"Double Indemnity" (1944)

"Double Indemnity" (1944), directed by Billy Wilder, 5 stars

“They’ve committed a murder.  It’s not like taking a trolley-ride together where they can get off at different stops.  They’re stuck with each other, and they’ve got to ride all the way to the end of the line, and it’s a one-way trip, and the last stop is the cemetery” – Barton Keyes, Claims Manager

"Double Indemnity" is one of the best examples of 1940s film noir and stands at 29 in the American Film Institute's 10th anniversary listing of the top 100 American films of all time.  Fred MacMurray plays Walter Neff, a top-of-his-game insurance salesman and Barbara Stanwyck plays Phyllis Dietrichson, the slinky wife of a client whose auto policy has come due.  It's lust at first sight, and the two fairly quickly concoct a scheme for killing the husband and cleaning up on his accident insurance policy.  If he dies on a train, an actuarial improbability, the policy pays double (hence the title), so that's the plan.  The story is loosely based on a real murder committed by Ruth Snyder and Henry Judd Gray in 1927.

MacMurray, best remembered for his later forays into Disney comedies (e.g., "The Shaggy Dog" and "The Absent-Minded Professor") and for the iconic and extremely long-running sitcom, "My Three Sons," was equally adept over a decade earlier adopting the necessary hard-boiled persona he exudes in this film.  As the murder plot unravels, so does he, but to outward appearances, he remains cool, calm, and collected.

The plot unfolds as a series of first-person narratives spoken into a Dictaphone in the office of Neff's colleague, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson in, perhaps, his very best role).  Neff appears to have been shot in the shoulder, and each time an episode ends and cross-fades back to him, the spot of blood on his coat grows larger.  The narration is filled with tough-guy colloquialisms and sparks fly in the banter between Neff and Phyllis.  And well they should.  The screenplay was written by Raymond Chandler based on a 1936 novel by James M. Cain.  This duo along with Dashiell Hammett were the masters of the genre in literary form and are variously responsible for other cinematic and literary pulp classics such as "The Maltese Falcon," "Out of the Past," "The Postman Only Rings Twice," "Murder My Sweet," and "The Big Sleep."  And then there's relative newcomer to directing, Billy Wilder, whose "Sunset Boulevard" a few years later takes first-person narrative to a whole new level, putting words into the mouth not of a man who is dying, but one who is dead before the film begins.  "Double Indemnity" is an early example of what the French would later dub "film noir."  Its fatalism prefigures the post-World War II cycle that would become pervasive until the McCarthy witch hunters weighed in and laid waste much of the pool of talent responsible for identifying and illuminating the darker corners of American life.

"The Unholy Three" (1925)

"The Unholy Three" (1925), directed by Tod Browning, 3 stars

“The Unholy Three” was the third of ten silent films Lon Chaney made with director Tod Browning (known also for sound films such as “Dracula” and “Freaks”).  The film also stars Victor McLaglen as the sideshow strongman, Hercules, and Harry Earles as Tweedledee, a politically incorrect little person billed as “Twenty inches! Twenty years! Twenty pounds! The Twentieth Century Curiosity!”  With Chaney as Echo, the ventriloquist, the men partner to become the pseudonymous unholy three, opting into an ostensibly easy life of crime.  In short order, however, we learn that this is no group of criminal masterminds. But I’m getting a little ahead of their story.

The film begins at a pretty sleazy indoor carnival where performers, including the three principals, a tattooed lady, a sword swallower, and Siamese twins, are flaunting their unique qualities.  Among the onlookers is Mae Busch as the not so sweet Rosie O’Grady.  She busily picks various onlookers' pockets, much to the delight of Echo, who watches her while performing his act.  He’s clearly smitten, but as this is a Lon Chaney film, there’s no chance of their relationship ending well.  In fact, things go in a southerly direction rather quickly.  Tweedledee kicks a young boy in the face for making fun of his height, and the unholy ones together with Rosie escape just as the cops come to call.

After their abrupt departure from the carnival, they pool their resources and open a store that sells birds.  The shop owner is Grandma O'Grady, who is really Echo in drag.  Tweedledee also gets into the act by dressing himself in swaddling clothes and impersonating a toddler (see photo below).  Grandma hires Hector (Matt Moore) as the store's sales clerk, and Rosie immediately takes a shine to him, much to Echo's distress.  But before things deteriorate, Grandma hobbles around the store selling talking parrots to rich patrons by projecting her voice, thus creating the illusion that the birds are speaking to the customers.  Their words appear on the screen in animated cartoon bubbles, a nice touch.  Because the homes where the parrots wind up are regularly robbed soon after they arrive, the cops come once again to call.

