Secret File: Hollywood

Got this movie in the Mill Creek 200 cult cinema box set. Wasn't expecting much and didn't get it either.

A tale of scandal, blackmail and murder. Down on his luck PI get involved in the scummy underworld of Hollywood dirt rags. But did he get in over his head?

Alright movie not great not horrible. I wouldn't run out to see it but kept my interest. If you have it might as well give it a look. There is a lot worse out there.

Coming at the fag end of the panic caused in Hollywood by the squalid revelations in the mid-50's by 'Confidential' magazine, the victim this time round is "one of Hollywood's most talented directors" a fellow named James Cameron (played by John Warburton).

The film boasts a Dr.Mabuse-like 'Mr.Big' who communicates with his operatives via tape-recordings, and brunette Francine York (looking barely a day younger in her film debut than she did in the 70's) and blonde Maralou Gray are a chic, foxy pair of chicks. But even though I soon ceased to care I figured out 'Mr.Big's identity long before the conclusion and the succession of drably lit, unimaginatively staged scenes of people talking had worn me down.

If director Rudolph Cusumano (using the pseudonym Ralph Cushman) had just moved his camera in a little closer to the action more often, the lively performance given by the camera boom would have been less detectable, but the film might have been duller still.

After a bar room brawl ends in the accidental fatal shooting of a woman, a private investigator finds himself barred from doing any further business. Soon he finds himself in debt and with gangsters hovering about looking for their money, so he decides to accept a sleazy job taking incriminating photos of celebrities for a Hollywood gossip rag. Before long he comes to realise that his new work is being used as leverage for blackmail and even worse events follow.

Secret File: Hollywood does have a half-way interesting premise for a movie and one which remains pretty topical today given the public's continual obsession with gossip magazines and celebrity shenanigans. Despite the promise in the set-up, the film itself is only okay at best though. It's not terribly exciting and it sort of drags despite its short running time.

This is a movie that will have your jaws dropping!! For half the movie, you can see the bottom of the boom microphone and in some shots, THE ENTIRE BOOM MIC IS IN VIEW!! Also within this bad movie are people in a viewing room who are reviewing a bad movie. Definitely a movie that will have your head spinning!! This was a movie that the guys at MST3k would have had a field day roasting.....

After becoming involved in a bar room shooting incident somewhere around L. A, deadbeat private eye Maxwell Carter (Robert Clarke) loses his snooping ticket and suddenly find himself out of work. With a couple of months back rent to pay on his sleazy dump of an office and a mean bookie on his tail who won't take "no" for an answer in regard to some outstanding pony debts, Maxie boy has to come up with some serious cash - pronto.

Enter Nan Torr (Francine York), the luscious, smartly - tailored editor of a cheap-jack scandal rag called (you guessed it) "Secret File Hollywood". Now, this is where the whole thing gets really exciting.

It just so happens that the serpent-like Nan (who stares out at the world through a pair of phony black-rimmed glasses) is a good pal of "Hap" Grogan, the bookie 'oom Max is into for about three grand.

To the sound of a sexy saxophone (or is it a trombone ?) smoldering away in the background, Miss TNT slides into Max's miserable hole in the wall and starts to whisper something about a high paying job.

Badly hung-over from a night on the sauce, its takes our hero a moment to get a hook on Nan's batty proposition. Turns out that it's a pretty shady assignment even by Max's lowly standards. Clear away all the bells and whistles and what it gets right down to is blackmail. In short, Nan wants the poor slob to take some compromising photos of a famous(and married) Hollywood director. Of course, Nan will take care of all the staging. All Max has to do is stand in the bushes and snap away at the right moment with his 35mm SLR.

But things rapidly get out of hand and blackmail soon turns to murder and suicide (one of each). Before long, however, we come to learn that neither Nan nor the gun-toting Grogan are the real brains behind the operation. They actually take their orders from a mysterious "Mr Big" -someone whom they have never personally met (he gives them their instructions via tape recorded messages).

Anyway, as utterly desperate as he may be, murder just isn't Max's style and, bein' the kinda guy that he is, he decides to blow the lid "clean 'awf" the whole stinkin' racket.

Although listed as having been made in 1962, those who care about such things will note that there are no cars later than '59 models in any of the street scenes.

The boom mike does, indeed, frequently appear at the top of the frame -something that was not unusual in bargain basement movies of the period. Several of the sets look like they were cobbled together for a school play in a really bad part of town. When the bulky Hap Grogan flops down onto an "expensive" chair in Nan's "luxury apartment", the hap-less piece of furniture makes a terrible stress related noise, much akin to the kind of racket that one might expect to hear from a twisting suspension bridge immediately prior to its collapse.

Despite all its faults, however, this creaky little gem does have a certain grotesque charm and I'll always have fond memories of watching it on Channel 9's "Night Owl Theatre" many moons ago.