"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1941)

This film version of Robert Louis Stevenson's tale of a scientist's experiments with mind and body transformations via a laboratory potion was castigated and an embarrassing flop on it's initial release.
Many thought Spencer Tracy's two character performance was hammy and hamfisted. He even thought it would ruin his career! It's time for a rewrite. Let's start with the production. It got the full luxe MGM treatment.There's nothing like fog-blanketed Victorian London to set a moody tone and here you get those eerie cobblestoned passageways with a murderous cloaked madman flitting about the barred parks and side streets like a superhuman acrobat. Chillingly beautiful. And then the cast: Tracy brings a nuanced interpretation to the halved protagonist, more psychological than Freddie Kruger scary. Stevenson's idea of Everyman being a receptacle of Good and Evil is ratcheted up another Freudian notch. The Evil is our id, sexual repression leads to beastly carnality. The good doctor is torn between his virginal fiance, Lana Turner as a dewey Victorian Barbie doll, and the lustier bad girl, Ingrid Bergman as a hotly-totsy barmaid garbling a dubious Cockney accent. Each woman toys with his inner urges (given how stunningly beautiful they're filmed by lensman Joseph Ruttenberg, is it any wonder?) and each summons up that creepy ol' Mr. Hyde in some disturbing shock moments. But if there's one reason to see how legendary director Victor Fleming spins the yarn, it's in the Jekyll-to-Hyde mutation sequences. The images that are careening thru Jekyll's brain are so bizarro you wonder "How did this get past the Hayes office??" Need I say more than Tracy flogging two horses with a whip, one white, one black, who morph into galloping naked Turner and Bergman? If that doesn't get you to watch this underrated classic I don't know what will.

"Sea Wife" (1957)

What is it about survivors lost at sea in a lifeboat that makes for good movie watching? It must be the enormity of powerful Mother Nature bearing down on those little people trying to eke out an existence despite all odds. We know someone--probably not all--will survive, so there's an element of suspense. Of course there's always little or no food or water, the unbearable sun, the long stretches of tedium where all you have to do is discuss Life...and don't forget sharks! It's all here as four strangers from a torpedoed steamship during WWII bob along in the Indian Ocean in a rubber raft...a beautiful young woman (Joan Collins), a British army officer (Richard Burton), a boorish racist of a businessman (Basil Sydney), and black seaman (Cy Grant). Things get steamier as Burton falls in love with Collins but she's got a Very Big Secret. You have to watch and see if he finds out what she's hiding before the castaways get rescued. (And do please overlook some of the special effects, they're a mite 1950's cheesy). In case you're wondering, Burton and Collins don't wed on the high seas, the title refers to an old sailor's term for mermaid, the men's nickname for La Joan when she takes a dip over the vessel's side.

"Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" (1957)

John Huston directed this quasi remake of his very own "The African Queen". If the formula works, why mess with it? Here we have another two character adventure story with a prim woman and a rough around the edges man thrown together into hyper survival mode in an exotic locale during wartime. A nun (Deborah Kerr) and marine (Robert Mitchum) are the only castaways on a remote island in the South Pacific during WWII. Two polar opposites, they befriend each other and learn to survive even when the Japs land and takeover the island. Things get even knottier/naughtier as Mitchum starts falling for Kerr. Great suspense and terrific chemistry between the two leads (this is the first of four films they made together). Mitchum's own favorite of all his roles.

"The Rose Tatoo" (1955)

