Category: Golden Age Article

DVD Review, Golden Age Article

DVD Review: The Hildegard Withers Mystery Movie Collection

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This DVD set brings viewers all six of the Hildegard Withers mystery movies that were released in the 1930s. The series began in 1932 with Edna May Oliver in the role of Hildegard Withers and James Gleason as Inspector Oscar Piper.  Oliver was succeeded in the lead role by Helen Broderick and then Zasu Pitts with Gleason continuing the whole run.

Each film was very much of its era. The acting from the supporting cast in the early films showed the struggle of many actors to adjust to the fact that talking films were different, so there’s a lot of over-acting. There’s also quite a bit of melodrama in the plots (although the ending to the first film The Penguin Pool Murders cut against that grain.) Inspector Piper is, in many ways, typical of movie police inspectors of the era. He always accused the right person of committing the crime because he always accused everyone of committing the crime.

The strength came down to the lead actress. Edna May Oliver elevated these films above the typical mysteries that dominated this era. Her take on Hildegard Withers was perfect. She was a proper middle-aged school teacher who was used to being listened to and commanded respect as she would speak to any man as if she were their stern school teacher rather than just a school teacher. She had both a sharp tongue and a sharp mind. Oliver’s delivery is a joy to hear.

At the same time, she had a streak of romanticism about her, as well as a caring nature. Oliver played great off Gleason as the two worked together to solve the case and were also gently competitive and even romantic.

Oliver was replaced by Helen Broderick whose one outing in, “Murder on the Bridal Path,” was fairly unremarkable. Zasu Pitts took over the role and the production took an interesting turn. Pitts was known for playing somewhat ditzy comedic roles and was also several years younger, so her Hildegard Withers is a much more flighty character than how Oliver played her, and Inspector Piper is actually the key figure in solving the case in Pitts’ first outing as Withers in, “The Plot Thickens.”

While I didn’t care much for Pitts’ first turn as Withers, her second (and last), “Forty Naughty Girls,” is actually pretty good. It’s about a murder at a Broadway play. Piper begins the investigation while the play is still going on. Withers smells perfume at the scene of the murder and goes and smells every woman on the stage in search of one that could provide a clue. The movie clocks in at just over an hour and the entire film is set in that one setting over the course of about an hour, so the movie goes along at an almost real time pace. While Pitts plays Withers a bit smarter, it’s still not at the level set by Oliver. It feels like Pitts is playing Pamela North from the Mr. and Mrs. North TV series.

Overall, the three Oliver films are very good and the others are okay for the most part. The more you enjoy films from the early to mid-1930s, the more you’ll get out of this set. My only complaint is that they didn’t get the rights to the Eve Arden Hildegard Withers telefilm for this set and include it in the release.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

 

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Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: Avengers: The Lost Episodes, Volume 6

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Big Finish released the penultimate volume in is Avengers: The Lost Episodes range, recreating the mostly lost first season of the Avengers featuring David Keel (Anthony Howell) and John Steed (Julian Wadham). This release and Volume 7 (which will be released in January) contain three episodes rather than four as did the first five sets. Here’s a look at the three stories included:

The Frighteners: This is an adaptation of one of the few episodes to be preserved from the Avengers’ lost season. While I’ve never seen the TV version, Big Finish’s take on the story is a very good one.

The titular Frighteners, a group of thugs who blackmail “patients” (i.e. victims) with severe beatings if they don’t perform a desired action that their clients want are genuinely creepy and menacing with their euphemistic language.

At the same time, this is a fairly complicated problem for Keel and Steed compared to the others they’ve faced because they not only have to deal with the Frighteners (Counter Measures), they also have to deal with one of their victims, who has his own agenda for wanting to marry a wealthy man’s daughter. Keel really shows how much he’s grown since he first appeared, easily taking the lead both physically and in planning.

With a guest appearance by Hugh Ross, this is an extremely enjoyable episode and one of the best stories released so far.

