Dynamite

I've seen many, many similar movies like "Dynamite". The only big difference is that the others were better! This isn't surprising since the film is a Pine-Thomas production and their movies are generally below average to fair B-movies.

The film is about powder monkeys...men whose job it is to use dynamite to clear rock for roads and other construction. It begins with one of the guys accidentally blowing himself up...and throughout the film LOTS of these guys blow themselves up! They seem to be the most incompetent idiots imaginable!! The big controversy in this one is that the son of the dead man at the beginning is apparently REALLY dumb, as he's nearly finished with an engineering degree but quits to become a powder monkey.

The film has terrible dialog, mostly third-string actors and simply has been done many, many times before...and better each time. A dull and silly little film.

Typical plot, used in various other movies. William Gargan is a dynamite contractor who has his eyes on pretty little Virginia Welles. Richard Crane joins the team, and a feud breaks out between Crane and Gargan for Welles. When there is a mine cave-in, Gargan is forced to help rescue Crane.

Ok acting, OK script. Pure programmer. Little kids might like the movie for the dynamite scenes.

Story of miners, blasting dynamite in the mountains. The picture and sound quality are pretty bad. Clearly, people have been making copies of copies, and it just gets worse each time. Of course, miners and dynamiting are dangerous occupations. Right away, we see someone get blasted to bits. Can the company survive on what little business they are getting? And a truck full of explosives loses its brakes and crashes. A side story of the men fighting over mary (virginia welles, the one who isn't married to orson welles). Some humor when they call the stew "filet mignon"... and "filet mulligan". Love the reference to lighting the brandy on the plum pudding... my mother used to do that to the plum pudding she made at christmas also! Quite the old-time reference. This film is ok. Not much suspense... seems to be a lesson in a "what not to do" manual while drilling for minerals. Or just find a safer profession. Directed by william pine, who died young at 59. He and partner william thomas were called "the dollar bills", since they produced many films under budget and on time for paramount pictures. Izzokay.

Here's another B picture from producers William Pine and William Thomas. Around Paramount, they were called the Dollar Bills, because their movies never lost money. They relied on tried-and-true stories, performers that could be gotten for a reasonable price -- here Irving Bacon is fourth-billed, and he doesn't even get bitten by a dog.

Richard Crane decides that if he's going to become an engineer, he needs to understand high explosives, and the best way to learn is on an explosives crew. So he goes to work for William Gargan, who has a pretty daughter, Virginia Wells. Young love, and things that go boom: a perfect combination for the movies. Having other old pros like Douglas Dumbrille, Lane Chandler, and Jason Robards Sr. Must have sped up the shoot. It's a typical, watchable programmer from the firm.

In the 1940s, the Pine-Thomas production unit (releasing through Paramount) specialized in low-budget black-and-white adventures about the military, aviation, and various rugged occupations with titles such as ALASKA HIGHWAY, POWER DIVE, FLYING BLIND, WILDCAT, AERIAL GUNNER, MINESWEEPER, THE NAVY WAY, HIGH EXPLOSIVE, TIMBER QUEEN, HIGH POWERED, SWAMP FIRE and HOT CARGO. Most of these films mixed shots of the actors in cramped studio interiors with stock footage of actual military maneuvers or industrial activity. DYNAMITE (1949), was the last of the industry-themed series and something of a throwback to the early 1940s as the Pine-Thomas team soon moved into medium-budget Technicolor adventures set in the old west or in more exotic climes, as indicated by such titles as EL PASO, HONG KONG, TRIPOLI, JAMAICA RUN, CARIBBEAN, TROPIC ZONE, and SANGAREE.

DYNAMITE focuses on a four-man/one-woman contracting team who lay the groundwork for bridge and tunnel construction by dynamiting through solid rock in advance of the actual construction crews. It follows the standard formula of these films with tensions on the job between an older worker and a younger man and rivalry over a woman between the same. Here, the older, more experienced hand is "Gunner" Peterson, played by William Gargan, and his rival is a smoother, college-educated newcomer, Johnny, played by Richard Crane. Virginia Welles plays Mary, the daughter of the crew supervisor, Jake (Irving Bacon), and it's obvious she thinks of Gunner, whom she's known all her life, as more of a big brother than a potential mate, and is clearly more enamored of the dashing and aggressive Johnny. The remaining crew member is old-timer Hard Rock (Frank Ferguson). Eventually, a dispute on the job between Gunner and Johnny leads to tragedy.

There seems to be less stock footage and more actual location footage involving the cast members than was usual for these films. The caves they film in look a lot bigger than the quarries found in Bronson Canyon in Hollywood's Griffith Park, the usual go-to location when caves were needed for a shot. There's even a bonafide action scene that qualifies as something of a car and truck chase as one vehicle's occupants try to rescue the driver of a truck with loose brakes.

The most significant element of this film for me was the casting of character actors Irving Bacon and Frank Ferguson as crew members. These men normally played much smaller parts, with Bacon usually cast as soda jerks, proprietors or storekeepers or, more famously, in the long-running Blondie series as the mailman on Dagwood's street, and Ferguson often cast as a reporter in a crowd or as various officials or men who sat behind desks and counters. Here they are active participants in the dynamiting work and appear in scenes throughout most or all of the film. For them, these must have been very meaty roles indeed. Also, Douglas Dumbrille plays the construction supervisor who gives them a job and is on site during all their work as well. He often played villains, usually sitting behind a desk, so this was a chance for him to get out into the field and play an active—and sympathetic--role as well. Of the younger cast members, Richard Crane deserves singling out for going on to play TV's Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

DYNAMITE was the last of five features directed by co-producer William H. Pine himself. (I've seen two of the others, AERIAL GUNNER and SWAMP FIRE.) As Pine and his partner, William C. Thomas, nicknamed the "Dollar Bills," moved into higher-budget features from 1949 on, the directing was most often assigned to Lewis R. Foster or Edward Ludwig, although occasional name directors did one feature apiece for them, including Joseph Losey, Nicholas Ray and Phil Karlson.