1992 - PASSION FISH.very good character study but overlong

A soap opera actress who has become a paraplegic after a car accident returns to her childhood home in Louisiana for therapy.  Angry about her situation she slowly bonds with her caregiver who is confronting some personal issues of her own.  Passion Fish is a good drama that avoids a lot of feel good sentimentality.  This situation is interesting enough thanks to Sayles skilled writing and doesn't need any Hollywood type "goosing up" with it's story.

The actors Mary McDonnell and Alfre Woodard  give excellent performances and the supporting cast that Sayles has assembled also have their very strong moments.  Sayles strength as a filmmaker was always in creating believable characters that populate his films.

The biggest problem with Passion Fish is it's length.   The film runs over two hours and could have used a little pruning.  Sayles is clearly in love with his cast and the scenes that help flesh out his characters but  an awful lot of the film does have a tendency to meander at times.

Still a film that features two strong believable actresses working through their personal problems in a realistic way is certainly worth  a look at the very least.  The film has nice on location photography and as usual with John Sayles he takes an editing credit as well.

The screenplay is by John Sayles, the running time is 135 minutes.

1967 - THE GNOME-MOBILE, one of Disney's better live action films

Probably one of the few good live action Disney films shot in the 1960's,  although the bar isn't really very high for the amount of live action junk they cranked out.  The film benefits from Disney's best in-house director Robert Stevenson, the actor Walter Brennan and (for the time),  Disney's top notch special effects crew which interestingly enough credits Robert Mattey who went on to build the shark for Spielberg's Jaws.

The film has Walter Brennan as a lumber tycoon on vacation with his grandchildren played by Matthew Garber and Karen Dotrice the Mary Poppins kids.  While stopping off at a forest they run into a couple of gnomes who need to be reunited with their gnome friends.  Brennan plays two roles in the film The lumber tycoon D.J. Mulroney and Knobby the old gnomish elf.  As was the practice with Disney films there are a lot of old-timers in the cast.  Jerome Cowan, Richard Deacon, Ed Wynn and Sean McClory who was usually associated with John Ford.

 

Robert Stevenson the director, seemed to have a knack for these kinds of films.  He directed The Absent Minded Professor, Mary Poppins, The Love Bug and Son of Flubber.  All big moneymakers for the Disney studios.  Stevenson had directed Darby O'Gill and the Little People about a bunch of leprechauns which featured Sean Connery in one of his first important roles.  That film used lots of clever trick photography in it and despite being a good fantasy film was a commercial disappointment.  Stevenson and his crew clearly used a lot of what they learned about trick photography from that film for the  The Gnome-Mobile which was a more audience friendly film.

 

The film was written by Ellis Kadison based on a book by Upton Sinclair of all people.  The running time is 84 minutes.

1943 - NORTHERN PURSUIT, ridiculous World War II thriller

Apparently Nazi agents were running all over northern Canada during World War II. Fortunately Erroll Flynn is on the job as an undercover member of the RCMP.  It's hard to know what to make of this film.  During the war the studios were good at putting out films that were essentially propaganda pieces for the country.  Some were even decent like Air Force, The Mortal Storm or The Great Dictator .  But Northern Pursuit needs to be put in the same category as Flynn's other silly propaganda film Desperate Journey, which had Flynn and Ronald Reagan as Allied pilots trapped behind Nazi lines battling their way back to England.  Flynn is the star in this film so he gets no help from Reagan this time.

The plot involves the Nazi's sneaking bomber parts into Canada so they can assemble a bomber and blow up a canal between Canada and the United States, that's determination for you.  Somehow the Nazi's capture Flynn's fiancee played by an actor named Julie Bishop who was one of those second tier performers who never hit the big time.  Since the film is set in snowy Canada we have lots of studio footage of fake snowy sets mixed with actual 2nd unit footage shot in some winter locations.  I can only assume that the actors were roasting under the bright soundstage lights in their winter fur outfits. 

The film was directed by Raoul Walsh who apparently thought the film was nothing more than a "potboiler."  Walsh was a good director and the best thing you can say about this film is that he paced the film so well that the damn thing does move along quickly.  The rumor mill said that William Faulkner worked on uncredited on the screenplay but you'll find no traces of Faulkener's "The Sound and the Fury."  The film also makes a joke about Flynn's real life rape trial.  Flynn was to put it as mildly as possible a real lady killer in his personal life.

