if not more. The movie runs seventy-two minutes total. So thirty-some lousy Ruggles gags.

Ruggles works for John Howard. Howard is the romance lead, a playboy who funds lovable mad scientist John Barrymore’s projects. Only Howard never asks to see results—not until the movie starts, when Barrymore needs to turn someone invisible. It needs to be a person; Howard apparently won’t believe it if Barrymore turns the cat invisible. The human subject is going to be Virginia Bruce. She initially wants to get invisible to seemingly erase herself from reality. Bruce isn’t good in the scenes where she’s getting philosophical about woman’s place in the universe and so on but at least it’s character.

When she does get invisible and gets to do whatever she wants, it’s just messing with crappy boss Charles Lane. When Lane’s bad, it’s a sign Invisible Woman is never going to be good or even okay. Even with Ruggles, even with Howard, even with Barrymore basically letting his elaborate make-up do all the acting, if the movie were at least funny with its big supporting cast of comedy regulars… it’d have a chance.

But no.

Because Sutherland’s direction is terrible.

And the script—from Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo, and Gertrude Purcell (from a story by horror guys Curt Siodmak and Joe May)—is terrible. So the movie doesn’t have a chance. Ever.

The best part of the movie is Margaret Hamilton, who plays Barrymore’s assistant and her dismissive, impatient attitude is perfect for the part and movie. She doesn’t camp it up, but she seems to be acknowledging the quality constraints and so on and excels—reasonably—within them. The movie sort of trades her screen time for Oscar Homolka, which is appropriate for Invisible Woman. Hamilton’s the best, Homolka’s the worst. Now, obviously, dramatically speaking, Howard’s the worst. But for the comedy—and Woman’s a comedy–Homolka’s an endless pit of bad comedy.

Invisible Woman gets so painfully bad in the last third—it’s also a slog of seventy-two minutes, probably because there’s not a good “Invisible Woman” set piece. Sutherland is clearly inept at the special effects sequences but the movie needs them. There’s not even a big screwball number, just more plot, as Homolka’s gang goes after Barrymore and friends.

Howard—Shemp—is in the gang. Donald MacBride is in the gang. Edward Brophy is in the gang. Invisible Woman wastes Edward Brophy. Wastes him in a way you think they’d never seen an Edward Brophy performance before. Including the one he’s giving here.

Terrible editing from Frank Gross doesn’t help things either. Occasionally the cuts make it seem like they’re doing a lot of work—revised audio looped in to dialogue-free visuals, jokes muted and faded out on—and maybe Gross was doing the best he could with Sutherland’s footage. It’s sadly immaterial, other than to correctly portion the blame.

The Invisible Woman’s laugh-less and charmless, only impressive because they can never find a good joke, not even on accident.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s01e19 – The Mandrake

This episode gets off to a rough start wrapping up last episode’s cliffhanger—Sabrina and the gang discovering a shrine to her in the mines, which is at least hundreds of years old. Kevin Rodney Sullivan’s direction is peculiar in a bad way (unless there’s a good reason for it like they reshot all of Ross Lynch’s one-shots). Then there’s Joshua Conkel’s script, which has Gavin Leatherwood forgetting Lynch’s name even though it’s been established Leatherwood obsesses over Lynch as a romantic rival for Kiernan Shipka.

Luckily, once that not good scene is over, The Mandrake turns out to be rather excellent. Shipka decides she’s going to get rid of her powers and so she and cousin Chance Perdomo make her a mandrake root clone, which is going to magically syphon off Shipka’s powers. Only they don’t think it works so they go off to try something else. Meanwhile, turns out the cloning did work and so now there’s a different Sabrina (Shipka) around; it’s got all her powers, the non-clone one is depowered. After some fun scenes with the saccharine sweet clone, Shipka gets to start being weird and evil to her mortal friends. It’s very cool (eventually), with a great Invasion of the Body Snatchers reference, even if the scene with Shipka the clone and Lachlan Watson is icky as hell. Watson gets to play hero later, which is great.

Meanwhile, at the witch academy, Richard Coyle is instituting his “Church of Judas,” which is basically just a He-Man Woman Haters club for warlocks. Miranda Otto tries to tell Tati Gabrielle not to trust dad Coyle but, continuing her lousy arc as of late, Gabrielle doesn’t listen when she should and instead needs the point hammered in three times. Lucy Davis is sort of part of this subplot, working behind the scenes; some excellent moments for Davis as far as acting goes, just not the best use of her (or the audience’s) time; it’s filler.

