1951 - OPERATION PACIFIC, a typical John Wayne war movie

 It's World War II, we are in the Pacific theater of action and big John Wayne is commandeering a submarine and taking on the Japanese navy when he's not rescuing nuns and orphans off of some Pacific Ocean island.

Wayne's love interest is Patrica Neal one of the few female performers who could stand up to him on screen.  Ward Bond, Wayne's drinking buddy has a big part and movie buff favorite Jack Pennick is the crew chief.  

 This film is pretty standard war movie stuff but Wayne as usual seems to be able to pull this kind of story off.  It is sort of entertaining in a crazy way.

 

 

George Waggner directed and wrote the screenplay.  Waggner also directed the nutty Pentagon anti commie film Red Nightmare.  But make no mistake Duke was the guy in charge on this film.

111 minutes.

1962 - RED NIGHTMARE, defense department film about commies ain't subtle

This one's been kicking around the Internet for a while.  Red Nightmare was a defense department propaganda piece about the dangers of communism.  The film is narrated by Jack Webb in his "Joe Friday" voice.

Apparently in the middle of the Soviet Union circa 1960, a replica of a typical Midwestern town is being used by the Russkies to educate would be spies and saboteurs about the American way of life for their own sinister purposes.  But enough of that fear mongering , lets get to the actual story.

Good old American citizen Jerry Donovan takes his family and his freedom for granted in some nondescript middle American town.  But he is about to learn a lesson.  One night AKA It's a Wonderful Life.  He finds himself living in a country controlled by commies.  Jerry races around small town USA and finds that the ordinary citizens which include his family are acting like a bunch of mind controlled robots.  Arrested by the secret police and put on trial, Jerry makes an impassioned speech about the loss of his rights.  As he is being executed by authorities, he wakes up to find it was all a dream.  Jerry has learned his lesson about liberty. 

Red Nightmare may have been produced by the Defense Department, but it is a Warner Brothers film all the way. The writer, director and actors were all from the studio and apparently the whole thing was actually supervised by Jack Warner himself.

Red Nightmare would be a great double feature with Warner's left wing piece of  propaganda film Mission to Moscow.  It would be a something for everyone kind of movie night for leftie nuts and right wing extremists.

25 minutes

1941 - THE WOLF MAN, classic Universal horror film is pretty lame

The Wolf Man probably has a higher reputation than it deserves.  This is mostly bargain basement Universal horror movie stuff with a better cast than usual which really doesn't help the case.

Pretty standard stuff, Lon Chaney Jr. is bitten by Bela Lugosi playing a gypsy with a werewolf curse who naturally turns into a werewolf himself.  A lot of time is spent with psychological explanations of Chaney's conditions but all the kids in the theater knew he really was under a curse, blah, blah, blah. blah.

Pretty indifferently made, the direction by George Waggner is strictly by the numbers almost TV style direction.  This isn't surprising considering Waggner finished his career directing lots of TV shows.  The cast does what but they can but it's pretty much a going through the motions kind of film.

The film has a nice foggy atmosphere since it was shot on nice foggy sets with the nice fog making machine they always liked to use at Universal for these things.

71 minutes.