Sweetheart of the Navy (1937, directed by Duncan Mansfield)

Posted on June 17, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

I watched this movie by accident.

I was looking for Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, an obscure Buster Crabbe film that is nearly impossible to find. I was happy to see that someone had uploaded it to YouTube but then I watched and discovered that, even though the video was entitled Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, they had actually uploaded a movie called Sweetheart of the Navy. I was disappointed but I went ahead and watched because the movie was only 61 minutes long and I needed something to post for today’s review.

In other words, I’ve got no one to blame but myself.

Cecilia Parker plays Joan Whitney, who co-owns a cafe on the harbor. When her business partner runs off, he takes all the money and leaves her with all the bills. Joan has to raise the money to keep her bar open. Her friends, Andy (Cully Richards) and Pete (Don Barclay), decide to stage a fight against the boxing champion of the Navy, Bumper (Jason Robards, Sr., father of the more famous Jason Robards). They recruit the overmatched Eddie Harris (Eric Linden) to fight Bumper and then get all of their friends in the Navy to bet on the fight. Commander Lodge (Roger Imhof) views Eddie has being his protege and tries to change his mind about fighting. Joan tries to convince Eddie to get in the ring.

I may be biased because I was already annoyed that Buster Crabbe wasn’t in this movie but Sweetheart of the Navy was instantly forgettable, creaky, and corny. Forgettable songs, stagey directing, and boxing action that won’t exactly put Rocky to shame, Sweetheart of the Navy took 61 minutes of my life under false pretenses.

And again, I have no one to blame but myself.

The Lawless Nineties (1936, directed by Joseph Kane)

Posted on April 7, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1890 and Wyoming is on the verge of voting for statehood. Newspaperman Major Carter (George “Gabby” Hayes) believes that it’s time for Wyoming to become a state and most of the locals agree with him. Businessman Charles Plummer (Harry Woods) does not want Wyoming to become a state and he’s willing to send out his main henchman, Steele (Al Bridge), to intimidate the voters and to silence Carter. Plummer has a profitable racket going and the last thing he wants is for the U.S. government to get involved in his activities. It falls to two federal agents, John Tipton (John Wayne) and Bridger (Lane Chandler), to supervise the voting and protect the citizen. When Major Carter is shot by a drunk anti-statehood activist, the mission to make Wyoming a part of the Union becomes personal.

The Lawless Nineties is typical of the B-movies that John Wayne made for Republic Pictures before John Ford resurrected his struggling career by casting him as The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach. There are plenty of gunfights and horse chases and explosions as the bad guys try to keep the townspeople from voting and the federal agents set up their own sting operation to expose Plummer’s gang. Wayne seems more relaxed here than he did in some of his other B-movies. He was obviously getting more comfortable with being on camera and playing the hero. Probably the most interesting thing about this film is that Gabby Hayes (credited as George Hayes, without his famous nickname) plays the renowned and intelligent Major Carter. Hayes was just a year away from establishing himself as a perennial B-movie sidekick and supplier comedy relief. He would soon be best-known for playing characters who had little in common with the intelligent and well-spoken Major Carter. In The Lawless Nineties, Hayes gets a chance to play something other than the comedic relief and turns out to be petty good at it.

This is another one of those westerns that will be enjoyed by fans of the genre. It’s nothing special but it does allow Wayne to show hints of his future stardom and it also gives Gabby Hayes a chance to show what he was actually capable of.

Horror Film Review: Son of Dracula (dir by Robert Siodmak)

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Did you know that Count Dracula had a son?

Well, maybe he did or maybe he didn’t. It all depends on how you interpret the 1943 film, Son of Dracula. In Son of Dracula, Lon Chaney, Jr. plays a vampire named Count Alucard. I get the feeling that it’s supposed to be a shocking moment when it’s pointed out that Alucard is Dracula spelled backwards but, since the movie is called Son of Dracula, I would think that most people would have already figured out the connection.

That said, when Alucard reveals that his true name is Dracula, he seems to be suggesting that he is the original Count Dracula. And yet the name of the film is Son of Dracula. At one point, two characters speculate that Alucard is a descendant of the original, just to be corrected by his bride. “He is Dracula!” she announces. Then again, she could just be bragging. If you’re going to marry a Dracula, wouldn’t you rather marry the original than a descendant?

If he is the original Dracula, you do have to wonder why he’s still alive. Since the film is a part of the Universal Dracula series, you have to wonder how he managed to survive being both staked by Van Helsing and having his body cremated by his daughter in Dracula’s Daughter. You also can’t help but notice that Alucard doesn’t bear much of a resemblance to Bela Lugosi. nor does he have a European accent. Instead, Alucard looks a lot like Lon Chaney, Jr. Chaney does not make for the most convincing vampire. As an actor, Chaney tended to project a certain “likable but dumb lug” quality that worked well for The Wolf Man and as Lenny in Of Mice and Men but it doesn’t quite work when he’s cast as a suave, Hungarian vampire.

Anyway, Son of Dracula finds Count Alucard in New Orleans at the turn of the century. He has specifically moved to the Deep South so that he can be with Katherine Caldwell (Louise Allbritton), a young woman who is obsessed with the occult. Katherine secretly marries Alucard. When her former boyfriend, Frank (Robert Paige), finds out about the marriage he decides that the best way to handle way things would be to get drunk and shoot the count. Unfortunately, since the Count is a vampire, the bullet passes through him and kills Katherine instead.

Or does it!?

Probably the most interesting thing about Son of Dracula is that it presents Alucard as being manipulated by a mortal. Usually, Dracula is the one doing the manipulating but in Son of Dracula, it’s suggested that a clever mortal can manipulate the undead jut as easily. GO KATHERINE!

Anyway, Son of Dracula is okay. It has some steamy deep south atmosphere and it’s fun in a campy, Universal sort of way. It has some historical significance because it was apparently the first film to actually feature a vampire transforming into a bat onscreen. For the most part, though, it’s a film that will best be appreciated by Universal horror completists.

That said, I kind of like the fact that nobody in the film could figure out that Alucard is Dracula spelled backwards. That was cute.