THE 27TH DAY (1957)

Based on John Mantley’s 1956 novel of the same name, this seventy-five-minute science fiction effort could be considered a thought-provoking approach, but it is the time-honored Hollywood fear that atomic weapons will destroy Earth by dim-witted political administrations. And every galaxy knows about it. Though not given any credit, Robert Fresco wrote the screenplay's adaptation. An oversight, I assume, and not at his request. It is competently directed by William Asher and produced by Helen Ainsworth for Columbia Pictures. Mischa Bakaleinikoff composed an effective score. It is a solid lead cast, though most are not globally known. A misleading poster suggests aliens arrive to attack the Earthlings. Again. The film is well-played with a refreshing alien twist.  

Hollywood almost always portrays aliens with a higher intellect than mere humans. Mankind’s hopeless assumption is that it is always greener on the other side of their life, which is not evolving as they had hoped or were led to believe. As representatives of the world's population, five humans (that low number is not a typo) are taken aboard a spacecraft by an alien, Arnold Moss, the planet’s marketing director. He travels at the speed of light yet waits until the last minute to save his own people from annihilation. The aliens favor Earth as their new home. The problem: all the humans taking up so much space. The subjects are given three capsules, each capable of destroying all human life within a 3,000-mile radius. Neither the environment nor anything constructed by men or women will be harmed. Whew! Each of the five can only open the capsule case through their specific mental projection. The liberal alien believes the entire human history is one of self-destruction, and it will not surprise him if the capsules are used for this purpose. Aliens can be a pessimistic bunch. However, if humans behave themselves, the capsules will be rendered useless, and there will be no invasion on the twenty-seventh day. The last time Earthlings took an alien at his word was from Klaatu.  

Alien Moss interrupts worldwide broadcasting transmission to reveal the names of the five, becoming the first alien whistle-blower. The media speculates about the “dangerous five” with a fever pitch of personal opinions. It becomes a pandemic of fear. Jisatsu shortens the group by one, while another, Valerie French, throws her capsules into the ocean, relieving her of any responsibility in the film. Not making a great deal of sense, she catches the next flight to rejoin top-billed Gene Barry. Now with a new purpose, she becomes the companion and sounding board for his theories. The police have awarded Barry an APB, but not for being a newspaper reporter. Citizens are warned not to take the law into their own hands, yet someone fitting his description has already been killed. Quoting Barry, “People hate because they fear, and they fear anything they don’t understand.” Earthly life as we know it today. Relinquishing their three-day hideout at an off-season horse race track, they place their bets with the authorities.

Friedrich Ledebur, above, a year after playing the bald, creepy, tattooed Queequeg in Moby Dick, has a brief role as a brilliant scientist with the most chiseled, aesthetic face in this or any other film. Once realizing the alien’s ultimatum, he subjects himself to a lethal dose of gamma radiation just in case they need a guinea pig to test one of the capsules. To his good fortune, they do! They place him on an inflatable raft—with an irrelevant life vest—in the South Atlantic Ocean. We see him happily waving. His coordinates are given. He vaporizes. No one else in a 3,000-mile radius is affected. One of the remaining four, a respected scientist, determines that a complete set of capsules has a numbered code of “math destruction.” He activates all three capsules, and the results indicate they contain the power for both life and death. Confusingly, the screenplay suggests the capsules know which is which. Those tricky aliens!

                               EX-TER-MI-NATE! EX-TER-MINATE!!

On the other side of Earth, the Soviets are relentlessly interrogating the Soviet officer about his capsules. He is administered a truth serum plus mind and physical torture, which provides the Soviets with knowledge of the capsules’ purpose. Unable to sustain the atrocities, the officer mentally opens the capsule's lid. The Soviets, somehow, locate the two other capsule cases. Global headlines claim the Soviets have world domination with the demand that America withdraw all its military from Europe.

The United Nations is all giddy about the prospect of being overrun with aliens. They give Alien Moss fifteen seconds (that is also not a typo) to reply to their friendship broadcast, hoping he has not stepped out for a supermarket errand. All broadcasting ceases to provide a clear reception of his reply. Millions are pretty peeved that they will miss their regularly scheduled programming.