Death on the Slipway: This story is a somewhat standard spy tale, that finds Steed investigating a mysterious death at a shipyard with the British Navy’s latest submarine is being built. The sound design is solid on this as it really conveys the feeling of a 1960s shipyard. Death on the Slip has some good moments with Steed in the spotlight as Dr. Keel is relegated to a couple comedic scenes back at the surgery. It’s a decent enough story of a break-in gone wrong and the spy is menacing, but the production’s not a stand out by any means.

Tunnel of Fear: Steed goes undercover at a fun fair to investigate strange goings on after an exonerated prisoner who had pretended escape and worked at the carnival, is beaten so badly he didn’t remember what happened. This is another good story with a bit more humor thrown in. Steed has some of the best lines of the entire Lost Episodes series in this story and there’s some superb fight scenes. The villains are pretty typical, but the unusual locale makes this a fun story.

Overall, this is a solid box set that lives up to the high standards Big Finish has set for the series.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Audiobook Review: Terror Town

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Terror Town finds a small town New England librarian wondering what happened to a bright farm boy who frequented the library. The teenager turns up dead under mysterious circumstances and he’s the only the first to die as the town is gripped by panic as the body count rises.

Originally released in 1956 and re-released as a standalone Novella, Terror Town is a very good time capsule. It captures the feeling and mood of its era. The idea of a peaceful town suddenly beset by homicides with no great detective around to sort things out, but rather local police doing the best they can, is different for the era.

Yet, at the end of the day, the story only goes so deep. The librarian’s unrequited love for the town deputy who can’t seem to get it in his head that the girl next door has grown into a woman to be taken seriously takes up too much energy and isn’t really resolved. The solution is decent, but a little bit predictable.

It’s an okay audiobook, but not the best example of Ellery Queen’s work.

Rating: 3.0 out of 5.0

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Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: The Hobbit (NPR)

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The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien was adapted for radio in the 1970s by Mind’s Eye Theater in Virginia. It tells the classic tale of Bilbo Baggins’ journey through Middle Earth to a lost Dwarf Kingdom.

The story is one of the classics of the Fantasy genre and the adaptation deserves credit for its faithfulness to the story. It captures all of the most important and interesting moments of the novel. Ray Reinhhart (who plays Bilbo) does a good job portraying Bilbo’s transformation in the course of the story from respectable Shire Hobbit homeowner to the heroic burglar he becomes in the course of his adventures. While I think the performance is mostly serviceable and enjoyable, I think the production deserves some praise for the way it handled the scene where Bilbo met Golem. This was before the motion pictures so defined the character of Golem and how he talked. I found this audio adaptation to be different, but still genuinely chilling.

Where the story does lose points is with some of the acting. The cast are essentially unknowns and some of the voices don’t quite fit the parts. As was the case on several radio programs in between the Golden Age of Radio and the Twenty-first Century, the sound design was very minimalist. That’s not a huge problem when Bilbo and friends are walking down the road, but when you’re dealing with something like the Battle of the Five Armies, the Sound Producers couldn’t do it Justice, so you’d better have a really good imagination.

Still, the strength of J.R.R. Tolkien’s story and this adaptation’s faithfulness to it make it a worthwhile listen, if not a perfect one.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: The Campus Murders

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Released in 1969, the Campus Murders by Ellery Queen introduced Micah McCall. The premise is an intriguing one. McCall is a Special Assistant to the Governor of an unnamed state who is called in to act as a troubleshooter.

In this case, he’s looking into the disappearance of the daughter of one of the Governor’s intra-party political rivals on a small campus, troubled by unrest. His status is a nice feature. He’s not a policeman, but his standing as “the Governor’s Man,” gets grudging cooperation from the police.

McCall finds himself not particularly trusted by the police and being over thirty, he is not welcomed and not fully trusted by most of the radical college students attending the college.

On the positive side, the mystery isn’t bad, and if you want a taste of the 1960s and how the problems on campus were viewed, this book certainly gives a perspective and captures the spirit of the time. There’s nothing more 1960s in the book than Nature’s Children, a group of college students who demonstrate while wearing grotesque masks in the buff and haze McCall.

