Cover of The Prince of Darkness (Plantagenet 4)

Was King John of England, who died in 1216, an evil king?  Jean Plaidy wrote about him in her 1978 novel, The Prince of Darkness, and to her the answer is certainly yes.  It is not long before the book ends that John is forced to sign Magna Carta; before this he demonstrates not only how famously hot-tempered he is but also how infernally cruel, feckless, lustful and selfish.

The novel’s England can barely withstand the royal immorality here, and near the end the nation hits the skids, though not hopelessly.  The Prince of Darkness is gripping and engrossing, even if sometimes Plaidy nearly loses control of her sentences.  I don’t think there’s a shortage of historical accuracy either.

A 64-minute silent film, Hell’s Hinges (1916) is a Western released only a couple of decades after the Old West had faded away.

A Protestant preacher, accompanied by his Protestant sister, is sent to a western town to start a church.  The many reprobate men there resist this church-planting and hope to discredit the preacher, not a very hard task since Parson Henley is probably the weakest Christian on the face of the earth.  But gunslinger Blaze Tracy (William S. Hart) ain’t weak.  This evil fellow falls in love with the preacher’s sister and, possibly blessed with God working on him, wants to reform.  And does, though not without literally fighting fire with fire.

This Charles Swickard-directed short can be exciting and, in some ways, lovable.  Tragic too.

It is perhaps only via the DVD set called Treasures From American Film Archives that Hell’s Hinges can be seen on disc.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Re the writing by John August, Tim Burton‘s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) is not much of a movie version of Roald Dahl’s humanity-scolding book.  The final few minutes go nowhere, and Charlie (Freddie Highmore) is a somewhat hollow character.  Burton’s imagination exceeds his intelligence, yet . . . we love him anyway, right?  His Charlie is spellbinding, with perfect razzle dazzle and effective humor.  And Johnny Depp playing Willie Wonka as a solitary, sadly neurotic freak.  His acting is more curious than strong, but it is curious, even enticing.

A bratty girl is carried to a garbage chute by industrious squirrels, a candy bar techno-magically replaces the monolith in a shown copy of 2001, an Indian palace made of naught but chocolate melts in the sun—Burton presents it all with expert direction.  My enthusiasm is limited—the film lacks the moral import of the weaker Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, from 1971—but Charlie is boyish poetry.

Cover of The Lemon Drop Kid

A talented Bob Hope stars in The Lemon Drop Kid (1951), and although much of it is funny, I don’t consider it a successful movie.

Hope’s character is a chiseling skunk who is only a little less than a chiseling skunk at the flick’s end.  Naturally he has a girlfriend but the actress who plays her, Marilyn Maxwell, is charmless. . . The movie lacks what marked a lot of American screen farces of the Thirties and early Forties: likable characters and, whether the narratives were any good or not, likable scripts.  The script for It’s a Gift is indifferently plotted but still likable, still palatable.  Those words don’t describe the script for The Lemon Drop Kid.

A Coast Guard boat attempts to rescue the men on a ruined oil tanker in Craig Gillespie‘s based-on-fact Disney film, The Finest Hours (2015), and when nature isn’t unpleasant in one way (a sea storm) it’s unpleasant in another (a blizzard).

Re the blizzard, it’s no holiday for Holliday—Holliday Grainger—when she’s out driving in it, worrying about her man, Joe Coast Guard (Chris Pine), out on the waves.  Here, the movie owes a trifle too much to The Perfect Storm (remember Diane Lane and Mark Wahlberg?), a lesser work, but at any rate there is a dab of visual poetry when the small boat shining a searchlight on the dark tanker is followed by a shot of Grainger’s car as the snowflakes fall.  Mostly, though, there is entertainment to be had.