Pawn
(2013/Anchor Bay Blu-ray w/DVD)/Philo
Vance Murder Case Collection (1930 – 1940/MGM/First National/Warner Archive
DVD set)/Spies Of Warsaw (2013
British TV Mini-Series/BBC Blu-ray)
Picture: B-
& C+/C+/B- Sound: B- &
C+/C+/B- Extras: C-/C-/C Main
Programs: C-/B-/C
PLEASE NOTE: The Philo Vance Murder Case Collection is only available from
Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the
link below.
Mystery
and suspense are not easy to do, but these days, filmmakers and their TV
counterparts don’t always even try or substitute those aspects for
trickery. Here are three new releases
that show us the range of this…
David A.
Armstrong’s Pawn (2013) is a violent
thriller that is more about being self-impressed with its script twists and
thinking it is on top of every con game you can think of than actually telling
a story of any substance, made worse by wasting some good actors. A group of men invade a diner and hold everyone
hostage, but a cop (Forest Whittaker) comes in for a break and unknowingly
interrupts the criminals. Their leader
(Michael Chiklis with an accent that is either angry British or Irish or maybe
both) wants it all, but things start to go wrong, a few people are up to no
good in ways not immediately apparent and it gets worse… for us the viewers as
much as any character.
Common
(who we just saw in the mess called Luv)
is a cop trying to resolve the hostage situation and with a cast that also
includes Stephen Lang, Sean Farris, Nikki Reed and poor Ray Liotta playing in
the same genre, the actors and even some elements were here to make this
work. However, this never does, is
everything you have seen before and seems longer than its 88 minutes of screen
time.
Yawn.
A brief
Behind The Scenes featurette is the only extra.
After
Sherlock Holmes, it is up in the air who the moist film-adapted literary
detective is, though if we had to consider who might have had the most
adaptations by different studios, runner-ups (with or with TV included) would
include Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Georges Simenon’s
Inspector/Commissioner Maigret and S.S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance. In twelve novels from 1926 – 1939, the Thin Man novelist and creator also gave
us the smartest detective since Holmes with some of the most complex mystery
writing of the time that was way ahead of its time in extensive scientific and
factual detail. A hit radio series, big
selling books and a few later TV projects that did not work out are among the
adaptations. As well, Hollywood wanted to make some hit films out
of the popular novels, but none were able to get a movie series out of it.
Paramount
tried first with three films with future Nick Charles/Thin Man William Powell
as Vance, starting with The Canary
Murder Case in 1929 (it started as a silent film, then became a sound one,
in a trilogy now owned by Universal) in three classy capers in all, a later
1937 Vance film (Night Of Mystery)
with Grant Richards and The Gracie Allen
Murder Case with Allen and Warren William.
PRC made the last three Vance films to this day in 1947 and that was it. Four other studios tried to make it work
including a 1936 British version (no one seems to know where a print is) with
Wilfred Hyde-White as Vance, plus six films from MGM, First National and Warner
Bros. now collected in The Philo Vance
Murder Case Collection DVD set from Warner Archive.
The six
films are as follows…
Released
as Paramount’s
original trilogy was wrapping up, The Bishop
Murder Case (1930, co-directed by David Burton & Nick Grinde) was
released between film’s 2 & 3 and has a very young Basil Rathbone solving a
series of murders based on poetry and chess games. About a decade before becoming the iconic
Sherlock Holmes (these films are always making reference to Holmes for whatever
reasons), Rathbone gives a very different kind of performance as a very smart,
urbane detective with advanced facilities but totally different performance
that works and it is a shame MGM did not hold onto him and make a series with
him in it.
Despite
its age and being an early talkie, this is a fine mystery tale that lays out
the clues very well and effectively, has some fine acting for its time
(including Toland Young and future director Delmer Daves) that is a gem and
worth your time to visit and revisit.
Sound really helped the detective mystery film and this is definitive
proof of that.
Warner
Bros. decided to take a chance on the character and got William Powell to
return to the role he had established at Paramount for The Kennel Murder Case (1933) which is also his last serious
appearance as the character, paired here with future Thin Man co-star Myrna Loy, trying to unravel what a dog show,
locked room and a broken vase has to do with a suicide that might not be
one. Director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) keeps the pace going, but
despite being a solid entry, a little bit of the spirit of the book and
character are lost, yet it is a fine film on its own as it is and one of the
best-realized adaptations to date.
Eugene
Pallette (playing Sgt/Detective Heath as he had in the trilogy with Powell at Paramount) and Ralph
Morgan also star.
Pallette
continued on in The Dragon Murder Case
(1934) with Warren William as Vance in who I feel was the only actor I thought
really did not click with the role. Made
as a major production at First National Pictures before Warner bought the
studio out, this is a tale that has not dated well as a man disappears after a
swim with friends one evening that brings Vance in as three jump in but only
two come out. One man disappears. Where did he go? Is He dead?