In a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock, a detective interviews the unholy three.  Tweedledee has stashed stolen jewelry in a toy elephant which the detective inadvertently kicks.  He then picks up the toy, begins playing with it, and in the process, hears something rattle from within.  The camera cuts between the detective's examination of the object and the fearful faces of the unholy trio, each increasingly worried that the man will stumble upon the hidden treasure.

He doesn't, so the group decides to implicate Hector in the robbery and then flee the scene of the crime, accompanied by a fifth companion: a giant chimpanzee.  As Hector goes on trial for theft, the fugitives hole up in a mountain hideaway, getting increasingly jittery, greedy, and treacherous in their isolation.  In a final fit of pique, Tweedledee lets loose the chimp and, sorry to say, things go very badly.

At almost 86 minutes, “The Unholy Three” seems a bit overlong.  The attraction that Rosie develops for Hector doesn’t really ring true—at least not in movie terms.  Matt Moore plays Hector as a four-eyed wimp, and Mae Busch’s Rosie is way too sassy and street-wise to find much use for a guy like that.  But somebody other than Chaney needs to get the girl, and Hector, assuming he's found not guilty, is the only guy around.

The film, which cost just over $100k to make, grossed over seven times that amount.  Its financial success, combined with the prospect of adding not only multiple faces but multiple voices to his repertoire, induced Chaney to remake "The Unholy Three" five years later as his first and only sound film.

Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus (2012), directed by Ridley Scott, 3 stars

I tried my best not read anything about “Prometheus” before seeing it because I was so looking forward to being blown away by the return of Ridley Scott to the Alien franchise.  I still remember sitting in the front row on the day that “Alien” opened at the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC and being thrilled and chilled as the crew desperately tried to combat a terrifying, seemingly indestructible creature that neither they nor the audience had ever seen the likes of before.  I knew nothing at all about “Alien” going into that film other than its catchphrase: “In space, no one can hear you scream.  About “Prometheus,” I knew nothing other than Noomi Rapace (“Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) and Charlize Theron (“Monster”) were in it and that Michael Fassbender (“Shame”) played a robot.  Although I did a pretty good job clearing my mind of any preconceptions, my gut reaction to “Prometheus” both as I watched it and almost immediately afterward was a feeling of disappointment.  I haven’t given up on the Alien franchise by a longshot, but I think it needs more of an infusion of creative energy than this film gave it to keep the series going.

It begins with a humanoid drinking a putrid-looking liquid which almost immediately dissolves him down to his DNA.  His molecular structure washes into the river below where it mingles with the fast flowing waters.  Cut to a cave where an ancient painting discovered somewhere in the Isle of Skye includes a familiar pattern of stars.  Although invisible to the naked eye, apparently, this configuration has been seen in preserved drawings from Egyptian, Mayan, Babylonian, and other ancient cultures (but not from the recently discovered imprints from Spain, which some are theorizing to be Neanderthal in origin—hold that thought).  How could ancient humans know about this?  The answer to that and other fundamental questions of species origin are first and foremost on the minds of scientists and soul mates Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green).  So persuasive are they in their arguments that these are clues to the dawn of humanity that an aged tycoon, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce in less than becoming or convincing makeup), finances a trip to the stars.  Or so we are led to believe.

As should come as no surprise, upon arriving at their destination, the crew discovers that the world they have landed on is fraught with danger, and their reactions in general are, unfortunately, less than cool, calm and collected.  Two easily freaked-out scientists head back to the mother ship only to get lost and then wind up trying to befriend a cute little slithering creature that, true to form, welcomes them with open mouth.  David the android concocts his own mischief and the results are about as bad a breakup as possible between doctors Shaw and Holloway.  Ships and chests explode violently and no one—including me—is any more the wiser by the end of it all.  Check out this video after watching the film to hear from some equally confused, kindred spirits.

I wanted something smarter.  Sure, the characters in the original “Alien” were pretty much decimated, but they really were trying to do the right (and smart) thing given the circumstances.  In “Prometheus,” it’s not really clear what motivates anyone.  You'd think that on a mission as critical and as well-financed as this one, the crew would not start coming apart so quickly.  Also, I found I really liked the space jockeys (now referred to as “engineers”) much better dead than alive.  They were much creepier that way.  The 3D and Microsoft-inspired computer effects were nicely-done, and petite Noomi Rapace does a great job following in the gigantic footsteps of Sigourney Weaver’s mythic alien-buster Ripley.

There are many (many) sites out there that attempt to explicate far better than I the critical elements of the film.  This FAQ is a good place to start.  I'm guessing that most fans of the original series (or some subset thereof) will like but not love this film.  I suspect, too, that viewers who haven't seen any of the earlier films won't miss much if they see this first, but I certainly hope that, if nothing else, "Prometheus" inspires this group to see "Alien," which without question remains one of my favorite horror films.  Watching it again even now can make me (with apologies to Paul Simon) still queasy after all these years.