The other big, nearing the end of the season development comes as Shipka finally figures out Michelle Gomez isn’t actually her guardian… angel, but a Machiavellian villain. It’s not the best stuff material for Shipka, who’s too busy with her clone subplot; however, when Gomez and Leatherwood realize Shipka’s unintentionally going to unleash literal Hell on Earth, great material for Gomez. The episode ends up successful enough you’ve got to wonder what happened with that opener.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s01e12 – The Epiphany

It’s a new year for “Chilling Adventures,” literally, with the episode picking up after winter break as Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) has decided she’ll no longer be attending Baxter High and going to witch academy full-time. New Baxter High principal and actual Biblical figure (albeit unbeknownst to Shipka) Michelle Gomez approves the move, Zelda (Miranda Otto) is indifferent but supportive of the move because she’s high on being a new faculty member at the academy (not to mention her naughty time with newly and indifferently widowed high priest Richard Coyle), but Hilda (Lucy Davis) really thinks Shipka should be hanging out with her mortal friends to get some grounding.

Only Shipka’s intentionally avoiding them because she’s terrified the Dark Lord is going to call on her to do his bidding and it’ll somehow hurt the mortals if she’s around them. Great scene for Shipka and Davis; it’s the first time in what seems like forever we’re getting back to Shipka’s perspective.

The main plot is Shipka competing against kind of too good to be true warlock slash love interest Gavin Leatherwood to be the academy’s “top boy,” which is only gendered because Coyle is misogynist trash. They have to compete in three challenges and Shipka’s got a lot of studying to do for them, but that studying always gets interrupted by one of the Plague Kings trying to kill her.

The Plague Kings are a big misfire, both in terms of foes—Shipka just needs to use regular magic on them to get rid of them, which doesn’t make them seem tough, just inconvenient given circumstances—the costume and make-up design is terrible (they’re all in pseudo-trenchcoats, looking like something from a mid-nineties action movie), and the acting is… not good. Nelson Leis has the most to do as Beelzebub and he’s terrible.

Someone on “Sabrina” must’ve read Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, John Totleben… there’s good ideas out there for visualizing these guys… just saying.

The other big plot is Lachlan Watson’s character, assigned at birth as female, identified as enby (and ok with AFAB given designation) transitioning to male. It’s a great moment for Watson, though Sinclair immediately misgendering him is a bit of jaw-dropper. Like, I get it, show how people are human and are going to make mistakes because their brains misfire or whatever, but it’s pretty harsh.

Later, when explaining it all to Ross Lynch, Sinclair’s got it down. But then that explanation just turns out to be prelude to her accidentally using the Shining on Lynch and discovering they’re going to get hot and heavy in the future.

Watson also tries out for the basketball team—with Madame Satan Gomez telling the sexist basketball coach what’s up in a way you hope she eventually eats him—and Shipka magicks Watson’s abilities so she shows up the other boys, which maybe isn’t going to go well in the future but Shipka doesn’t seem to be thinking about it.

It’s a good episode, Plague Kings aside, with one hell of a cliffhanger.

Evil (2019) s01e06 – Let x = 9

So in addition to Christine Lahti becoming bride to the unclean one through some really good third grade poetry imagery because “Evil” is really condescending to its target audience, the Christians who vote blue, the episode also confronts the whole “child rape” thing with the Catholic Church. Confronts as in lapsed Muslim skeptical charming aloof guy Aasif Mandvi makes a crack about it; a serious crack about it sure but a crack. “Evil” really wants to pretend people haven’t figured out the Catholic Church basically functions the way it does to protect child rapists. Like, when did it start. Was it before the Borgias? After? Because it started hundreds of years ago.

And “Evil” wants you to forget about it because Mandvi is the most successful character on the show and because it’s like “American Horror Story” for your grandma or something. It’s a CBS-ed horror story. With conspiracies and symbolism and blah blah blah.

But it’s also one of the most successful episodes in a while because Katja Herbers gets a bunch to do and she’s awesome at it. The scenes themselves vary, but she’s always good. Until the second half twist—surprise, sexy grandma Lahti’s new stud is none other than decently not sexy grandpa Michael Emerson, who also has kind of been stalking Herbers since the beginning of the show in order to further his life goal of promoting evil in the world. Can Lahti give him up for Herbers and the four adorable granddaughters, who Emerson has drawing secret symbols and singing creepy religious songs? Oops, I spoiled it in the first sentence. But whatever, doesn’t matter. “Evil”’s very deliberately plotted. To the point it supersedes everything else going on in the show; in some ways it feels like a very standard eighties nighttime mystery drama—Herbers and Mike Colter’s workplace romance—and very edgy for the USA Network in 2005. Like if they’d done a “Da Vinci Code: The Series” and it was surprisingly mean-spirited. But with some patronizing exploitation.

