The trouble with Harry, not to put too fine a point on it, is that he’s dead. And not only is he dead, he was inconsiderate enough to leave his body lying around, causing no end of problems for the living. Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn) thinks he accidentally shot Harry while rabbit hunting, Miss Gravely (Mildred Natwick) thinks she killed him with a hiking boot, and Harry is found and hidden, buried and unburied, more times than anyone cares to remember. Captain Wiles, Miss Gravely, artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe), and Harry’s estranged wife, Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine), try to figure out who exactly killed Harry, what to do with his troublesome body, and how to keep Deputy Calvin Wiggs (Royal Dano) in the dark. Meanwhile, love blossoms between Sam and Jennifer and between Captain Wiles and Miss Gravely, and a millionaire art collector (Parker Fennelly) becomes interested in Sam’s work.
Posts Tagged ‘1950s’
Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies
(Ray Greene, 2001).
A documentary about US exploitation films from the 50s and 60s. Has the usual fringe-film-doc dilemma, in that it, quite naturally, focuses heavily on the exploiteers who were willing to be interviewed. This of course means that it can study its subjects – Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Harry Novak, &c – in quite some depth, but it also means that it ignores a lot of key figures and films. Which is only to be expected; no one documentary can encompass all exploitation cinema. The film also has a tendency to go on the defensive about the artistic significance of some films, which hurts its credibility.



