Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin (1948)

"CANON CITY' THRILLING. FACTUAL REPORT OF PRISON BREAK Rates • • • generally, if exploited liaglc I, ion i<2 Minutes Scott Brady. Jeff Corey. Whit Bissell, Stanley Clement.';. Charles Russell, DeFore.it Kelley, Ralph Byrd, Mabel Paine, Warden Roy Best, Alfred Cinder, Richard Bice, Henry Brawlon, James Maf/ill. Ray Bennett, Robert Kellard, Raymond Bond, John Doucette. Ere Marsh. Directed by Crane Wilbur. "Canon City" promises to be a showman's bonanza and, powered by R-Iv's explosive promotion, should stack up an impressive pile of niazuma. Tiie picture itself, though short of terrific, is a wonderful example of honest reporting with a maximum of dramatic intensity. It retells the story of the sensational break at the Colorado State Penitentiary last December, utilizing the original locale and sticking to the actual events with great fidelity. And the amazing thing is tiiat a film of this quality was "in the can" less than six months after the actual event. Credit is due producer Bryan Foy for this efficient accomplisliment and to Crane Wilbur for writing a taut, convincing script and directing it with com|)elling realism. Without introducing any obvious hokum or lurid bru t'dity, it is a spine-tingling recreation of actuality that raises the "dccumentary" technique in feature films to an unsurpassed level. It's ;i!l there, the chilling prison environment and tile vicious, desperate, single-minded convicts. Tiie real-life warden himself, Mr. Roy Best, is much in evidence throughout the proceedings. Slicrbondy, one of the twelve renegades, is portrayed by Scott Brady, a pnjmising newcomer, who seems to have the same flair for rugged roles as his brother, Lawrence Tierney. Jeff Corey is realistic as the ring-leader and there is wonderful bit supplied by Mabel Paige as a a white-haired lady who slugs him with a hammer. Photographer John Alton, of "TMen" and "Raw Deal" fame, makes striking use ot dramatic lighting. E:XPL0ITATI0N : Cut loose all the superlatives for this "Thunderbolt of Unleased Fury." There are innumerable angles for street baIl\hoo with the prison motif. But foremost, tills front-page sensation happened just last December, and here it is NOW on the screen in powerful, dramatic exactitude. The factual story of how the twelve convicts escaped and how they were captured, with a slight re-emphasis to feature Scott Brady. He a young murderer, who stubbornly refuses to join in the break planned by Jeff Corey. Hut he gets involved when they plant their liaiid-made guns in the photo dark-room where he works. Their plans are ingenious, including smuggled weapons and split-second timing, culminating during a snow-storm when twelve cons, six of them from solitary, overpower four guards and escape. They split up in separate groups, some of them in guard uniforms. Three of them with Corey hide out in the ranch house of an elderly couple and are overpowered after Corey is slugged by the housewife. Stanley Clements and his partner head for his girl friend's apartment where they are captured, Oi.e playing a lone hand is shot while crossing a 1,000 ft. suspension bridge. Brady and two others are trapped by the posse after breaking iiito a home. Brady escapes the fusilade and after hiding out for two days, he staggers, frozen and half-starved, into another household. Tiiey give him food and after their child is stricken with appendicitis, he permits the another to go for a doctor. He tries to continue his escape, but is caiitured at a road block. Final score — two killed, four wounded, all returned. Abrams. -ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS' ZESTFUL. HAPPY TECHNICOLOR MUSICAL Rates ® • • generally Warner Bros. 99 Minutes Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don Defore, Doris Day, Oscar Iterant, S. Z. Sakall, Fortunio Bonanova, Eric Blore, Franklin Pangborn, Leslie Brooks, William Bakewell, Johnny Berkcs, Kenneth Britton, and Avon Long, Sir Lancelot, The Samba Kings. The Page Cavanaugh Trio. Directed by Michael Curtic. Hot weather entertainment? All-weather entertainment ! "Romance on the High Seas" is a gay, bouncy, gorgeously Technicolored musical that will give paying audiences more than their money's worth in laughs, tunes, romance and all-around good fun. And largely responsible in all these factors is a new screen personality, Doris Day, formerly vocalist with Les Brown's band, who takes to her new medium like a Kentuckian to bourbon. This bonded blonde reaches stardom in one joyous swoop, displaying a happy combination of good looks, a way with a wisecrack and vocal ability that will make the fans sit up and take notice. Four of the six fine Jule StyneSammy Cahn tunes get a torrid treatment