NEW ORLEANS AFTER DARK (1958)

Poor Stacy Harris, the stalwart B-movie and television actor, tries to hold this shoestring-budgeted film together while being surrounded by a production full of amateurs. Few films are more forgotten or unknown than this one. Perhaps to give a jolt to realism, a few “actors” are actual police officers. The police captain, Louis Sirgo, is for real but no acting experience. He holds his own pretty well but his family scenes are shaky, mostly due to poor directing and a cliched script. The first family scene awkwardly plays out similar to those teenage etiquette films of the era.

The film opens on a sleazy section of Bourbon Street as an “exotic” dancer is called into the lounge owner’s office. He is angry at all the needle marks on her arm and arranges to have her stowed away in a motel to detox. It is a short night for her. Finding the murderer is a job for professionals. Detective Harris and Captain Sirgo will have to do. Sirgo, being the proper spouse and parent, dutifully calls home frequently to apologize for the constant developments in the case and postpone the family fishing trip. It does not get any more real than that.

To continue the film’s awkwardness, the motel manager, helping describe a visitor that night, with eyes looking up in deep thought, says he can still hear those heels clicking. "Cowboy boots...pant legs rolled down over them." That is some kind of hearing! He should be a spy or something. They find cowboy boots but attached to the wrong man.

We are taken to another nightclub where Dixieland music is playing. The people around the bar are unaware of this because most are tapping their fingers on the bar counter to the rhythm from a different club. In the same scene, one camera has a sharp focus on Harris, while the actor he is interrogating is filmed with a soft focus—looking more like old stock footage. Most interior scenes are covered by a single area microphone.

The lounge owner, known affectionately as “The Boss,” is fronting his heroin business as a tobacco exporter. Destroying hundreds of clients, one way or the other. By now, we discover the late cow-booted killer was simply a hired gun. Harris and Sirgo, as well-known local cops, go “undercover” as dishonest sailors. Everyone recognizes them immediately. Even Clark Kent wore spectacles and we know how effective those were. But thanks to their training, they turn the tables on the thugs, eventually tailing the boss to his warehouse where the policemen arrest him after bullets are exchanged. No shots fired...they just exchanged bullets. This movie makes a good case for never creating “reality” television shows.

Note: This film is based on the 1955 television series "N.O.P.D." starring Stacy Harris. The "documentary" movie takes the sleaze level to a new low. One of only two films produced by Eric Sayers, it probably accounts for the awful presentation. His credentials are as thin as the cinematography work by Willis Winford or the direction by John Sledge.

THE SHADOW ON THE WINDOW (1957)

Jerry Mathers hears screams while playing outside the home where his mother, Betty Garrett, is temporarily employed. Running to the window, he sees her being thrown violently to the floor. Coupled with his witness of the homeowner’s murder, the boy goes into a state of shock as he wanders off, never blinking, down a road until two truck drivers help him to safety. Enter police detective Philip Carey, with the most envious character named Tony Atlas. It is his boy who is rescued, and Mrs. Atlas is being held hostage. He is told of the boy’s condition and then proceeds to find out what happened. Maybe a hug first would have uplifted the boy. Carey’s stoic, low-key performance does not always fit the compassionate father role. Not until they track down the truck driver hours later are they able to locate the secluded farmhouse.

This B-movie includes the usual tense moments as Garrett tries and fails to befriend Corey Allen, one of the three miscreants. This must have been the era to have psychos with bleached blonde hair. From Raymond Burr to Skip Homeier and now Allen. None in the gang have their head screwed on right. We know the three losers are not going to make it, but we do not know how. Seeing their Sociopathic leader, John Drew Barrymore, break down his bravado into a sniveling coward when seriously challenged is...uh...expected. Though the hostage premise is not unique, and the hoods are typical of the era, it is not a total embarrassment.

Location filming adds realism, yet it plays out more like a television episode. Directed by William Asher with a screenplay by Leo Townsend and David Harmon, this seventy-six-minute film was released by Columbia Pictures. The music score was by the five-time Oscar-nominated George Duning.

MOHAWK (1956)

There are enough embarrassing movies to do a very long film festival, but this film ranks—in the literal sense—fairly high. The film is often categorized as a Western, but it is really an "Eastern." This eighty-minute film was distributed by 20th Century Fox. Beyond the obvious Hollywood sets foreshadowing television's Bonanza are outdoor sequences from 1939’s Drums Along the Mohawk, which add the only gravitas to the film. The actors mostly justify their salaries, so it is not entirely their fault. Most of my arrows are aimed at the screenwriter, Maurice Geraghty, and director Kurt Neumann. The film is produced by Edward L. Alperson, who also wrote the music, after a fashion. The B-movie casting net was not very wide, relying on the popular Scott Brady, Neville Brand, Ted de Corsia, Allison Hayes, John Hoyt, Rita Gam, and Lori Nelson. All destined for television notoriety. Unintentionally funny can bring the house or teepee down. It is easy to imagine Mel Brooks remaking this film.

Brady plays an 18th-century Casanova painter from Boston looking for subjects and action in early America. Quoting King Richard from The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), after Robin stops a group of horsemen (the gallivanting King's entourage) but does not recognize him, he asks if he is loyal to the King. With tongue-in-cheek, he states, "I love no man better." So it goes for Brady. The local tavern waitress at the military fort is a red-headed Hayes, his favorite model to add "flavor" to his landscapes. Never mind that visiting Nelson is his fiancée. Captain Kirk should be so lucky. Gam had a European facial structure (being born in Pittsburgh), so naturally, she plays a beautiful Native American. Aside from his premixed paints in pig’s bladders, she becomes Brady's main squeeze. The Iroquois appear to be Wall Street businessmen or taxi drivers, and the actor playing de Corsia's teenage son came directly from the set of Rebel Without A Cause. "Hateful Hoyt" deceptively seeks to generate war between the Continental Army and the Indians, ridding the Mohawk Valley of all bad haircuts, leaving the land all to himself. Brand is cast as the only member of the little-known sub-tribe, the "Irritated Iroquois," and is suspicious of the “white paint man.” His tirade against de Corsia's tribe, nearly an hour into the film, is pretty embarrassing. Scenes will have you laughing or groaning.

An excellent print of this film will be sharp and clear with vibrant colors. To an unrealistic level.

The set designers were apparently going through their blue-violet-lavender period. It is overwhelming at times. Case in point: for those familiar with his myriad of gangster and Western villain roles, de Corsia—the "Chief Mohawkster" above—is visually hilarious with his spectacular mohawk and two-week-dead, violet-brown makeup. He looks quite healthy inside his teepee, but once he steps out onto the studio set, aka outdoors, "he goes" very dark.

His monotone Iroquois dialect is not believable, either. One studio set (above, bottom) may remind one of the color palette in a Maxfield Parrish painting. The Indians sitting around the fire, the "Mohawk Singers," are singing a melodic chant in professional mixed four-part harmony. They should tour more often.

Perhaps in an effort to save the film from a total disaster, there is a climactic, rifle-blasting finale battle at the army fort with the Indians. Hoyt finally gets his wish and his due. In the end, we learn little of early American history, or authentic painting, except that oil paints travel well in saddlebags. The flammable turpentine to clean the brushes is totally ignored.

Note: The credits are dealt with uniquely, suggesting a documentary. The red, modern font text on a black background introduces the film as "A Legend of the Iroquois..." and the film ends with the actors' credits, "...and these were the players of the legend," showing a clip of each actor with their character name.