Is it a killer dragon that is really on the loose?
The
characters ready to accept a monster too soon is one of the many issues I had
with this mixed adaptation, though Director H. Bruce Humberstone (who moved on
to direct some of the best early Charlie Chan films at Fox with what he has). Future Burns & Allen and Ed wood alumni Lyle
Talbot also stars along with a decent cast and William was later Vance (as
noted above) only one more time in the very comical Gracie Allen Murder Case back at Paramount which was based on an
actual novel, but had a mixed result.
The film
that holds up as well as any in the set is Edwin L. Marin’s The Casino Murder Case (1935) with Paul
Lukas as a terrific Vance for MGM, who once again hold an actor in the role for
only one film, but what a film as a note about a murder that will take place at
a local casino drags him into a family conflict and plenty of dysfunction and
motives as he has to sort out the case before the authorities take it
seriously, with the beautiful Doris (a young Rosalind Russell in prime form) in
a very strong entry.
Ted Healy
takes over as Heath, Leo G. Carroll is great in an early role as a butler and
this one manages to hold onto the charm and spirit of the early films and books
while still having the pace of The Kennel
Murder Case. And that is a young
William Demerest as an Auctioneer, while Lukas continued in a great career that
included the 1935 RKO Three Musketeers,
Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (now on restored
Blu-ray from Criterion), the Bob Hope comedy Ghost Breakers (1940), 55
Days At Peking and Sol Madrid
showing what a great fit he was in genre films and much more. We lost out again.
MGM tried
again with The Garden Murder Case (1936)
and actor Edmund Lowe was not bad at all as Vance, but the film was only an
hour long, was too comical and despite some good moments could have been
better. Too bad MGM sold the book short,
yet the cast that includes Nat Pendleton as Heath, Virginia Bruce, Gene Lockhart
and Kent Smith keeps this one going.
Edwin L. Marin was even back as director, but MGM folded on the
character, but that was not the end.
Calling Philo Vance (1940) was directed by William
Clemens and has James Stevenson as a passable Vance in this too-soon of a
remake of The Kennel Murder Case now
set in pre-WWII Europe with overtones of
Nazism afoot with the Warner Brothers themselves the first studio heads to want
to deal with the issue. Shorter, slicker
and somehow more dated than the William Powell version, it is a nice attempt to
update it, but it is just not as convincing, falls flat, runs barely over an
hour and Warner folded on the character at this point too. Oh, and that is future Superman George Reeves
as a clerk on the steamship.
We hope
to see more Vance on DVD and even Blu-ray, but this is a solid set and a must
for anyone serious about filmmaking and mystery thrillers. Trailers for the latter 3 Vance films are the
only extras here, sadly, but you can always start reading the books in order!
So maybe
if we go to reliable British TV, we’ll find better period success with a
pre-WWII thriller. Unfortunately, Spies Of Warsaw (2013) with former
Doctor Who David Tennant, a British TV Mini-Series from the BBC, has him
playing a French official setting up help-lines and missions against the Nazis
before the war breaks out, but they are already up to their murderous
intents. In two parts at 3 hours, I had
hoped this might be effective and challenging, but was shocked at the
sloppiness, cheating and technical inaccuracies that plague this production.
The Nazis
come across as a tad too nice and clichéd, while Tennant is not bad, he only
partly shakes off his Who past. The cast
of mostly unknowns (save Julian Glover as a veteran official he reports to at a
time) are not bad, but this all comes across as flat, plastic, underproduced
and not effectively directed at all. I
thought this might pick up in the second half, but after a cliffhanger between
installments that was lame, it never did.
Fans of Tennant might like it, but even he could not save it.
The only
extra is a piece with Tennant on camera on the production.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Pawn and 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Spies are about even as HD shoots with
their own approaches to cutting and degraded images, neither of which helps
them in long run and issues on both include detail and some motion blur. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on
the Pawn DVD is softer and lacks the
color of the better moments on the Blu-ray.
The 1.33 X 1 black and white images on the six prints of the Vance films may show their age at times
and not always be sharp as expected, but they all look like real monochrome
film and are the best the films have looked on home video ever. I like the cinematography on all the films,
despite the different approaches from the different decades, as well as changes
in shooting and film stocks.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Pawn should be the sonic winner here, but sound is more often towards
the front speakers than expected and sounds even worse on the lossy Dolby
Digital 5.1 DVD version. The DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo lossless on Spies
has some Pro Logic surrounds, is as well recorded and as warm, if also not
perfect can match the 5.1 film in all around playability. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the six Vance films can show their age,
especially the background noise on Bishop,
which needs some cleaning up, but are decent otherwise though captions would
have helped in a few moments where dialogue is unclear.
To order The Philo Vance Murder Case Collection,
go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
