Harrison's Reports (1951)

66 HARRISON’S REPORTS April 28, 1951 “Mask of the Dragon” with Richard Travis and Sheila Ryan ( Lippert , March 17; time, 54 win.) An indifferent melodrama, suitable for the lower half of a double bill in case there is nothing else in sight. It is manifest that what was concealed in the statuette was, not uranium, but opium, but because the Code administration discourages the use of opium smuggling in pictures it was changed to uranium. But this change weakened the story. The plot itself is not bad, but poor direction failed to bring out its values. The acting is nothing to brag about: — Richard Emory, an American Lieutenant in Korea, agrees to deliver to a curio shop in Los Angeles a Jade Dragon. Arriving in Los Angeles, Emory goes to the private detective agency he operates with Richard Travis, his partner. There he is attacked by ruffians and murdered. They ransack his bag in search of the Jade Dragon but do not find it because he had left it in a curio shop in Honolulu. Travis and Sheila Ryan, an assistant in the police crime laboratory, start to search for the murderer. A clue in Emory's luggage leads them to a curio shop in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, where Travis has a talk with the proprietor. Just as he leaves, Travis is attacked by two thugs and taken blindfolded to a small hotel room, where they attempt to extort from him information about the Jade Dragon. He asserts, however, that he knows nothing about it, and later, when the thugs go to ransack his office, he is freed mysteriously by a woman. She turns out to be Dee Tatum, a television singer who had been a friend of Emory’s. She promises to help search for the killer only to be murdered herself. Travis then suspects that the two murders have the same motive. When Dan receives a package from the Honolulu curio shop and finds in it the Jade Dragon, he takes it to the Los Angeles curio shop for a showdown with the proprietor. Meanwhile Sheila learns from police lieutenant Michael Whalen that the proprietor had a long criminal record. Organizing a detail, Whalen rushes to the curio shop and arrives in time to save the life of Travis, who was about to be murdered by the gang. It then comes to light that Emory had been killed because he had discovered that the Dragon was filled with uranium, which was received and distributed by the curio shop for a big price. Sigmund Neufeld produced it, and Samuel Newfield directed it, from a screen play by Orville Hampton. An adult picture. “The Prowler” with Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes ( United Artists, May 25; time, 92 min.) A strictly adult melodrama. The direction and acting are skillful, but as entertainment it is a decidedly unpleasant picture, one that goes the limit in its frank depiction of an illicit affair between a married woman and a policeman, an unscrupulous fellow who murders his lover’s husband and makes it appear like an accident, his eye being on her inheritance. An idea of the picture’s daring is the frank discussion between the lovers on their wedding night (they marry after her husband’s death), at which time she tells him that she has been pregnant for four months. There is no question that the policeman is the father since pains had been taken to establish that the husband was incapable of fathering a child. The picture is somewhat demoralizing in that it tries to win sympathy for the heroine by depicting her as a victim of her lover’s machinations. Her character, however, is so weak that one feels little or no sympathy for her. The closing scenes, where the hero is killed after a wild mountain chase, are highly melodramatic: — Called by Evelyn Keyes to investigate a prowler around her home, Van Heflin, a policeman, finds her attractive. He learns that she is married to an all-night disc-jockey, a man much older than herself. He cultivates her friendship cleverly and, before long, she falls in love with him and starts an illicit affair. Wanting her for himself, Heflin, through a vicious scheme, kills the husband by “mistaking” him for a prowler. He is cleared at the coroner’s inquest when Evelyn testifies falsely, that she had never met him before lest an admission of their relationship compromise them both. But she suspects that he had murdered her husband and refuses to have anything to do with him. Having learned that Evelyn will inherit a sizeable forture, Heflin resigns from the force and schemes his way back into her heart by convincing her that the killing was really an accident. She marries him, and on their wedding night she informs him that she was going to have a baby within five months. Realizing that the birth of a child so soon would shatter their testimony at the inquest, Heflin decides to take Evelyn to a ghost desert town to have her baby without witnesses. There, Evelyn becomes ill, and Heflin, frightened, hurries to a town nearby for a doctor. While waiting for the baby to be born, Evelyn learns that Heflin planned to kill the doctor and discovers that he had killed her husband. The doctor, warned by her, drives off hurriedly after the baby is born and returns with the police, who shoot down Heflin when he attemps to make a getaway. It was produced by S. P. Eagle and directed by Joseph Losey from a screen play by Hugo Butler, based on a story by Robert Thoeren and Hans Wilhelm. Definitely not for children. “Sante Fe” with Randolph Scott and Janis Carter (Columbia, April; time, 89 min.) The devotees of western melodramas should find “Santa Fe" to their taste. Photographed in Technicolor, the story, though not novel, is well constructed and fast -moving, and it has more than a fair share of gunfights, brawls and chases, which provide the thrills and excitement one expects to find in a picture of this type. An unpleasant feature of the story, however, is that it pits brother against brother. The characterizations are more or less stereotyped, but the players do a good job. Like most big-scale westerns on the market today, this one, too, is set in the post-Civil War days. A definite asset is the color photography, which enhances the magnificence and sweep of the great outdoors: — With his family plantation taken over by Yankee carpetbaggers, Randolph Scott faces the future with the intention of building a new life for himself, but the bitterness of defeat still rankles deeply in the hearts of John Archer, Peter Thompson and Jerome Courtland, his younger brothers. The four meet trouble in a Missouri town when two drunken ex-Union soldiers pick a fight with them and Thompson shoots one in self-defense. Fleeing the scene, the four leap aboard a passing train transporting workers for the building of the Santa Fe railroad. Warner Anderson, the chief construction engineer, recognizes Scott as a former Confederate officer and signs him on as his assistant. The other brothers refuse to work for a Yankee and join up with Roy Roberts, a gambler and outlaw. In the events that follow, Scott finds the job of building the Santa Fe beset with difficulties, mainly because the gamblers, headed by Roberts and his brothers, followed the construction crew to sell liquor and cheat the workers at cards. Moreover, several holdups of the payroll take place. Meanwhile Scott falls in love with Janis Carter, a widow, who had taken over her husband’s job as paymaster. Scott's efforts to make his brothers give up their lawless ways are unavailing, and during one holdup Thompson is killed. Learning that Sanders and his two other brothers planned to rob the Santa Fe payroll, Scott rushes to Dodge City to stop them but arrives too late. He joins a Marshal’s posse and traps the bandits in a small railroad station. Scott calls to his brothers to surrender, and Roberts tries to shoot him. The brothers, to save Scott, turn on Roberts, but both die in the exchange of shots. Roberts and another henchman hop aboard a passing freight train to make a getaway. Scott, too, jumps on the train and, after a furious hand-to-hand gun battle, kills both Roberts and his aide. It was produced by Harry Joe Brown and directed by Irving Pichel from a screen play by Kenneth Garnet, based upon a novel by James Marshall and a story by Louis Stevens. Suitable for the family.