The screenplay is credited to  Frank Gruber and Alvah Bessie.  The running time is a quick 93 minutes.

1966 - WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE?, crazy sci-fi/fantasy from Czechoslovakia

This screwball film from Czechoslovakia has to be seen to be believed.  The wife of a scientist has invented a device that can make a person's dreams come true.  She uses it on her husband while he is asleep and out comes a blonde bombshell named Jessie who is the featured character in a comic book series he has been reading called "Who Wants to Kill Jessie?".  Along with the blonde, a couple of her antagonists also materialize, a strongman and his henchman who is dressed as a cowboy.  The comedic situations arise when people in the real world have to deal with imaginary comic book characters who continue to act like they are in a comic book story.

The film is full of sight gags and slapstick.  The two comic book bad guys chase after Jessie all through the city.  They create havoc where ever they go, and their are many scenes of stuff getting destroyed.  The comic book characters don't actually speak in the real world.  They communicate with dialog balloons and everyone eventually reacts to this as it is completely normal thing.

 

The film is short and sweet, it sets up it's comic situation and then milks it for some laughs without overdoing it.  A funny and very weird film.

 

Co-written by the director Václav Vorlíček along with Miloš Macourek.  The running time is 81 minutes.

2011 - THE LINCOLN LAWYER, a good crime thriller

 The brief no give away synopsis of this film is, a defense lawyer who works out of his car gets involved with several cases which turn out to be interconnected.  This is a film adaptation of the book's author Michael Connelly's story.  The film follows Connelly's book fairly closely which is probably the reason it works as well as it does

Michael Connelly is good at atmosphere in his novels and the film version of The Lincoln Lawyer does have a nice feeling for Los Angeles.  Connelly had been a crime reporter for many years so he brought that experience with him when writing this novel and his other successful book series about detective Harry Bosch.

 

 The creators of this film were smart enough to leave what worked in the book alone without signifciatnly changing things.  The end result is a tricky crime thriller.  The film  also has a decent mainstream Hollywood cast starting with Mathew McConaughey as Mickey Haller the defense attorney who is a bit of a shyster.  The rest of the cast has been carefully put together.  Marisa Tomei is Haller's ex-wife, William H Macey is a private investigator,  one time pretty boy Ryan Phillippe is one of Haller's clients.

 

It's actually kind of refreshing to see a mainstream commercial film actually hit it's targets for a change and produce an entertaining story.

The screenplay is by John Romano, the running time is 118 minutes.

1930 - BILLY THE KID, early sound western from King Vidor

This is an early sound western from one of the legendary silent film directors, King Vidor.  Billy the Kid was filmed in 70 mm and in 35 mm.  Unfortunately no 70mm print seems to exist so film buffs will just have to live with the 35 mm version.

The film had extensive location photography in Utah, New Mexico and the Grand Canyon so you can get somewhat of a feel for the landscape even if it is only in 35mm.  Vidor directed a couple of good action scenes and when the film is outdoors it's visually fairly impressive to look at.  As with all early "talkie" films the acting and dialog is kind of shall we say stilted.  It would take a few more years for sound recording to improve and for actors and writers to develop a new understated way of writing dialog and performing.

 

Unsurprisingly this is not the true story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Hollywood has been spinning fantasy's about their story for almost as long as there has been movies.  Still for an old movie King Vidor did a fairly good job with the story, it must have been a challenge dealing with sound cameras on these western locations.

 

 The film was written by Laurence Stallings and Charles MacArthur, the running time is 95 minutes.

1964 - THE LONG SHIPS, very entertaining Viking adventure

No one was ever going to confuse The Long Ships with Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, but this is a very entertaining adventure film.  The film stars Richard Widmark as the Norseman Rolfe.  Along with his brother Orm, they kidnap a Viking Princess and steal a Viking boat in search of a giant Golden Bell.  While in search of the Bell they run up against a Moorish King played by Sidney Poitier of all people.  Poitier's queen is the Italian actress Rosanna Schiaffino and the screenplay is written in such a way that Poitier has taken a vow of chastity.  In fact he doesn't even touch the gorgeous Schiaffino at all throughout the entire film.

This film has it all,  shipwrecks, battle scenes a treasure hunt and excellent location photography.  The film was shot on some scenic Yugoslavian locations for the most part.  One doesn't think of the actor Richard Widmark as having a light touch as a swashbuckler in this adventure epic, but he's not bad.  Poitier is all dead seriousness as the Muslim King Aly Mansuh and Rosanna Schiaffino basically stands around and looks beautiful.   Dancer/actor Russ Tamblyn is Widmark's brother and in his fight scenes he hops around like he's back in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers. 

