Harrison's Reports (1954)

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March 6, 1954 HARRISON’S REPORTS 39 “Casanova’s Big Night” with Bob Hope, Joan Fontaine £uid Basil Rathbone (Paramount, April; time, 86 min.) Although Bob Hope romps through this Technicolor costume comedy in a way that should amuse his avid fob lowers, it is doubtful if those who can either take Hope or leave him will find the picture much more than moderately entertaining. As a cowardly tailor’s apprentice who imper^ sonates Casanova, the great lover and expert swordsman, Hope makes the most of every opportunity to gamer laughs from the numerous whacky situations in the zany story, but there are moments when his slapstick antics are forced and quite feeble. The best of the comedy highlights include Hope dancing a gavotte at a palace ball while dressed as a woman; his duel with a champion swordsman; and his arrival in a gondola in Venice, where adoring women throw roses at him and scream in bobby-sox fashion while he sings a love song. The production values are fairly lavish and the color photography good; — Along with several other tradesmen, including Joan Fontaine, a grocer’s widow, Hope, a tailor’s apprentice in the Italy of 1757, arrives at the villa of Casanova (Vincent Price), who had promised to settle his long overdue aca counts. Having no intention of paying his bills, the great lover talks the unwitting Hope into changing clothes with him and absconds from town. Just then Hope Emerson, a Duchess, arrives at the villa with Robert Hutton, her son, and, mistaking Hope for Casanova, offers to pay him 10,000 ducats to test the love of Audrey Dalton, Hutton’s fiancee. As proof of his success, Hope is to bring back a petticoat embroidered with the Duchess’ family crest, a gift from the Duchess to the young bride-to-be. Hope first objects to the masquerade, but quickly agrees when Joan, for whom he had a great desire, hints that she will be receptive to his advances if he undertakes the assignment. Accompanied by Joan and by Basil Rathbone, Casanova’s valet, who, too, hadn’t been paid in months, Hope arrives in Venice and makes his way into Audrey’s bedroom. Before he can make love to her, he is trapped by the male members of her family but manages to escape. Paul Cavanagh, Audrey’s father, asks Arnold Moss, the tyrannical ruler of Venice, to banish Hope from the kingdom, but the scheming ruler, who had been plotting to seize Genoa, plans to use Hope’s mission as an excuse to start a war. He explains that if Hope is successful and Hutton rejects Audrey as his bride, the incident would be construed as an insult and serve as a reason to provoke a war. From then on Hope becomes involved in a series of whacky court intrigues that end with his being thrown into prison and sentenced to die because of his refusal to follow through on his mission in order to save Audrey’s reputation. The story then winds up with two endings, one showing Hope executed, and the other showing him besting his enemies, with the audience left to decide on which ending they prefer. It was produced by Paul Jones, and directed by Norman Z. McLeod, from a screenplay by Hal Kanter and Edmund Hartmann, based on a story by Aubrey Wisberg. Family. “Dragonfly Squadron” with John Hodiak, Barbara Britton and Bruce Bennett (Allied Artists, March 21; time, 84 min.) From a production point of view, this war melodrama is worthy of a major studio, for the characters are believable, and the dangers to which they are subjected hold the spectator in tense suspense. It is a reenactment of a phase of the Korean War, the action taking place in the beginning, when the Communists first attacked and the Americans were unprepared. There are heroics, of course, where the Americans and their Korean allies are outnumbered by the Reds and sacrifices are made to hold back the enemy. John Hodiak does good work as a Major. He is represented falsely by some of the younger officers as having failed in his duty earlier, but it comes out later on that he had not shown cowardice. The romance is fairly interesting. There is no comedy, for all is grim. The photography is good: — Hodiak, a rigid disciplinarian, is ordered to Kongju, South Korea, to step up training of the Korean Air Force because of rumors of a Red invasion from the North. Assisted by Gerald Mohr, his operations officer, John Hedloe, his adjutant, and Korean captain Benson