FILM REVIEW OF ''POSTAL INSPECTOR'' (1936)

Bela Lugosi made many unusual movies during his career.  Clocking in at a mere 58 minutes, Otto Brower's "Postal Inspector" (**1/2 OUT OF ****) is a contrived but entertaining cinematic tribute to the U.S. Postal Service.  Indeed, “Postal Inspector” could serve as a prototype for anything “Dragnet” creator Jack Webb created.  For the record, Lugosi doesn’t take top billing.  Suave Ricardo Cortez has that distinction.  He played the original Samuel Spade in the 1931 version of "The Maltese Falcon" before Humphrey Bogart recreated Spade in his own image.  Lugosi took fourth billing after Patricia Ellis and Michael Loring.  Brower and “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” scenarist Horace McCoy have forged themselves a genuine hybrid with an array of characters. "Postal Inspector" consists of one third crime thriller, one third musical, and one third disaster epic.  At every opportunity, our hero reminds us that the best insurance in the world is a postage stamp.  Moreover, the message that citizens must be protected from fraudulent practices drives the Postal Service.  The comic relief consists of several vignettes about fraudulent gadgets sold via the mail to naïve citizens.  Cortez looks like he would be the wrong man with which to tangle.  Sadly, Lugosi languished in a lackluster role as a shifty nightclub owner in trouble with the mob. During the first scene, our hero and his fellow postal inspectors receive praise from none other than President Franklin D. Roosevelt over a speaker phone for their "fine work" moving the gold reserves of the United States to the inland cities.  Clearly, the producers must have approved of FDR’s policies.  You should have no trouble spotting African-American actress Hattie McDaniel in a supporting role as the heroine’s maid.

Not only does Inspector Bill Davis (Richard Cortez) take everything seriously, but he also is a paragon of efficiency.  The unflappable Davis always has reassuring words for anybody who has a problem with the postal service.  Davis sorts out all the problems that citizens have without blowing his cool.  Popular singer Connie Larrimore (Patrick Ellis) meets Davis aboard a flight from Washington, D.C. to Milltown, during stormy weather. The pilots are struggling to land, but a storm blinds them.  Ground Control talks the pilots safely down.  During the story, our heroine sings to soothe some frightened passengers, with a youngster providing accompaniment on his harmonica. The press plasters Connie's commendable singing exploits across the front page story.  . Bela Lugosi makes his first appearance as Gregory Benez at the airport. The natty nightclub owner has Connie under contract to sing in his nightclub The Golden Eagle.  Eventually, we learn Benez has shady dealings with the mob.  He owes Alfred Carter, ‘known to have financed many nightclubs,’ $50-thousand.  Worse, Benez is two weeks tardy on his payment.  At the airport, Connie reacquaints herself with an old friend from high school in Milltown.  The friend turns out to be Bill’s younger brother Charlie (Michael Loring), and Charlie wants to rekindle the flame.  Seven years have elapsed since they went their separate ways.  Our hero’s introduction to Connie has a memorable moment.  Charlie points out his brother works for the post office.  Slyly, Connie reminds Charlie that it has been a long time since they played post office.  Brower and McCoy milk this moment again later in the action for dramatic emphasis.  Connie learns Charlie works for the Federal Reserve Bank.  Charlie is in charge of all the money that the Federal Reserve wants to remove from circulation. He tells Connie about a shipment of used bills, approximately $3-million worth of bills.

About 31 minutes into the action, our handsome hero catches a plane to Yarborough where heavy rains have washed out a bridge and cut off the town.  Meantime, Davis relocates the Yarborough Post Office to higher ground.  Later, Benez and his accomplices knock over the armored car, kill a postal employee, and steal the millions.  Benez is nowhere around when his henchmen hit the Postal truck.  Of course, Davis is not happy.  Brower doesn’t depict the attack on the driver of the postal vehicle.  Everything occurs off-screen.  Afterward, we see the postal vehicle tipped onto its side.  Benez’s henchmen careen away from the scene with a bundle of money.  Later, a man named Ritter (Harry Beresford) apprises Davis about the money bags.  They use a boat to reach the robbery vehicle and find $20-thousand.  Davis assures Ritter that he will figure in any reward.  Meantime, Davis learns that only three people knew about the $3-million, and one of them was Charlie.  Initially, Charlie assures his brother Bill that he had nothing to do with the robbery.  It looks like Charlie and Connie are to be implicated until Connie agrees to flush out Benez. When Bill investigates the robbery vehicle, he discovers the car belonged to Charlie.  Bill puts Charlie on the hot seat about the robbery, and his brother comes back to him two hours later with the explanation.  Charlie let Connie borrow his car and somebody stole the car from Connie.

Altogether, "Postal Inspector" qualifies as a routine potboiler about Postal Inspectors.  The stock footage of the flood scenes is impressive.  One desperate African-American scrambles to seize a chicken.  Lugosi plays Benez with considerable restraint.  The joke about the elderly woman who solicits proposals of marriage through the mail with a photograph of a young, beautiful woman is hilarious.  The villains use a boat to elude the authorities, but Charlie and Connie disrupt their getaway. Newspaper headline state that the mail robbers are scheduled to serve 20 years to life.  The mail robbery prompts the Federal Reserve to stop transferring old bills.  Instead, they decide to mutilate the bills in the future.  Charlie and Connie serenade Bill over the phone and apprise him of their impending marriage.