 

Apparently no one wanted to make this film, the thought of being on location in Yugoslavia was less than appealing to the cast, particularly the American actors.  The director Jack Cardiff supposedly spent much of his time trying to get out of his contract to make the picture.  It's amazing this picture turned out as well as it did.

The Long Ships is the type of lightweight adventure epic the film industry doesn't seem to be able to provide these days.  The film was written by Beverley Cross and Berkely Mather.  Beverly Cross had written Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts which was clearly an influence on this film's plot.  The running time is 126 minutes.

1978 - NEWSFRONT - Australian film about a newsreel company

 Newsfront is a tribute to the Australian newsreel organizations that provided news and human interest stories to movie goers before the main feature film began.  The film covers the period of 1948 - 1956 when television became more prevalent and basically put the newsreel cameramen out of business.  Newsfront touches on major events in Australian history, a flood, a rabbit plague, a long distance road race and a vote to ban the Communist Party in Australia.  While these moments were important in Australia hisory these events probably won't mean much to any viewer outside of Australia.

The film uses a lot of actual newsreel footage and it also employs that old Wizard of Oz trick of switching from black and white to color at times. The cast is obviously all local actors who for the most part I had never heard of with the exception of Bryan Brown, Bruce Spence and Wendy Hughes.  I recall Wendy Hughes from some American TV shows that she guest starred in.  Star Trek:  The Next Generation sticks out in particular, I believe she was Picard's love interest.

 

Newsfront was based on a short film from director Phillip Noyce.  Noyce eventually moved to Hollywood in the 1990's and made some undistinguished film thrillers such as Patriot Games, Silver and A Clear and Present Danger to name a few.  

 

The big problem with this film are the choices that Noyce made as a storyteller.  He appears to have decided to play down all of the drama of the various historical events and this has even extended to the cast who so underplay their parts that the viewer has no chance to get involved with their lives.   The characters are cyphers at the beginning of the film and they remain cyphers at the end of the film. It’s just poor drama. While Newsfront has interesting moments overall the film lacks any reason for  viewers to get involved in this story.

Written by Phillip Noyce and Bob Ellis, the running time is 110 minutes.

1980 - SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II, car chase film without car chases

 Curiosity drove me to watch this sequel to Smokey and the Bandit, one of the most popular action comedies of the time.  The rumor was that this sequel was really bad and did not measure up in any way to the first film.  How bad could it be?  Well as it turns out the rumor was absolutely correct.  The film is a complete failure even for a simple minded sequel.  All the filmmakers had to do was remake the original movie but apparently they had loftier ambitions.  The film is an examination of the role of celebrity in America and the toll it can take on the rich and famous, in this case Burt Reynolds and his toupee.

Burt Reynolds is back as the happy go lucky driving ace "The Bandit." The Bandit has fallen on hard times, he's drinking to much and his girlfriend played by Sally Field who at this time were a couple in real life has left him.  He gets a chance to redeem himself with an offer to transport a pregnant elephant to the GOP convention.  Jerry Reed is back as The Bandit's sidekick and Dom DeLuise is the doctor taking care of the pregnant elephant.  You know you're film is in trouble when Dom DeLuise is the most nuanced character in the film.

Back also is The Bandit's nemesis Sheriff Buford T. Justice, in pursuit.   Jackie Gleason is not just playing one character but actually three in total, Gaylord Justice some sort of weird gay character and Reginald Van Justice who sings opera for no apparent reason.  Gleason was clearly allowed to ham it up throughout the film and it's safe to say he's not very funny.  Since this is basically another Burt Reynolds redneck comedy film we have The Statler Brothers, Mel Tillis and Brenda Lee showing up in it.  

 

The film was directed by Hal Needham the stuntman turned director.  Needham is a unique voice in the world of film.  He doesn't know how to direct actors, his staging of scenes is completely pedestrian and he doesn't seem to understand how dialog in films works.  Needham's expertise is in staging car stunts and toward the end of the movie there is a large scale semi-truck versus cop car show down which actually comes to late to save this boring film.  This film is a warm up for Needam's Cannonball Run films.  Needham in his own odd way is actually kind of an auteur he cetrainlhy has a distinct non style.