On the negative side, the book drags at times, particularly before the first murder in the book. It is so focused on the campus issues and getting all these various student perspectives that it really has troubling remembering that it’s a mystery. And when it comes to the big issues of the day, it offers a simple pat solution that minimizes the complexity of the issues it’s addressing. McCall’s characterization doesn’t age well, particularly when it comes to women, but even by the standards of the time, it’s hard to see his behavior as anything but boorish and shallow.

Otherwise, it’s not horrendous but neither is it compelling. It’s a fairly competent book, but it left me completely uninterested in further installments in the series.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0

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DVD Review, Golden Age Article

DVD Review: The Saint, Set 1

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The Saint, Set 1 collects six episodes from Roger Moore’s fifth’s season as the Saint, the first to actually be in color.

The Episodes glory in the Saint’s entry into the world of Color with one beautiful location after another. From Monte Carlo to Venice to Hamburg to Scotland, the series showcases the globetrotting nature of the Saint’s adventures, as well as the wide variety of forms they can take. In, “The Queen’s Ransom,” the Saint accompanies the American wife of an European king in returning a treasure to him and has to outwit a gang of International criminals in the process. In, “Interlude in Venice,” Simon helps out the naïve daughter of an American politician who is at risk of getting swept off her feet by a conman. In, “The Reluctant Revolution,” Simon is compelled to throw in with revolutionaries trying to overthrow a “Banana Republic.” In, “The Convenient Monster,” he encounters a woman who claims the Loch Ness monster is really out there in Scotland.

The variety of the Saint’s adventures is part of what makes the series a standout. The adventures range from straight up mysteries to spy and political thrillers. Through it all, future James Bond Roger Moore plays the Saint as smart, tough, and charming. He’s also joined by a solid guest casts in each and every story.

Overall, these episodes are marvelous and a great start to the Saint’s full color adventures.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0

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Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: Dandelion Wine

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Twelve Year old Douglas Spaulding is growing up in the 1920s in Green Town, Illinois, a town that’s full of life, energy, and a reliable circle of friends and family, and Summer is the best time of all. In the course of Summer, the magic of Green Town makes for many wonderful moments, but Douglas also has to cope with the first pangs of growing up.

Dandelion Wine was originally a novel by Ray Bradbury, who later wrote it as a play and then turned it into this audiodrama for Colonial Radio Theatre.

Dandelion Wine showcases why Bradbury is such a beloved author even outside of the science fiction genre. Bradbury’s at his best and this story works very well for radio as the lyrical dialogue paints evocative pictures that capture the imagination. Dandelion Wine manages to take even mundane moments in life and wrap them in wonder. One of my favorite scenes involves Douglas’ grandfather taking inventory of his stock of the medicinal dandelion wine. It’s a well-done scene that creates a sense of nostalgia and gives a keen insight into the childlike way Douglas views the world.

The play is well-acted with Jerry Robbins turning in a great performance as the mysterious and soft-spoken Mr. Forrester. The sound design is ably done and helps to re-enforce the tone of the story.

The play is a story for all ages, though younger and older viewers will view it differently. Douglas relates well to the younger listeners. Yet, for older listeners, it’ll call to mind a whole other set of emotions: reminders of childhood and the moments when it ended with the realization that the world was changing whether you wanted it to or not.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.0

Note: This Audio Drama is available for free through Audible Channels for Audible subscribers. It’s also available for purchase for non-subscribers.

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Graphic Novel Review: A Secret History of Space

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This graphic novel collects Issues 4-7 of Boom Studios’ Steed and Peel series based on the 1960s TV show, The Avengers. 

The four issues cover three separate story lines but there is a sense of them being tied together. The art is superb and really fits with the imaginative, often larger than life world of the Avengers as beautiful concepts are explored.

The first Issue features Steed and Mrs. Peal attending a masquerade ball with some dangerous intruders. It’s probably the simplest story in the book, but the art is very good, even though black and white are the predominant colors.

The middle issues are probably most speculative in the book in a plot that involves blackmail of high government officials, secrets from space, and time travel.