FILM REVIEW OF ''STEAMBOAT BILL, JR" (1928-SILENT)

This imaginative comedy lacks the prestige of Buster Keaton's classic American Civil War comedy "The General." Nevertheless,"Steamboat Bill, Jr." (***1/2 out of ****)surpasses "College." Clocking in at a concise 69 minutes, this amusing father and son reconciliation drama includes a romance along the lines of William Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet." Furthermore, the narrative chronicles the emergence of our diminutive protagonist as a man who can master his fate after he appeared destined for disaster. In other words, Buster casts himself as an underdog again as he did in "College." The problem with this existential comedy is our hero's transition from a clumsy nincompoop to an expert acrobat who can perform high dives off the top of a steamboat and rig it up in such a way so he can operate it single-handedly lacks credibility. The only shred of evidence that our eponymous hero has what it takes occurs when he surprises the sheriff, slugs him in the stomach, and watches as the fellow falls like an avalanche. More amazing than any of Buster's clever sight gags as he learns his way around the paddle wheeler is the spectacular special effects. Remember, the special effects personnel pulled off these stunts long before computer-generated special effects were available.

The Carl Harbaugh story concerns a pugnacious Mississippi River paddle wheeler captain who meets his son, Willie (Buster Keaton of "The Three Ages"), for the first time since he last saw him as an infant in the crib. Essentially, Bill does not know what Willie looks like. Meantime, Willie arrives at River Junction from Boston dressed like a fashionable college graduate, wearing a beret, sporting a pencil thin mustache, a spotted bow-tie, and carrying a ukulele under his arm. He has sent his father a telegram informing him that he will be able to recognize him by the white carnation that he will be wearing in his coat lapel. Unfortunately, Willie seems to have forgotten that it is Mother's Day and everybody is wearing a white carnation. Bill (Ernest Torrence of "Captain Salvation") and his First Mate, Tom Carter (Tom Lewis of "Adam and Eva"), head off to the railway station fully expecting to greet a big strapping lad twice the size of William Canfield, Sr. Nobody at the train station fits the description of the elder Canfield's son. As the Southern Railway locomotive with the number 45 on it pulls out, it turns out that Willie Canfield has been out of sight on the other side of the tracks. He makes an idiot out of himself as he approaches all the men in the station and flashes his carnation at them. Eventually, Willie loses the carnation, but he does not realize it and keeps poking his empty lapel into the faces of strangers. Finally, Bill recognizes Willie by the tag on his luggage while Willie is dancing and playing his ukulele for a baby in a stroller. Clearly, the 1920s were a different age altogether when babies could be left unattended in carriages at a public place without fear of being abducted.

Once he has picked his son up at the depot, Bill ushers Willie into a barber chair and orders the barber to shave off the "barnacle" of a mustache on his lip. Later, Bill drags Willie to a haberdashery to replace the beret with a hat that a man would wear. No sooner have they left the store than a gust of wind whips the white hat off his head and blows it into the river. Willie pulls the beret out of his back pocket and slips it back onto his head. Predictably, Bill is surprised to see the beret reappear, but he does nothing. Earlier, while Willie enconsed in the barber chair, Willie noticed that a cute little thing sitting opposite him is none other than Kitty King (Marion Byron of "Song of the West"), who attended the same college in Boston. These two try to get together, but their fathers refuse to countenance their relationship. John James King (Tom McGuire of "The Reckless Age") tells Kitty that he will pick the right man for her and the candidate will not be "the son of a river tramp." Similarly, Bill tells Willie that he will choose an appropriate mate for him and will not have a King for a daughter-in-law. Basically, Steamboat Bill and King are competitors in the paddle wheeler business on the Missisippi River. Recently, King brought in his brand new paddle wheeler and convinces the Public Safety Commissioner condemn the paddle wheeler--the Stonewall Jackson--that Bill owns. Bill goes after King, and King has him thrown in jail. The same day that the sheriff puts Bill in jail is the very day that Bill had arranged transport for Willie back to Boston. Willie sees the authorities take his father to calaboose and contrives a scheme to break him out. He conceals several tools inside a giant loaf of bread and convinces the sheriff to let him give it to his father. Initially, Bill wants nothing to do with Willie until his son shows him what the loaf contains. Bill breaks out, but Willie is caught. The sheriff cracks an unsuspecting Willie over the head with his six-gun and sends Canfield Junior off to the receiving hospital.

The major set-piece of "Steamboat Bill, Jr." is a high wind storm that tears up all the buildings in River Junction, blows the top off the hospital, and sends the jail into the river. The physical sight gags that Keaton performs are some of his best and most imitated. In one scene, the entire facade of a building falls on Willie, but he is standing where the window is so he is not hurt! Each gag is beautifully orchestrated by director Chas. F. Reisner who specialized in comedies, including the lesser Marx Brothers picture "The Big Store" and the Abbott & Costello comedy "Lost in a Harem." Even the smallest of gags, such as peanut hulls--which Bill refers to as "cocoanut shells"--that cut their bare feet up when they cross a floor are hilarious. The spectacle of Keaton clutching an uprooted tree that is hurled into the river is incredible as are the flying buildings that Buster runs into and out of. Of course, Willie and Kitty hook up in the end. Keaton performs all of his stunts and they are pretty amazing. "Steamboat Bill, Jr." ranks as a memorable Buster Keaton epic with several well-staged sight gags.

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