New Orleans Uncensored, A Gritty Dock Flick

In 1954, Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, and Eva Marie Saint did "On the Waterfront." Classic film about union corruption on the docks. The film's success spurred copycat films. In the 1950s, the unions and docks were rife with corruption and crime. Now that our government has aimed to clean them all up, our docks are even more rife with corruption and crime. Today's film was shot in New Orleans, at the time the seconds busiest port in America. New Orleans is a shithole today and back then it was sort of a shithole in training. Let us look at 1955's "New Orleans Uncensored," directed by horror film great, William Castle.

Dan (Arthur Franz) arrives in New Orleans with a dream.  The former navy sailor from California buys a surplus LSM docked on a Mississippi River junkyard. He has dreams.  The rust bucket, according to Dan, will be fixed up and haul timber up and down the mighty Mississippi. He meets the sultry blonde Alma (Helene Stanton) who gets him introduced to the longshoremen and their union bosses. Now Dan is making money on the docks. Uh oh...he befriends Joe (William Henry) who is a union boss who is trying o do the right thing. Zero (Michael Ansara) is the owner of the stevedore company that controls the loading and unloading of all the ships in port.  Zero has a fine racket going and makes loads of cash stealing and reselling cargo. Dan, and honest chap, also meets Joe's lovely wife, Marie (Beverly Garland). Marie is sad. Joe's desire to make a lot of money has corrupted him and she fears Dan will also be corrupted.

When Joe gets too ambitious, Zero has him killed and dumped in the Mississippi. Marie is sad, and also available. Dan is too awed by Alma and her charm and seduction to notice. Alma is also on Zero's payroll and anything Dan says or does is reported to Zero. Zero then tries to corrupt Dan and thinks he's doing a great job at it.  Then when Marie's brother, Scrappy (Stacy Harris) is killed, Dan figures out what is really going on. Now, doing the right thing could get him killed, nonetheless, he liked Scrappy and Joe and now realizes Zero murdered them.  He also likes Marie...who wouldn't?

Will Zero put bullets into Dan and dump him in the river?  Will Alma and Marie get into a catfight over Dan's affections?  Just how will Dan go about doing the right thing on those dirty docks of The Big Easy?  This is a gritty and violent one.  Union corruption and fisticuffs permeate every frame of this film.  The two dames, Ms. Garland and Ms. Stanton, are sultry and a great contrast to the dirty river docks.  See "New Orleans Uncensored" for a bargain basement version of the classic "On the Waterfront."  

The Scarlet Hour, Love, Jewels, and Murder

One of the most famous Hollywood directors of the 40s and 50s is Michael Curtiz. He was the director of the Bogie/Bergman classic "Casablanca." In 1956, this titan of movie directors did something unusual. He used three brand new peeps to star in a film that also had plenty of already famous talent.  The three top-billed folks were all "introduced" in this Film Noir film. The most famous was Carol Ohmart, the sultry blonde.  She is the femme fatale in our feature today, but you will know her as Vincent Price's grouchy but beautiful wife in 1959's "House on Haunted Hill." She, clad in a negligee, was backed into a pit of acid by a skeleton. Will she fare any better in this one? Our feature today is 1956's "The Scarlet Hour."

Paulie (Ohmart) is married to rich real estate guy, Ralph (James Gregory). She is having a torrid affair with Ralph's #1 guy, Marsh (Tom Tryon, also introduced in this film). Ralph is onto them but wants his wife back. Sadly for Paulie, Ralph has a temper problem and beats the daylights out of Paulie in some very hard to watch scenes. Paulie and Marsh decide to do something about it. They plan to rob jewel thieves after the thieves hit a mansion, and steal the stolen ice. Brilliant!  Like, what could go wrong? With the $350,000 in jewels, the cheating duo plan to go away together. You got it...this plan fails badly. Ralph follows Paulie to the job, believing she is there to meet Marsh.  He beats up Paulie as she waits for Marsh to rob the thieves.  In self defense, Paulie shoots Ralph...now marsh runs out being shot at by the thieves.

