stedder-26846

CORNY BUT ENJOYABLE story of a strait-laced, stern disciplinarian schoolteacher who has her entire small town cowed, and how she got that way. "Terrible" Miss Dove's vocabulary and diction are so high-flown and stilted, I fear it would sound like a foreign language to today's audiences. "Allow me to convey my felicitations!" She always wears a hankie pinned to her jacket, and makes the students wear one too. Elementary school was rugged in those days. We never find out Miss Dove's first name, and she never calls anybody by a nickname, saying "Will-i-am" instead of "Bill," for instance. -

Jennifer Jones gets to do some acting in her scenes with Miss D as a 19-year-old. Stereotypes practically monopolize the supporting roles, Chuck Connors is an Irish cop, black servant, blonde floozy, they're all there. Miss D has little sympathy for a woman pregnant out of wedlock. Robert Stack is his usual confident self. There's even a Dead End Kid type who escapes from prison to see his beloved teacher--twice! The lone Jewish kid becomes a big-time Broadway playwright. It goes on and on. -

In my home town, there was a high school teacher much like this, Miss Stafford, who had the whole town in an iron grip of fear. When she retired, they had a big party for her, in the football stadium! And gave her a new car! So the story isn't so far from reality. -

The photography, in Cinemascope, is gorgeous. The story is told mainly in flashbacks, so don't go to sleep or you'll wake up confused. It's worth a look for fans of popular culture of the mid-twentieth century, and for those who are always whining about how there aren't any "likable characters" in a movie. No surprises here, all these characters are just what you expect, not scary at all.

The movie postulates aliens masquerading as earthmen, in order to use our genetic material to have children, since their own women have all died. We laugh at the audiences of the fifties for not having seen how corny this movie is. But, if you follow UFO belief systems, you know that there are plenty of people right now who devoutly believe that this exact same plot is happening, in real life! At least in 1958 everyone knew this movie was fictional! So who's the naive audience now?

The movie itself is a class production, with really sumptuous sets and detailed decoration. The special effects, when the alien faces are briefly visible in flashes of lightning, aren't overdone. The effect of the aliens dissolving into vomitous piles of gorp is a little sickening at that. The script is rather hard on the dogs in the story, two out of three of them don't survive. Tom Tryon, the lead actor, was always rather wooden, but that's exactly what the role calls for, and he's perfectly cast.

I have to weigh in on the errors in alicecbr's review, since it's featured here on IMDB. I refer to the first paragraph. Robert Ryan wasn't in "Seven Days in May." And there's no lecture in that movie about women sucking juices out of soldiers. The closest thing I can think of is Sterling Hayden in "Dr. Strangelove," who tells Peter Sellers about the Commie plot to sap and impurify our bodily fluids by fluoridating the water. Nothing in it about women, though, just Commies. I'm voting it...unhelpful!

Underrated actors Aldo Ray and Robert Ryan are outstanding in this eccentric bit of Americana from the novel by Erskine Caldwell, which was banned in some towns. The setting on the farm with random holes and piles of dirt is almost surreal in appearance. And there's Tina Louise, and Little Joe Cartwright plays an albino.

The movie must have put the Production Code censor board to sleep, because toward the end, when the pirates are in port in the West Indies, dancing girl Marianne makes her appearances. Now there's no better way to say this, she's going braless under a green see-through blouse. The still frames are definitely eye-filling, and even played at normal speed you can hardly believe your eyes. This must be absolutely unique for a major studio film in the early 50s, and I suspect it may have been Flynn's idea. The actress was Gillian Lynne, uncredited even though it's a speaking role.

Having pointed that out for admirers of the female form, the movie is an enjoyable costume adventure, which interestingly doesn't have a Hollywood-style happy ending. An extra star for the great Roger Livesey, who carries the film with his florid language and stage Irish accent.

There's an entry in the Goofs column saying that the generator rig was impossible, because there was no source of power for the generator. But the truck has a gas engine, and power take-offs for farm machinery were common in those days. A shaft could run from the engine and drive a belt on the generator easily. Power take-offs are used on farm machinery to this day, and people are regularly injured coming too close to the rotating shaft.

Other than that, the movie is a typical 70s flick, and even has Bud Cort in the cast, the mark of a real 70s black comedy. Stacy Keach gives a fine performance as the executioner who comforts the guest of honor with a BS spiel about the paradise he's going to, similar to what some major religions believe even today.