THE HOUSTON STORY (1956)

William Castle offers up his final noir about an ambitious oil driller who discovers a way to steal oil and then sell it to distributors or foreign interests for huge profits. The film's first half is the stronger section, as one is not sure of the main character's intent, played by Gene Barry. The opening morgue scene involving a female's body gets the intrigue award. Barry purposely misidentifies her. The script can be complicated in laying out the benefits of underworld “investing” and whose pipes are being gleaned. It starts to disintegrate during the last third of the film, however, offering a commonplace resolve. There is enough backstabbing in this film to be another Castle horror movie.

Barry puts the con in conniving. A greedy, unscrupulous businessman who romances a nightclub singer to infiltrate a Houston mobster's organization. He is a decent fit for this role as a womanizer. More believable than the original choice, Lee J. Cobb. Barbara Hale—the aforementioned (in name only) morgue lady—is now a nightclub singer with a different name. Her single vocal number is quite mesmerizing and convincing. No dubbing. Her bleached hair and facial features are also stunningly perfect.

Mob boss Edward Arnold, in his next-to-last movie, could play corrupt like few others. Barry needs his financial backing. Arnold goes along with Barry's scheme, vouching for their newest board member, chaired by “Mr. Big,” John Zaremba. But Arnold never wavers from his plan to dispose of Barry once the funds start rolling in. Apart from Houston's temperatures, Barry begins taking heat from investigators. He sets up nightclub owner Paul Richards, another Arnold associate, to take the fall for an oil well sabotage to get them off his back. But Richards shifts the blame to Arnold, putting him on a slippery slope. For the first time in his career, he is a hunted man with no place to go. Out of nowhere, instantly, Arnold spits out his startling confession to Barry, “Now I gotta run! I never had to run before! I don't even know how to run!” At his weight and age, he was accurate. Zaremba wants Barry removed “peacefully” from the “board of elders” and sends a gangster, Chris Alcaide, to...uh...find him. 

Barry's passed sweetheart, Jeanne Cooper, runs a cafe in oil derrick territory. She expects a future with him. Now in big trouble, he tells her to go to his house and get the 100 grand from the safe, then they will meet up later. Cooper arrives to find Hale already removing the money, which she does not plan to share. A lightbulb turns on for Cooper. With all his shrewd and detailed planning, Barry would have made an excellent professional organizer some fifty years later. Organized for him will be a trial. Sentencing for graft, corruption, and an itty-bitty murder. Digging himself out of prison might be his next drilling adventure.

HONG KONG CONFIDENTIAL (1958)

This United Artists film uses periodic voice-over narration akin to a documentary newsreel. The Robert Kent Production sounds authenticated and unfolds the story with the smallest studio sets, looking more like an early television play. Yet in one scene they manage to squeeze in a current model Ford through one tiny street, leaving little room for the studio lighting let alone the Asian extras to walk about on cue. It is a tale of Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and the special government agents assigned to resolve an unusual case. It is all fairly silly and predictable but the secret agent premise beats the Bond pictures out of the starting gate. 

The Communist's “new weapon” is to kidnap the son of an Arab King to pressure him into not signing an agreement with the United States to build a missile base in his small Arab nation. Assigned to find the prince is undercover agent, Gene Barry, who is posing as a lounge singer in a tiny Hong Kong nightclub set. He handles suave with the best of them and this film highlights his talents. The two brief songs he performs are the standout moments in the film. Barry had a voice but his body rhythm here is hilariously stiff and corny. His left and right arms do whatever they want with his body planning on moving right but it suddenly feels compelled to move left. Cannot fault him for trying his best to sell the first lame song about himself. But he is definitely a “foot loser.” Few would ever guess he is an intelligence agent, so in that regard, he is in deep cover. His love interest and accompanist is played by Beverly Tyler in her last film before transitioning to television. She is not undercover yet her faked piano playing made me suspicious.