The final issue is typical of many actual episodes of the Avengers as Steed and Peal investigate a series of unexplained unwarranted suicides in a small Welsh town. The ending is a little quick, but the concept is well-realized.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable book for fans of the 1960s series. While being single issue stories does make the first and last issue slightly less complex than you’d otherwise expect, writer Caleb Monroe does a marvelous job capturing the spirit and feel of this classic series.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

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Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: Too Many Have Lived

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In “Too Many Have Lived,” the Hollywood Theater of the Air presents a half hour Black Mask Audio Magazine dramatization of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade short story of the same title.

Sam Spade is hired to find a missing poet by a man who would very much like to marry the man’s wife. When the poet turns up missing, there are plenty of suspects around.

“Too Many Have Lived,” is a fine classic hard-boiled story. It’s no “Maltese Falcon,” but the Theater of the Era does a great job capturing the mood and it’s very well-acted and narrated with a decent amount of sound design. The story has a solidly clever solution that’s worthy of Hammett.

It also serves as a nice sampler for Hollywood Theater of the Ear’s longer works, including a collection of Black Mask stories.

This story is available for free to Audible Members through Audible’s new “My Content” feature and it also can be purchased by non-members for less than $1.50

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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DVD Review, Golden Age Article

DVD Review: Here Comes Cookie, Six of a Kind, Love in Bloom

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George Burns and Gracie Allen won the hearts of millions by coming into their homes over radio and television for more than two decades. It’s often forgotten that the two also appeared in films in the 1930s. A 2003 DVD from Universal Home Entertainment collects three of these rare films.

Here Comes Cookie (1935): In this one, Gracie plays the daughter of a wealthy man who fears that his daughter’s beau is a fortune hunter, so he decides to leave everything to Gracie. Gracie gets the idea that her father wants the family to be as poor as possible. This is a screwball piece and Gracie has some good moments, though George is relegated to a bit role. The film is a fun screwball affair with some old vaudeville actors featured.

Six of a Kind (1934): Like many of the Burns and Allen films, Six of a Kind is an all-star comedy. This one also features W.C. Fields and Charles Ruggles, along with Mary Boland and Allison Skipworth.

The plot involves a meek man (Ruggles) going on vacation unwittingly carrying $50,000 from his bank. George and Gracie sign on as travelling companions to share the ride. W.C. Fields comes into the story as a Sheriff and replicates a famous scene shooting pool from his Vaudeville days. Gracie has some hilarious lines, and George even gets a few laughs in as well.

Love in Bloom (1935): George and Gracie get the least screen time in the longest feature on the DVD. While they’re featured prominently in the credits, they have bit roles as the heroine’s brother and sister-in-law. The heroine (Dixie Lee) comes from a circus family and wants a decent, honest life, but struggles to escape her background even as she falls in love with a talented young singer/songwriter (Joe Morrison) and they go to work in a music shop on the strength of her salesmanship skills and his talent. The film is really a romance rather than a comedy and George and Gracie are pretty much side characters with them having a couple funny moments: one where Gracie tries to get out of a ticket and another where she tries to “sell” the music store to its owner. Beyond that, the movie is worthwhile when given a chance. Joe Morrison isn’t the best leading man but he’s got a good voice and Dixie Lee’s performance coupled with the old fashioned decency of the story, give it a certain charm despite its flaws.

Overall, the rare films on this DVD, while by no means in the same class as the greatest comedies of the era, are enjoyable. If you’re a fan of Burns and Allen, it’s a bonus as you get to see some of their work in films. However, to get acquainted with them at their best, their radio and TV performances are still the best bet.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Graphic Novel Review: Steed and Mrs Peel: A Very Civil Armageddon

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This trade paperback collects Issues 0-3 of the ongoing Steed and Mrs. Peel comic book series from Boom Studios.

These issues are written by an Eisner award winning comic writer and Mark Waid and get off to a strong start in Issue 0 with several people with high security clearances apparently doing Rip Van Winkle acts and waking up to find its the future and people from the future want their now “out of date” knowledge for “historical purposes.” The solution to this is clever and it feels like something that could have been expanded and broadcast in the 1960s.

The problem becomes that the next three are a single story arc where Steed and Mrs. Peel witness the seaming end of the world and end up in an underground bunker surviving thanks to the villains of the last piece. What’s going on is painfully obvious based on the first story and disappointingly the writing falls a little short of capturing the fun of the original TV series.

