danldhatu

Of course, when you put Albert Zugsmith and Hugo Haas together as producer and director, you aren't going to end up with something approaching GONE WITH THE WIND. Hell, you're not even going to end up with anything as good as FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN.

Julie London is beautiful, but incredibly miscast as a woman with some African heritage passing for white. Even with black hair and a suntan, she was one of the WHITEST women around. It's not for nothing that she later played a character named "Dixie" on TVs EMERGENCY.

But hang on here! For those who would scoff and say that this movie is unrealistic, I've got a piece of news for you. It's based on a TRUE STORY! The whole thing is told in a book called "LOVE ON TRIAL : an American scandal in black and white" by Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone. Lots of this stuff really happened, including the young wife having to bare her flesh before the Judge to see just how "colored" her nipples were.

Unlike the movie, however, in the end, the young husband wimped out and divorced the woman, caving in to his rich father's demands. Money talks.

Too bad.

This is something like the odd film out in Russ Meyer's later film career. In no way is it as well crafted as "Vixen", "The Supervixens" or "Beneath the Valley of the UltraVixens." Of course it's far superior to "Blacksnake," "The Seven Minuets," or "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." As far as its "plot" is concerned, well, in order to have ANY appreciation of Russ Meyer films in general, you really can't be too concerned with the "plot" to begin with.

What makes this movie worth watching (especially if you're a hetero male) is Raven De La Croix in the role of Margo Winchester. This Beautiful-Busty-Lovely-Dynamo Brunette Chick is IT--the bottom (and TOP) line.

Actually, she's a little over-the-top, but that's part of her charm!

This is Raven's one and only movie for Meyer, and it's a shame that he didn't use her as much as he did Uschi Digart or Kitten Natividad. It is truly a shame that Raven didn't get as many featuring roles as she should have in the 70s and 80s.

As I said in another review, this movie makes for a fine half of a double feature with one of Raven's other movies, "The Lost Empire." You can watch them back to back believing that "Margo Winchester" is just an alias of "Whitestar."

It has been joked about that a remake of this film should be done. Well, only if we can get Salma Hayek to play the part of Margo.

This film makes for one half of a great double bill with Russ Meyer's UP! Both are notable for featuring the 70s-80s lovely-busty brunette, Raven De La Croix. Miss De La Croix should have been a major star of lowbrow cinema. She could have played an ongoing series action-adventure heroine who comes to the rescue, bashes the baddies and comes out on top while being stripped of all her clothing in the process. She really gets better the less she has on, which means that she's PERFECT (and perfectly nude) at the end of UP!

She was quite good as an undercover cop in UP! This wasn't the best of Russ Meyer's movies, but it's worth watching for Raven.

Hers was a lost opportunity, but these two films are available on video.

Present day Republicans decry the so-called "liberal" Hollywood community. They should read the novel that this movie was based on and then contrast it to the movie to see just how Hollywood sucked up to a political position that would be considered "right-wing" today.

The story was a scathing political screed that had been put into the form of a novel. I wish that persons such as Robert MacNamera, Dean Rusk, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, et al had read and understood the novel. If they had, then perhaps America wouldn't have become mired in the Vietnam conflict.

The screenwriters understood all too well the power of the story and its likelihood of offending the conservative point of view. Simply put, the scriptwriters cut the political guts out of the novel when they turned it into a screenplay, giving us merely a sub-standard political thriller.

Read the novel. I just wish that George W. Bush had done so.

True enough, the production values have come down somewhat since SON OF FRANKENSTEIN: the costumes, sets and spfx. One can tell that Universal basically "b-movied" the whole concept of the monster series starting with this one.

Having said that, I think that this movie is still an all-time classic. It's got Lionel Atwill as Bohmer and if that weren't enough, it's got BELA THE GREAT! Ygor was Lugosi's best role--including Dracula! When, in the finale, Lon Chaney's monster speaks, it is with Lugosi's dubbed voice. It's truly one of the most unsettling scenes in the Universal horrors cannon. I don't know why more people haven't commented on it.

The Hollywood film industry has often been accused of ignoring the issue of religious faith. This is probably not because (as some people no doubt think) that the film industry is filled full of Godless Satanists. Rather, it is because filmmakers simply do not wish to offend.

Here is a rare film that has a clergyman as a protagonist. Sterling Hayden portrays the Pastor who has a very deep crisis of faith after his alcoholic wife commits suicide. He finds his way to and around skid row. His Journey is a path to a redemption that he has not actually been seeking.

Thomas Mitchell is great in this as well. Actually, he's doing his Doc Boone act from STAGECOACH all over again.

This film is somewhat underrated, I feel. It has moments of laughter and drama as well. The post-WWII Hell's Kitchen makes for an interesting setting. My main beef with the film as it now exists on video, is that they have cut out Tom Waits' scene when he sang "Annie's Back in Town." Someone should be shot for that.

This is a very interesting film for a variety of reasons. In many ways, it's a CITIZEN KANE knock-off, but sometimes in reverse. We see the reporter who is putting together the story of the great man, but we never see the great man himself. As in "Kane," the ex-wife is an alcoholic singer. There is also a "Rosebud" of sorts-a deathbed obscenity. Well worth watching!

WARNING-SPOILERS! Having looked over the other user comments, I find myself puzzled as to why nobody seems to have come up with a most obvious interpretation of this movie's ending. There are, after all, some clues that so much of this story is only in Mike's imagination. And yet people go on about how the ending is "unrealistic." Well, DUH-UH! (Major Spoiler and my own take on it.) Bobby DOESN'T REALLY EXIST! He never did! He is Mike's IMAGINARY PLAYMATE! It so happens that Mike must let his imaginary playmate go right at the same time that the King is arrested, and so the two events come together in Mike's mind. Well, that's my two cent's worth.