After Barry’s informant is killed, King Calder, the intelligence agent recommends Barry for the prince's retrieval. There is evidence that the informant had ties to Allison Hayes, who is under surveillance for gold smuggling to the Communists. Hayes can play untrustworthy through makeup and wardrobe alone. She resides in another small Asian film set called Macao. So Barry has about forty feet to travel, not forty miles, in the hope of flushing out the kidnappers. Barry sells her on his smuggling plan of mass-producing souvenirs, yet after the cheap metal is burned off, underneath is solid gold.

Barry discovers a medallion belonging to the kidnapped prince in the office of Noel Drayton and the kidnapping mastermind is revealed. Hayes sets up a meeting with Drayton but double-crosses Barry at gunpoint, forcing him into a cellar where Drayton awaits with the kidnapped prince. Smugly, he tells his plan to pin the kidnapping on the American Barry. He and the prince will be killed after the Arab King signs the papers to let the Commies establish their own missile base. All wait impatiently for that important phone call. But Barry comes up with a plan to disrupt the telephone service that is right out of a Bond playbook. In the standard secret agent ploy, he needs to stand and "fake" stretch. Then with outstretched arms, he casually picks up a thick metal pin lying near the telephone. Really not sure what it is, yet it is pretty obvious he is up to something. I am surprised Barry was not whistling a random tune. Drayton is oblivious. Suspended disbelief at its best. The funny scene continues as Barry sits back down and one arm immediately dives between the cushions as if it were sucked in. Below the couch is where the telephone line is and he pokes the pin through the rubber-encased telephone cable. Drayton must call from an upstairs phone to confirm the signing. He leaves Hayes alone with Barry. Uh-oh. Moviegoers knew what was coming next. In her “duh” moment, Barry volunteers to light her cigarette but overwhelms her with his charms...uh...arms, knocking the gun from her hand and as she stumbles hits her head in the fall. Drayton returns and graciously accepts a bullet. Barry and the prince escape.

One evil-doer is holding Tyler as Barry leverage. Barry kicks open the door and stands back as Asian bullets shoot the hallway full of lead. Without looking, Barry shoots around the door frame, killing the man. Yes. He is that good. At that very moment, another man is ready to shoot Barry in the back but he is shot in the back by Calder. This would have extended in a Zucker Brothers film. Tyler’s suspicions about Barry’s dancing abilities become clearer when she learns of his real occupation.

Note: Another funny scene, an optical illusion, is between Calder and Barry. Both men are facing the camera with Calder standing right behind Barry's right shoulder. Due to the lighting and shadows, it appears Calder is resting his chin on Barry's shoulder, who is getting a bit uncomfortable.

NAKED ALIBI (1954)

This Universal International Pictures release may give you the impression it is a sequel to either Crime Wave or The Big Heat. Two of its main stars play similar roles here. In short, we have seen this one numerous times. You will need to overlook the typical sets, a dubbed vocal and an erratic plot. The eighty-six-minute film was directed by Jerry Hopper and produced by Ross Hunter, both of whom had numerous television projects to their credit. Sterling Hayden is once again a wooden police lieutenant. Unsympathetic. Strictly business. He is bent on pinning a policeman’s murder on Gene Barry. Sympathizers of Barry believe it is nothing more than police harassment. But “Dirty Hayden” has issues. He is caught on camera roughing up Barry. The photo is published. He is fired. But he is convinced Barry is no good. He sets out to find him on a dark and grimy Mexico studio set.

Barry, the debonair owner of a local bakery, also frequents Mexico on “business trips” to reconnect with bad girl and nightclub singer, Gloria Grahame—the actress with a permanent fever-blistered upper lip appearance because of her towering Philtrum ridges and pronounced Cupid's Bow—to say nothing of her slight overbite with noticeable, tiny "Esses." Barry is not the innocent flour thrower we were led to believe. She gets roughed up by Barry, depending on his temperament, but nothing like her devastating scene in the aforementioned The Big Heat. Given Grahame’s earlier roles she should have seen this coming.

As the mundane script plays out, you get the distinct feeling Hayden has got a hold of something besides Grahame. You may actually end up liking him. As for the title, Barry's alibi is the bakery. Once he is apprehended he reveals himself, so to speak, to be a gangster. Naked to the underworld. I suppose.