via Miss Day's lovely larynx as she dominates the frolicsome proceedings. Jack Carson is an excellent foil for her peppery personality, but he, as well as the others, takes a back seat whenever she is on the screen, which, fortunately, is most of the time. While Director Michael Curtiz has kept the accent decidedly cn comedy and music, he and producer Alex Gottlieb embodied these in a lavish production that enhances the film immensely. The Technicolor is particularly good, the settings magnificent, the girls abundant and beautiful, and even the story, nonsensical as it is, 'makes a suitable framework for the important ingredients. Also along for laughs on the lush cruise that hits Havana, Trinidad and Rio, are Janis Paige. Don Defore, Oscar Levant and S. Z. Sakall, and in the musical department, Avon Long (hit of "Porgy and Bess"), calypso singer Sir Lancelot, the Samba Kings and the Page Cavanaugh Trio supply sparkling specialties. Worthy of special mention is a hilarious scene in which vaudeville comic Johnny Berkes snitches from Carson and Levant, while they get progressively stinko on the empty glasses. '"Romance on the High Seas" should be a strong grosser everywhere and the theatreman who gives it some extra plugging can look for smash returns. EXPLOITATION': For vacation-minded audiences, here is that dream cruise to tropical wonderlands they've always wanted. Play up the sparkling tunes, the samba and calypso ; the superb Technicolor, the bevy of beautiful gals, the high comedy. And, by all means, tell your audiences a wonderful new star is born in Doris Day. Doris Day, a night-club torch singer with Oscar Levant's band, is persuaded, without much difficulty, to take an all-expenses paid cruise to the tropics by the rich — and jealous — Janis Paige, who intends to stay at home, suspecting husband Don Defore of chasing other women, while the singer poses as Janis. Defore, also suspicious, hires "private eye" Jack Carson tc keep tab on his wife aboard ship. In the identity tangle, Carson and Day fall in love. In Rio, the complications reach a climax when Day is hired as the new Society singing sen sation and the four principals meet. But it's all straightened out. after some broad highjinks in Day's suite, in a splurge of color and song. Barn. 'THE MATING OF MILLIE' FAR-FETCHED FLUFFY LITTLE FARCE Rates • • + as dualler, n. g. for action houses Columbia 87 minutes Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, Ron Randell, Willard Parker, Jimmy Hunt, Mabel Paige, Virginia Brissac, Patsy Creighton, Tom Stevenson. Directed by Henry Levin. Aside from making some outrageous demands on the audience's credibility, "The Mating of Millie" is a fairly amusing bit of fluff, satisfactory as a neighborhood dualler, n.g. for action houses. Its efforts to marry off Evelyn Keyes, a luscious morsel whose strenuous efforts to find a husband — any husband — so that she can adopt a newly orphaned youngster, makes for a fair quota of obvious comedy even though it never remotely approaches logic. Thus the few attempts to turn •serious, spwttily injected into the film, are em barrassing, at best. As the hardy bachelor who directs Millie's marital campaign, and who everyone knows is going to end up at the altar with his client, Glenn Ford contributes a performance that can hardly be ranked with the tough guv who tamed "Gilda", but is good for a few light moments. His name, too, adds marquee value, but his deadly attraction for the opposite sex, emphasized in the film by long, low whistles whenever he passes through a mob of youn-.^ ladies, somehow escapes this reviewer's male viewpoint. Two other hunks of man, Ron Randell and Willard Parker, figure in Millie's machinations and make suitable props. Seven-year-old Jimmy Hunt is made to try hard to be both lovable and impish. He succeeds in being impish. Henry Levin's direction is purely routine. A department store executive, Evelyn Keyes, whose best years have been devoted to her career to the utter exclusion of romance, finds herself faced with the problem of finding a husband when she attempts to adopt Jimmy Hunt, a newly-orphaned youngster. Convinced of the independent character of Glenn Ford, a bus-driver who walks out of his crowded vehicle when the passengers refuse to "move to the rear", Keyes hires him as a floor-walker and amateurishly tries to ensnare him into marriage. He refuses to doff his bachelor's mantle, but oft'ers to help her find a husband. In the ensuing developments, he changes her from a business woman to a lovely young thing with a "bedroom voice", encourages her mating with Ron Randell. substantial head of a boys' home, discourages the w-olfish VV'illard Parker, and ends up himself with Keyes at the altar. Bam. 10 FILM BULLETIN