Okay, they have the jewels, but Ralph is dead. The cops investigate. Lt. Jennings (E.G. Marshall) is a good cop and he will conduct a fine investigation that proves Kathy (Jody Lawrance, also introduced in this film) is the killer. What! Who is Kathy? Kathy is the sultry secretary of Ralph and Jennings automatically assumed the two of them were having an affair. Kathy is a good soul, but could face hard time. Uh oh...the thieves want the jewels back and they find out who has them. Uh oh again, Kathy professes her love for Marsh, taking him by surprise. Jealous, Paulie gets desperate as cops and thieves close in. Marsh realizes that Paulie's best days are over, but Kathy's are still in front of her. Where this all goes is that all the plot points will converge. Jealousy, love, and deceit will rule the final half of this film.

Will there be a catfight between the two new, blonde Hollywood starlets, Ms. Ohmart and Ms. Lawrance?  Will Marsh have a shot at ending up with both of them?  Will the armed jewel thieves get to them before the cops do?  This is a good one and Ms. Ohmart is quite the seductive femme-fatale, and Ms. Lawrance is the perfect counter to her. Poor Marsh...he needed to stay away from dames.  See "The Scarlet Hour" and see how a brilliant director breaks in three very talented newcomers. Oh, by the way, Nat "King" Cole is in this, too.   

Quiet Please, Murder, A Dangerous Woman and Books

So refreshing! A sultry dame who gets off on being slapped.  She yearns for abuse, for bruising, and for being body slammed and thrown across the room. A dame who seeks to be terrorized and dominated! She detests love and fears desiring it. She seeks terrifying and intense emotion.  No, not the Proverbs 31 woman, but a dame from a weird Film Noir film about books and libraries. Let us look at 1942's "Quiet Please, Murder," directed by John Francis Larkin.

England and Germany are at war. Bombings of London have begun.  Heinrich Himmler has sent henchmen into London to steal their treasures to include rare books. Martin Cleaver (Sidney Blackmer) is his man. He engages the sultry book dealer, Myra Blandy (Gail Patrick) to secure a rare copy of Hamlet. Uh oh, that book has just been stolen by book thief/murderer Jim Flag (George Sanders). Sanders is a psycho murderer, and also hates the Nazis.  Myra actually is his partner and together they sell Cleaver a forgery of that book in question. Flag is a master forger. Cleaver finds out and wants the original and Flag's and Myra's heads. Enter handsome private eye, Hal McByrne (Richard Denning). He is looking for the book, too. He engages the services of book expert Myra, not realizing she is a cohort of psycho-book forger, Flag.

Hal doesn't trust Myra but realizes somewhere in her bag of secrets is the location of the rare volume. Flag does not trust Myra and figures she will fall in love with Hal. Flag owns and humiliates Myra into loyalty to him, and Myra loves it. She thirsts for this mistreatment...well, that's all chronicled in my first paragraph. Myra is indeed falling in love with Hal even though she knows she will have to kill him or be killed by him.  Still in Flag's influence, Myra hesitantly assists him in the psycho's latest plan to secure all the rare books in London. Hal is putting all the clues together and realizes Myra is loyal to Flag, but she is so sultry, maybe he can look past that. Air raids!  Murder!  Nazis in libraries! Rare tomes go missing! Swapping spit between Myra and Hal!  Flag planning torture, humiliation, and murder! The ambitious plot will leave you gasping for breath.

Will Flag kill either the Nazi guy, Myra, Hal...or all three?  Do Hal and Myra have any shot at leaving their sordid pasts behind and living happily ever after in besieged London?  Is Myra's affinity for being humiliated and destroyed by powerful men a fetish that has never gone out of style? This is a fascinating one and we waver between pulling for Myra or hoping Hal will shoot her.  For a weird character study of a dame who thrives on chaos and destruction, set in World War 2 London's public libraries...see "Quiet Please, Murder."