Fong, Hodiak steps up the training of the Dragonfly Squadron almost beyond endurance. The pressure brings dissatisfaction among the student pilots, particularly the Americans. A year previously, Hodiak and Barbara Britton, wife of Bruce Bennett, an army surgeon, had a romance, which was broken off when Barbara received word that her husband had not been killed in action as she had been informed. Both Barbara and Hodiak become emotionally disturbed when they meet in Kongju, where she was stationed with her husband. Hodiak continues his relentless training program. The Korean Reds attack in the North and Hodiak orders all American civilians and part of the officer corps to evacuate. Hodiak himself remains behind with a skeleton force to protect the airfield as best he can. They are overrun by Russian tanks and Bennett is killed in the action. Hodiak orders the remnants of his command to head for Chungtu in the South. En route many of the men are killed and he himself is wounded. He finally reaches a Red Cross station where Barbara is on duty. Chungtu is about to be wiped out by the Russian tanks when suddently, from out of the clouds, American planes sweep down and blow the tanks to bits. John Champion produced it, and Lesley Selander directed it, from a screenplay by Mr. Champion. Harmless for the family. “Phantom of the Rue Morgue” with Karl Malden, Claude Dauphin and Patricia Medina (Warner Bros., no rel. date set; time, 80 min.) It is manifest that Warner Bros., in producing this 3-D picture, which is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue,’’ hoped to duplicate the success of “House of Wax." To a certain extent they have succeeded, for there is more horror in this picture than there was in the “House of Wax." In the story, an ape is conditioned to commit murders. The ape’s face looks natural and his crimes are horror inspiring. The action is fast and furious toward the end, where Karl Malden, who had trained the ape to commit the murders, tries to make the ape kill Patricia Medina. His efforts are in vain, however, for the ape had conceived a liking for her and tries to protect her. As can be anticipated, the ape turns on Malden and he gets his just desserts. There is naturally no comedy relief. The 3-D photography is sharp, and the interest of the spectator, that is, the spectator who is not squeamish about horror action, is held tight to the end: — At the turn of the century, several beautiful French girls are murdered in gaslit Paris. The crimes are a matter of immediate concern to Police Inspector Claude Dauphin, whose job is to discover the criminal; to Karl Malden, head of the Paris zoo, whose study of conditioned reflexes in animals indicate a vicarious sadism; to Steve Forrest, a young psychologist, who is suspected by Dauphin, on circumstantial evidence; and to Patricia Medina, Forrest’s fiancee and laboratory assistant, who sees her innocent boyfriend placed in the shadow of the gullotine by the machinations of Malden, who craves her. Several murders take place but in each case Dauphin is stumped in his efforts to find the killer. Meanwhile he meets up with Malden, who explains his experiments in conditioned reflexes by which he is able to make a killer out of even a mouse. In the events that follow, circumstantial evidence involves Forrest in the killing of two other girls. He is arrested and jailed by Dauphin, while the suave Malden unctuously promises to look after Patricia. Forrest argues that all theories point to the murderer being an animal, perhaps an ape, but Dauphin remains unimpressed. Patricia comes to see Malden at the zoo and he makes a play for her, offering her the room formerly occupied by his wife, a supposed suicide, whom he had actually driven mad. When Patricia spurns his advances, Malden orders a giant ape, trained by him to commit murders, to kill her. But the ape, having taken a liking to Patricia, kills Anthony Caruso, Malden's assistant, after which he breaks into a room where Patricia is imprisoned and takes off over the roof-tops with the girl in his arms. A mad chase ensues, with the maniacal Malden opening the animal cages in the zoo to compound the chaos. It all ends with Malden killed by the tiger while a gendarme shoots down the ape and rescues Patricia. It was produced by Henry Blanke, and directed by Roy Del Ruth, from a screenplay by Harold Medford and James R. Webb. Strictly adult fare.