The book isn’t bad. The art is fairly good throughout and the first issue is enjoyable, however the three-part story arc in Issues 1-3 makes this a bit harder to get into.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0

Audio Drama Review, Golden Age Article

Audio Drama Review: The Avengers: The Lost Episodes, Volume 3

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Volume 3 of Big Finish’s Avengers: The Lost Episodes recreates four more lost episodes of Season 1 of the Avengers which featured John Steed (Julian Wadham) and Doctor David Keel (Anthony Howell).

The Springers: This story finds Keel undercover in prison as a notorious convict he hopes to impersonate. The story is a somewhat typical crime story but feels a bit more playful in places than some of the stories in the first box set. It’s a solid if unremarkable tale.

The Yellow Needle: An old friend of Keel’s is Prime Minister of an African nation about to declare its Independence from Great Britain. After an attempt on the Prime Minister’s life, Steed and Keel become involved in the case from several thousand miles away. The story reflects the process of breaking up the British Empire as former Colonies became Independent and the politics that often went into that. This gives it a definite historic value. Beyond that, it’s a taut and well-written political thriller.

Double Danger: Dr. Keel is kidnapped by desperate men who want him to treat a man they kidnapped so they can extract the secret of the location of stolen diamonds. This is set up like a traditional crime story but has a bit more going for it than many earlier stories. First of all, Keel’s adventures apparently have given him a bit of an edge of toughness as he’s far more calm than one would normally expect. There’s almost a hard-boiled aspect to some of the dialogue, and there’s more menace in the villains in this story than in many “thugs of the week” who have appeared before . The story moves at a fairly quick pace, and there’s a very effective use of humor with the old landlord.

The Toy Trap: This story takes a look at the seamier side of London life with a bit of a personal touch for Keel. Keel is to play chaperone to the wide-eyed innocent daughter of a friend, who has taken a job in London at a shop. They find one of her friends missing and that she’s been drawn off into a pornography racket exploiting naive young women. It’s a very well done crime story and it also introduces some genuine conflict between Steed and Keel. In the early going, Keel sharply disapproves when Steed starts doing his typical ladies man routine around his young charge, and then when Steed’s method for breaking the ring puts her jeopardy, Keel really lets Steed have it. Overall, this is probably my favorite episode in this series so far.

This collection contains some of the greatest Avengers Best Episodes Big Finish has produced and is my favorite of the four I’ve listened to.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5.0

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A Look at Elementary, Season One

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The first season of Elementary finds a tattooed Sherlock Holmes (Johnny Lee Miller) living in modern day New York as part of his rehab from heroin addiction. Ex-Surgeon Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) has changed careers and is now a sober companion for recovering addicts and lands Holmes as a client. Holmes is called in frequently as a consultant for the NYPD in solving strange and unusual cases.

Probably the first thing to get out of the way is that this is Sherlock Holmes in name only. Unlike Sherlock, which seeks to bring Holmes into the twenty-first century and updates the character accordingly, Elementary changes almost every detail about Holmes other than his name and general methods, and a few personality quirks. You can’t change not only the period, but also the setting, the background of the character, but also the gender of Holmes’ assistant, and that character’s nature, personality, and potential and have something that can really be compared to Doyle’s originals. The series is least convincing when it tries to re-use names, concepts, quotes, and characters but in ways that have little relation to the original story.

The best way to enjoy Elementary is to enter it with no expectation that it will be anything like Sherlock Holmes and to enjoy it on its own merits.If it helps, take my wife’s joking suggestion and mentally rename him Bob.

The mysteries are well-crafted and engaging. The plots are clever, usually with Holmes reaching several mistaken solutions on the way. Sometimes, the actual solutions are quite shocking such as, “Child Predator,” but all really have a great deal of inventiveness, although it does seem that Holmes accuses way too many innocent people of murder in some of these episodes.

Elementary’s Holmes and Joan Watson both have histories that are slowly unraveled, with Holmes’ drug addiction and the events that surrounded it. While Elementary’s Holmes ends up on the side of the angels, he can go into some gray areas particularly as a matter of revenge.  Holmes tends towards arrogance, whicht makes him uncomfortable and awkward as he faces the world of drug rehab, which keeps forcing him into moments which cut against his pride.