This was a career nadir for Reynolds and Sally Field or should I say another career nadir, they made five films together.  Field and Reynolds apparently didn't remember the old Hollywood message, don't act with kids or animals as they are complete scene stealers Smokey and the Bandit II has both.

The film was written by veteran comedy writer Jerry Belson but it's completely unfunny.  The cowriter is a man named Brock Yates who was one of the actual organizers of the real Cannonball coast to coat race.

As with many films in the world of cinema, Smokey and the Bandit II will sink out of sight and at best be a distant memory and a tribute to the inability of Hollywood to offer even simple minded entertainments to the movie going masses.

The running time is 101 minutes.

1960 - KIDNAPPED, Disney adventure film is a muddled mess

Filmed in England where the Disney organization had fairly decent luck with their English films, Kidnapped from a book by Robert Lewis Stevenson would seem to fill the bill as at very least as a good action/adventure film.  The problem was as usual that old bugaboo, the script. Kidnapped is about a young man David Balfour who is heir to a British estate.  Balhour is shanghaied by his greedy uncle and ends up as a cabin boy on a ship serving a crooked sea captain played by "M" Bernard Lee no less.  Balfour and a survivor of another shipwreck, Alan Stewart who is played by Peter Finch at the beginning of his career as a leading man I believe,  team up to take over the ship and prevent the captain from killing them for their money.

 Here's where things get very complicated.  David Balfour is a supporter of the King of England.  Alan Stewart is a Jacobite a member of a highland Scottish clan and a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie .  The low land clans of Scotland the Campbells, were supporters of the King and dominated Scotland for some time to come. If you went into this movie thinking you were going to enjoy some sword fights, a ship crashing into some rocks and exciting chases across Scotland, well you get that stuff.  But following this plot is a real challenge.  I've actually explained this story better than the movie does.  There is so much time devoted to politics and infighting among Scottish clans after a while you haven't a clue what's going on.

The production is a handsome one, the photography, sets and location settings are good.  The cast beginning with American James MacArthur at least attempting an English accent and Australian Peter Finch as a Scotsman certain are sincere.  Peter O'Toole in his first film role plays a Scottish bagpipe player who has a contest with Finch on the bagpipes instead of fighting him with swords or something.

 

This could have been a good adventure film but I would challenge anyone outside of Scotland or England to explain what is going on.  Certainly the popcorn munching crowds in Cleveland would be scratching their heads at this story.

The screenplay was by the director Robert Stevenson, the running time is 97 confusing minutes.

1963 - SON OF FLUBBER, sequel to The Absent Minded Professor

As the Walt Disney organization moved into the 1950's and 1960's the cost of production and the box office return on their animated pictures became more problematic.  Animated films like Sleeping Beauty while artistically stunning were so expensive the box office was a lot less than than was expected.  Disney moved more into the area of less expensive live action "family films"  usually with some type of fantasy element or lots of slapstick.

Disney had a lot of success with The Absent Minded Professor, with Fred MacMurry as a chemistry professor who makes a substance in his garage no less that's called "flubber" a bunch of goo that defies gravity.  This sets the film up for lots of slapstick a lot of it admittedly funny and it all climaxed in a zany basketball game with players bouncing all over the gym like Superman.

 

Naturally a sequel was called for and Professor Fred was back this time inventing a gas that makes it rain. In the words of some critic. "If you're going to make a sequel make a sequel, make the exact same movie." And that's what they did here, almost every gag from The Absent Minded Professor is repeated, right up to the wacky football game instead of a wacky basket ball game.  

 

Truth be told a lot of this movie plays kind of slow.  Audiences are now used to a faster pace in their movie viewing and Son of Flubber kind of meanders along for the most part,  There is some funny stuff and Disney did know how to play to their family friendly audience for the most part.  Fred MacMurry was always a decent comic who could occasionally rise to the occasion as an actor working for Billy Wilder.  The film for the most part is just OK.

The screenplay was by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi a couple of Disney veterans, the running time is 100 minutes.

1986 - MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE , a film for teenage boys with too much Testosterone

When Maximum Overdrive was released it was to put it kindly not a hit, audiences stayed away.  Critics crucified it and the director, novelist Stephen King really put it down.  King was apparently drunk and high on cocaine throughout the making of the movie so that might account for it's somewhat amateur film making although I kind of doubt it.

