Bulldog Drummond Escapes

I decided to try out one of the other crime solvers on the AMC disc with Ellery Queen.  I opted to go with Bulldog Drummond over Mr. Moto purely because Drummond was shorter.  I was actually surprised at how fast and fun the film was.  There is plenty of banter back and forth, a decent mystery and a performance by Ray Milland unlike anything else I have seen him do.  Most of my experience with Milland’s work has been as the bad guy or a serious role.  I think of The Lost Weekend or Frogs.  I was pleasantly surprised at how easily he could slip into the adventurous detective.

Sadly this was Milland’s only outing as Drummond, although several more films were made.  I look forward to checking out some of the other films in the future.  Bulldog Drummond Escapes gets 2 3/4 stars from me.

The Mandarin Mystery

I used to love watching The Ellery Queen Mysteries on NBC when I was a kid.  Mom and I would watch as Jim Hutton and David Wayne portrayed the father and son pair; one a police inspector, the other an amazing detective.  Each episode would end with Ellery solving the case and just before the reveal, he would break the fourth wall and talk to the audience, pointing out important clues and asking leading questions.  It was a lot of fun to watch and to play along.

The Mandarin Mystery was billed on box as an Ellery Queen mystery.  I was curious how a cinematic Queen might turn out, so I decided to pop the disc into the player and check it out.  The disc was part of a 2 disc, 4 movie set in the AMC DVD collection.  This collection was Great Detectives and included Sherlock Holmes along with Bulldog Drummond and Mr. Moto.  The character of Ellery Queen was played by Eddie Quillan and he plays Queen as a very confident, and very excitable young man.  He’s also very intelligent and has an eye for the ladies.  He immediately takes notice of Josephine Temple (Charlotte Henry) a young woman who has arrived to sell a very rare and valuable stamp to a collector named Dr. Kirk.  Dr. Kirk collects stamps and has been investing his ward’s inheritance into the hobby since the values continue to rise.  This allows him to pursue his hobby while investing her money as well.  The problem is she doesn’t approve, and she has others in the Kirk family that don’t feel this is a proper use of her money either.  When Josephine gets to the hotel where Dr. Kirk is staying, the stamp is stolen from her.  Soon a murder has taken place as well, and it is up to Ellery and his dad to figure it out.  

One way to make a mystery harder to figure out is to throw in a large collection of suspects, and that is what the writers do here.  They provide a few clues and a bunch of red herrings before eventually Ellery puts all the pieces together.  I enjoyed the film, but I do wish they had cut back just a little on the peripheral characters.  We not only have Miss Temple, Dr. Kirk, and the two Kirk girls, but there’s a boyfriend, a forger, and a stamp expert.  It soon becomes hard to remember everyone’s purpose and motive.

The print from which the transfer was made had some issues as well.  One scene jumps around like the print had sprocket damage when it went through the machine.  Still for $3, I don’t feel I got burned too bad.  The film plays fairly well with the exception of that one spot.  It still would have been nice to have had a cleaned-up and remastered print.

I give The Mandarin Mystery 2 1/2 stars.  I wish Quillan had done some other Queen films, but sadly this appears to have been his only outing as Ellery Queen.  Most of the other Queen films I have looked up feature Ralph Bellamy.  On a side note, I also just saw where the Ellery Queen Mysteries television show with Jim Hutton is coming to DVD this month.  Looks like I have something to shop for.

Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball

I decided to follow up Dick Tracy, Detective with Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball.  This was a little closer to the Dick Tracy plots I was used to.  The first film they talked about Splitface, but they didn’t show him that much as it was written as more of a whodunnit.  In Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball we know whodunnit.  Now all we need to know is how Dick Tracy is gonna catch him and bring him to justice.

Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball concerns some stolen diamonds.  Cueball stole them and had to kill to get them.  His partners (an antiques dealer, a diamond cutter and a secretary for the diamond importer) range from a coward that wants to back out now that murder is involved to a tough dame that tries to con Cueball into taking less money than he was originally promised.

Cueball is a hulk of a man that reminds me physically of the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island in a bald cap.  Dick Wessel does an excellent job playing Cueball and Esther Howard does a fine job as one of his old contacts, Filthy Flora.  Howard looks like the living embodiment of a Chester Gould cartoon Dick Tracy villain.  She’s not really evil, just criminal.  She’s always looking for a quick buck, but she’s also quick to play the scared little rabbit if she thinks it will get her out of a pinch.

I was surprised to find out that this film is listed in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way) by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.  I actually enjoyed the film and found Cueball and Flora to be entertaining villains.  Once again this is a perfect Saturday matinée movie.  I give Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball 2 1/2 stars as well.

Dick Tracy, Detective

Big Lots has been getting in quite a few sets of AMC classics.  Most of these are either public domain titles or ones that can be leased very cheaply.  They had one set that contained 10 films including two Sherlock Holmes movies, a Mr. Moto movie, a Bulldog Drummond movie, a Nancy Drew, a couple or three other crime movies, and two Dick Tracy films.  I hadn’t seen any of the old Dick Tracy films, so I decided to start with Dick Tracy, Detective from 1945.

These AMC DVDs aren’t exactly packed with features, but the movie was in decent enough shape.  There were a couple of rough spots where the original film had a bad splice or a few frames missing.  Other than that it was a fairly nice transfer.

Dick Tracy, Detective was the first of 4 Dick Tracy movies from the 40s.  The first two featured Morgan Conway as Tracy.  Conway does a fine job portraying Tracy, but his voice doesn’t match the voice I had in my mind for Dick Tracy.  In Dick Tracy, Detective Tracy and partner Pat Patton (Lyle Latell) are trying to solve a series of extortion murders that are the work of a killer named Splitface.  The victims seem to have no connection to one another and there is are no similarities in their social standing either.  As the body count increases, so do the possible suspects including a mystic that provides Tracy with the vital clue to crack the case.

Dick Tracy, Detective was an enjoyable film.  This would have been the perfect Saturday matinee movie.  I give it 2 1/2 stars and want to catch the other films.