Remember that episode of "I Love Lucy" where Lucy schemes to get a part in an Italian movie and she wants to emulate those lusty Italian actresses of the day so she ends up getting inspiration by stomping grapes in a vineyard? Well, Anna Magnani was one of those prime leading ladies of Italian neo-realism cinema and this movie brought that sensibility to Hollywood. It's a fine adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play (he did the screenplay), and he wrote the piece with Magnani in mind. How different she must have seemed from all the perfectly made-up and coiffed actresses of the time! Loud, unkempt, zoftig, with a face far from classically beautiful, she's totally refreshing and unforgettable. No wonder she walked away with Academy Award Best Actress honors that year. And if you come expecting Williams' usual mix of Southern Gothic sturm und drang told in poetic purple language, think again. This story of emotionally closed off widow opening herself up to a younger new love is happier and lighter in tone, an opera buffa set on the steamy Gulf Coast. Burt Lancaster is the clownish new paramour serving up a character you almost want to hate he's trying so hard to be likable, but before long he wins Magnani (and you) over. Yes, there's a lot of symbolism flying around--not one, but FOUR characters sport the title skin art--but with acting this good, all shown off in Oscar winner James Wong Howe's nuanced black and white cinematography, you'll go along for the earthy ride.

"Broken Lance" (1954)

An excellent cast in a re-telling of King Lear set in the Old West.  As in any version of this tragedy, it's all about the old man, and here it's a standout performance by Spencer Tracy as an ornery old cuss of a cattleman trying to deal with the sharp rattlesnake's tooth of his thankless children. But it's not a brood of daughters bickering over control of the ponderosa, it's four sons (Robert Wagner, Hugh O'Brian, Earl Holliman, and the eldest Richard Widmark). Tracy is effortless, by turns mean, stubborn, frightening, and tender (especially in his scenes with his Indian wife, the lovely Katy Jurado and his youngest half-breed son, his "Cordelia", the almost too handsome Wagner). And to thicken the plot's stew, Tracy must deal with a big mining company who is poisoning his land's water and has the state's shifty governor (E.G. Marshall) in its back pocket. A topnotch production  with director Edward Dmytryk making fine use of the widescreen Cinemascope vistas, plus a rousing western score by Leigh Harline.

"49th Parallel" (1941)

To some degree, all WWII movies made before and during the war are propaganda pieces. If the Allies didn't win the battle in the end there was always hope to fight another day. This engrossing thriller is of the latter kind but with a twist: the POV of the protagonists is of the Germans. A U-boat has made its way across the Atlantic to attack Canada's Hudson Bay. The sub is bombed and sunk but six survivors led by a hissable Lieutenant (Eric Portman) have the delusional idea that if they just march on across the continent they'll somehow get to Vancouver to be saved by the Japanese!
It turns into  road picture as they encounter (and terrorize) various types of Canadian citizens along the way...eskimos, lumberjacks, religious Hutterites, Indians, Mounties. Some are played by big name British talent in showy cameos. There's Laurence Olivier as a French Canadian lumberjack doing a wince-inducing Blacque Jacque Shellacque accent, Lesley Howard as an art loving writer, and Raymond Massey as a Canadian soldier. And while the agitprop is laid on pretty thick (one of the main goals was to foster American sympathy for the war effort), it all works because of the suspenseful setpieces where those likable Canadians keep outwitting the nasty Nazis. Who doesn't love kicking Jerry ass? Plus there's a simply gorgeous score by classical composer Ralph Vaughn Williams, his first of several for the cinema. Also look for a teenage Glynnis Johns as one of the Hutterite maidens.

"Gun Crazy" (1950)

This justifiably famous cult noir is the grandaddy of all "young lover criminals on the lam" movies. Without it there would be no "Bonnie and Clyde", no "Badlands", no "Natural Born Killers". And although those stories pushed the boundaries of the scary mix of sex with violence, this tight, low budget character study still has the power to disturb and seem evergreen 65 years later. It's a simple plot: two aimless and alienated young people meet, fall in love, and begin a life of crime, leaving a murderous path in their wake before society sadly brings them down. The twist here is all in the title, the couple (John Dall and Peggy Cummins, both excellent), are each expert sharpshooters. Guns and gunplay are eroticized for these two walking ids. Shooting and killing are their sexual release. Credit goes to director Joseph H. Lewis for taking a B movie premise and pushing it into a bigger statement about America's fascination with firearms that's still sadly relevant today. Look for the famous long take bank heist with the two leads in cowboy outfits(!) Just terrific filmmaking.