The plot has machines, cars, trucks, ATM's, video games you name it gaining intelligence apparently after a comet flies by the earth.  The machines proceed with killing off any human beings that get in their way.  The film focuses on a group of people trapped in a truck stop surrounded by menacing semi trucks who circle the truck stop like one of those old westerns where the circle of wagon trains are attacked by a group of menacing Native Americans.

 

Stephen King's intention was probably to make a B movie with lots of action, i.e. things blowing up.  At least I believe it was. The film isn't really as bad as the critics say it is, it's just dumb fun.  From the  AC/DC soundtrack to the stash of anti tank weapons the owner of the truck stop has in his basement.  Just in case he needs to blow up possessed semi trucks, well you get the picture.  Mix this with a lot of silly black humor and it's safe to say this film was clearly not to be taken even remotely seriously.

 

The film ends with a title card indicating that a UFO has been controlling all this machine mischief on earth and was finally shot down by a Russian nuclear bomb.  Probably as good an explanation as you are going to get for this movie.  

Written by Stephen King, the running time is 98 minutes.

1976 - MIDWAY, epic retelling of the navel battle via lots of stock footage

When I saw this film in the theater 47 years ago (yikes), I was fairly appalled by it.  The all star cast was for the most part doing it as a favor for producer Walter Mirsch or was filled out with the usual bunch of middle aged Universal stock players.  The film had to work in an interracial love story between a navy pilot and his Japanese girlfriend which seemed completely unnecessary.  Most if not all of the battle scenes were stock footage from various Japanese and American films about the World War II battle in the Pacific.  But most annoyingly Universal studios decided to add their technological marvel Sensurround to the soundtrack so you had to put up with your eardrums almost exploding at times.  You could barely hear the John Williams score towards the end of the film with all the Sensurround noise.

The cast were mostly people Walter Mirsch had worked with in the past, James Coburn, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Cliff 'Robertson, the list goes on.  Mirsch called in a lot of favors to pass this film off as an all star spectacular instead of some overblown TV movie of the week which it basically was.  The production even got Toshiro Mifune to appear yet again as Admiral Yamamoto.

As with all these navel films, there is a lot of pushing little model ships around on big table top maps which after a while gets completely confusing since all the little model ships look alike.  The director was Jack Smight a reliable guy that the studio could keep under their control.  But the real creators of this film were the editors, veterans Robert Swink and Frank Urioste.  They had to paste a movie together from films like Tora Tora Tora, Storm Over the Pacific, Away All Boats, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, The Battle of Britain and John Ford's documentary The Battle of Midway of all things.  It's actually kind of amazing the film is as coherent as it is.

For all my kvetching about this story,  the damn movie actually didn't play that badly.  The Battle of Midway is an important historical event during World War II and a very interesting piece of history.  As much as planning and the role that navel intelligence played in the battle on the United States side,  there is no question that the United States Navy was very lucky that day.

 The film was written by  Donald S. Sanford, the running time is 131 minutes.

2004 - Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, documentary about a movie nut

This documentary looks at the life of Jerry Harvey.  He was an  obsessed film buff who just happened to stumble into what for his was probably the job of a lifetime, programming a cable channel in Los Angeles with foreign and esoteric films that would have never been shown on HBO or Showtime.

The documentary is presented in the standard "talking heads" format as they say.  People associated with Jerry Harvey are interviewed an recall their interactions with him. 

Jerry Harvey was a troubled person to put it mildly.  It's   not a spoiler to say that he killed himself since this is presented at the beginning of the film. 

 

The film has quite a collection of interviewees.  Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne, Jacqueline Bisset, Theresa Russell, Jim Jarmish, Vilmos Zsigmond, F. X Sweeney, and Penelope Spheeris to name a few. It also includes many of Harvey's coworkers and friends.

 

My favorite moment is the filmmaker Alexander Payne complaining to Jerry Harvey that the letterboxing on a Kurosawa film was to wide and cut off a small part of the image, talk about movie nut obsession.

This is a fascinating documentary about film obsession which probably will have limited appeal to the not so obsessed film goer.  Still, highly recommended.

The running time is 122 minutes.

2023 - INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, second of the 2023 big summer action movies

 Objectively, when you sit back and give it a little thought the only really good Indiana Jones film was the first one Raiders of the Lost Arc.  The next four films in the series are really not very good.  Only the film making skill of Steven Spielberg and his production team made those films interesting.  Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was not directed by Spielberg and frankly the movie is a very joyless film.