Still, the acting can be great. Herbers is great here. Colter is not. But he’s okay, it’s the script. And Mandvi’s awesome. Of course he’s awesome, he gets tapped selling the “eh, it can’t be all priests, right?”

I mean, icky. But also… CBS tame for 2019. Both sides but we’re pretending politics don’t exist.

Also… Emerson basically just seems like he’s doing a Kevin Spacey impression.

Having Wonderful Crime (1945, A. Edward Sutherland)

Having Wonderful Crime is a perplexing comedy-mystery. The mystery itself is perplexing because it’s so exceptionally convoluted; three screenwriters and four or five red herrings and the picture only runs seventy minutes. The comedy is perplexing because Crime hinges its comedic potential on lead Pat O’Brien. O’Brien is a skirt-chasing Chicago lawyer who lets rich pal George Murphy talk him into solving crimes. Murphy seems to want to do it because he can’t say no to his girlfriend, Carole Landis. Landis wants to do it because… she’s the idle rich?

There’s a brief setup–including a voiceover introducing O’Brien (whose character appeared in more than just Crime from source author Craig Rice–but O’Brien never repeated the role)–which doesn’t just reveal (after there’s been a shootout) Murphy and Landis are now married (without telling best pal O’Brien) but also a bunch of the players in the next mystery. While on the run from the cops (because O’Brien will be in trouble if they’re found at the crime scene), O’Brien, Murphy, and Landis duck into a magic show. There, Crime introduces Lenore Aubert and Richard Martin as starcrossed lovers working for big jerk magician George Zucco.

After the magic show, which ends with Zucco really disappearing, Murphy and Landis break the married news to O’Brien and head off to their honeymoon. Of course, they end up taking O’Brien along, which is good because when they run into Aubert on the road to the resort–almost literally–they’re able to double register and get adjoining honeymoon suites. Of course, while his new fake bride is up in the room unconscious, O’Brien’s down at the bar trying to make time with Gloria Holden, who gets a thankless part as a professional swimmer.

The initial mystery–before there’s a murder–involves a giant chest, which may have a body in it. Once there’s a murder, the chest is still important, but then O’Brien and pals find out Zucco had played the resort the night before and there were strange goings ons at the resort too. Some involving rich spinsters Blanche Ring and Josephine Whittell, as well as resort manager Charles D. Brown and giant scary porter guy William ‘Wee Willie’ Davis. So many suspects, so much opportunity, so little motive but so many exteriors on the resorts grounds shot day-for-night.

Most of Crime is just O’Brien, Murphy, and Landis walking around outside trying to stumble onto a scene to kill a few minutes.

The film’s humor is utterly perplexing. While Murphy and Landis both occasionally exhibit comedic timing, it’s never when they’re together. There are some nods at slapstick, but usually at its aftermath, like no one thinks they could pull off the gag on screen. O’Brien’s got zero comic timing, so most of Crime’s scenes throwing him into comedic situations–often involving the skirt-chasing–fizzle. They don’t exactly flop, because it’s not like anyone’s trying too hard. Director Sutherland sure isn’t and the screenwriters don’t put any energy into building the gags. Crime gently amuses and never tries for anything else.

And it’s fine, since the film doesn’t have the time or cast to go for more. Landis is the only one of the three leads who’s consistently engaging; even when she gets pointless material, which is most of the time (Crime seems to know she’s easily the most charismatic cast member, yet the script gives her a constantly changing character because… I don’t know, idle rich?). Murphy always seems like he’s waiting for broader comedy. O’Brien always seems like he’s waiting for some actual direction. O’Brien’s scenes might actually play better with a laugh track, just because it’d provide some context for what Sutherland and the screenwriters are going for. Without it he just seems like a big jerk and a lech.

Aubert’s a weak ingenue. Martin’s light as her Romeo. Zucco’s underutilized. Ditto poor Holden. Ring and Whittell are great as the rich old spinsters. It’s a shame they aren’t in it more (Whittell isn’t even credited).

The film’s technically competent. Frank Redman’s day-for-night photography doesn’t transcend and it’s quizzical why they’d set so much of the movie outside when they clearly can’t shoot for it, but it’s not bad. Gene Milford’s editing keeps the pace.

Crime is more diverting than engaging or entertaining. Its creative choices make zero sense–who at RKO really thought people would rather sit through a Pat O’Brien vehicle than a Carole Landis one?

This post is part of A Century Of Carole Landis Blogathon hosted by Christine of Overture Books and Film.