Joan Watson is a bit of an enigma. Her career change from surgeon to sober companion was a come down in the world. She finds herself drawn into the world of criminal investigation. At the start of the season, she’s following him as part of the obligation to be in contact with him, but she becomes increasingly involved and engaged in the world of criminal investigations. She finds a new path through the course of the season and it’s very fun to watch.

The characters do work well together, and we learn quite a bit about them throughout the season. However, it’s very well balanced developed so that by the end of the season,  you have a sense that there are greater depths to explore. The supporting cast is understandably less explored. Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) has a few moments that reveal his differences with Holmes as well as his appreciation for him. Despite having an episode, in which he was accused of murder, Lieutenant Marcus Bell (Jon Michael Hill) is mostly a functional role in this first season.

The series does have a bit of story arc in the second half of the season involving its Moriarty. It’s certainly not a bad arc, but I found myself unexcited by the ending which seemed to drag and not really end strongly.

Overall, this series is more like a non-humorous version of Monk than it is a proper Sherlock Holmes. It’s enjoyable for what it is,when it doesn’t halfheartedly try to be something it’s not.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0

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Book Review, Golden Age Article

Book Review: Trent’s Last Case

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Trent’s Last Case (1913) features amateur detective Philip Trent being called in to solve the murder of a business tycoon with many enemies and a complicated relationship in the tycoon’s own house.

Trent is  a departure from the thinking machines that dominated detective fiction of the time. He was an eccentric, a romantic, and a painter with a light touch and a good deal of humor. Still, he also has a sharp mind.

The case itself is a solid puzzle. Trent uses his deduction and wit to come up with a clever solution which proves to be wrong. We don’t learn who the murderer is until the very end, and the person who did it was someone you never would have guessed.

The story had a great impact on the future detective novels. There is a little bit of over-indulgent social commentary to wade through, particularly after the start. However, even after over a hundred years, the novel holds up well as a light and engaging read.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

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Golden Age Article

A Look at the Revived Columbo: The Best of the Revived Movies, Part Two

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See Part One and the Worst of the Revived Movies.

5) Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star (1991)

The plot of this one involves a famous defense attorney murdering his girlfriend. It is well-written and a solid story, but Dabney’s Coleman Emmy-nominated performance makes this a standout. He manages to capture that classic Columbo villain arrogance. The final reveal is a stroke of genius as well.

4) Agenda for Murder (1990)

Patrick McGoohan’s third appearance as a Columbo villain is his best. He plays a high-powered lawyer with big-time political ties and kills off a man who threatens to reveal a scandal that could derail his ambitions. The murder is cleverly executed and the chemistry between Falk and McGoohan is superb.

3) Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health (1991)

Another 1970s Columbo Guest Star returns with George Hamilton playing the host of a program in the style of America’s Most Wanted. The murder method involves poisoned cigarettes and is ingenuous and there are good comic moments between Falk and Hamilton. I prefer this over Hamilton’s 1975 appearance in, “A Deadly State of Mind.”

2) Columbo Goes to the Guillotine (1989)

It had been nearly eleven years since the last Columbo movie. So the return film had to be good.  It was superb. A mentalist murders an old friend as an act of revenge for having been abandoned in a foreign prison so many years ago and uses a magic guillotine to do it. It’s a baffling crime for Columbo to unravel and part of that involves Columbo exposing the mentalist as a fraud in a very clever scene. The story also has a dramatic ending that features an attempt by the killer to get rid of Columbo. It’s a great return for Columbo.

1) Death Hits the Jackpot (1991)

An almost-divorced photographer buys a winning lottery ticket but wants to avoid splitting the winnings with his soon-to-be ex-wife. So his Uncle Leon (played by Rip Torn) comes up with a plan. Leon will cash in the ticket and give his beloved nephew the lion’s share of the winnings once the divorce is final, but Leon kills his nephew instead. Torn is superb in this one. He’s probably the most menacing Columbo murderer ever. He’s excellent as the calculating and insincere sociopath, making for a solid and underrated performance.

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