Back again is Harrison Ford in what has to be his final appearance as Indiana Jones.  This time his partner is the actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge who comes off as a rather abrasive character. Of course there is a little kid involved played by some actor named Ethan Isidore who is also a rather unlikable character.  Naturally the Nazi's are back.  Mads Mikkelsen who specializes in playing nasty European villains is of course cast as a nasty European Nazi villain.

The story has Indy jumping around the world in search of some kind of time travel device.  The action scenes which are unending are really not that exciting.  If you've seen one overlong chase you have kind of seen them all.  This movie wants to an exciting summer ride but so many people are shot and stabbed that the brutality in the films kind of takes the fun out of it. As a side note with all this semi graphic violence what does the Walt Disney Company add as a disclaimer?  A warning that people are smoking in some scenes.

Four writers were involved in this film and probably a bunch who are uncredited.  Although Spielberg didn't direct this film he apparently had a great deal of input into it.  John Williams as usual has to do a lot of heavy lifting with his music to make the film exciting.  The film was expensive, there is a lot of computer generated imagery crap in it and I'm sure Harrison Ford didn't come cheap.      

The film was written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and the director James Mangold,  The running time is an incredible 154 minutes.

2000 - STATE AND MAIN, Mamet's amusing film about the film business

David Mamet had spent enough time in Hollywood writing films.  He knew the score when it came to getting a movie made.  State and Main is his tale about a film company that descends on a small town to shot some kind of pretentious period drama. 

After getting kicked out of their New Hampshire location a film company shooting a picture called "The Old Mill," descends on a small Vermont town as an alternate location.  The trouble is that the town doesn't have an old mill.  It's up to the director and producer to browbeat the screenwriter into changing his screenplay by taking out all references to an old mill.  Meanwhile the actors are beginning to interact with the townspeople and not with the best results.

 

Most of the actors in Mamet's film in a  film are a collection of Hollywood monsters.  The leading man has a thing for seducing underage girls.  The leading lady has decided she will not do a nude scene unless she gets an additional $800,000 dollars.  The director is a manipulative bastard just trying to get the film made so he can make the final payment on his ranch in Montana and the producer is an abusive asshole to anyone who gets in his way. About the only pure person in the film company is unsurprisingly the writer.  Not much of a stretch there since Mamet is more a writer than a director.

 

This is a sly and funny film with the usual Mamet touches with dialog and a couple of clever plot twists.  I kind of suspect that overall Mamet seems to enjoy or at the very least be bemused by these horrible film people.  At the end of State and Main the production company begins to film their story and from the look of the scenes they are shooting the world will not be losing a cinematic masterpiece.

The running time is 105 minutes.

1968 - IN ENEMY COUNTRY, war movie junk from Universal Studios

 Not much fun to write up or even watch for that matter.  In Enemy Country is the kind of mediocre stuff Universal Studios churned out during the 1960's.  The other major studios, Warner Brothers, MGM, 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures for that matter certainly provided plenty of crap to the movie going public.  However Universal had a special place in Hollywood where their roster of contract performers and technicians made film after film for theaters or television.  These films all looked the same and the quality was about the same in any venue, mediocre.

 

 

Be it crummy musicals like Flower Drum Song or Thoroughly Modern Millie,  unfunny comedies  such as Tammy and the Doctor, or Fluffy this was all very undemanding stuff to put it nicely.  Universal was especially adept at lame westerns.  He Rides Tall,  Bullet for a Badman, Shenandoah and Gunpoint pop into mind to name just a few.  Hitchcock did some of his worst work for Universal towards the end of his career.  This was also the studio that pioneered the cheapo made for television films that always seemed to be on television almost like an out of control plague.

In Enemy Country is a very boring war film with most of it shot on the back lot.  The plot has three Allied Intelligence officers going undercover in Germany to steal a new torpedo which is so powerful it will disrupt the invasion of Normandy.  They are assisted by a beautiful woman who is a deep cover spy married to a German officer.  The talk in this film is endless for the most part.  There are a couple of action scenes but it's just too little too late by the time you get to the end of the picture.   The cast is that familiar bunch of actors that constantly turned up in Universal's films, Tony Franciosa, Anjanette Comer, Guy Stockwell,  Michael Constantine, John Marley, Milton Selzer, Tige Andrews and Virginia Christine.  I literally grew up watching these actors.

The film was written by Edward Anhalt and Sy Bartlett, the running time is 107 minutes.