Dick Tracy, Detective (1945) - Comic to Movie #1

Comic to Movie Introduction

Movies based on comic books have reached quite the zenith in the last ten or so years. I mean, they've always been a big part in what's playing at a theater in near you. And lately, new aspects in telling comic book stories on the big screen have been imagined and executed. Some have been majorly successful. Others, disastrous and forgettable. Nowadays, the concept of a "cinematic universe" is the trend to be tried in Hollywood thanks in large part to Marvel Comic's various movies based on their heroes and villains.

Some comic book based movies changed the genre and created new standards and imagery for audiences such as Tim Burton's Batman (1989). His movie made the caped crusader a darker, grittier, and split character. General audiences at the time, especially those who weren't comic book readers, were more familiar with the campy colorful television version of Batman.

Even the most recent film Dick Tracy showed audiences that a film based on a comic strip can be a colorful production and a visual explosion unlike anything seen before. 

But this genre of movie didn't just start with Superman (1978) or even with early comic book based serials like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century that played in air conditioned theaters our parents and grandparents told us about. In my search for such movies, I found some dating back to the silent era. Others, are adaptations I didn't know existed.
So, in this new year, I'm going to sort through over 30 obscure, forgotten, or overlooked titles based on comic books and comic strips. I'll see which ones still deserve appreciation, and which are better left in the garbage can of comic book cinema - forever disposed like those childhood comics your mom threw away when you moved out of the house. And I'm going to start with a comic that holds a special place in my heart.

Dick Tracy, Detective (1945)

"Who's Splitface?"

Director
William Berke

Cast
Morgan Conway - Dick Tracy
Anne Jeffreys - Tess Trueheart
Mike Mazurki - Alexis "Splitface" Banning
Lyle Latell - Pat Patton

First, Some History
Police Detective Dick Tracy is a character from the comic strip bearing his name created by Chester Gould. Dick Tracy debuted in the Detroit Mirror in 1931. He's based on real life U.S. Federal Agent, Eliot Ness - the prohibition agent who fought to ensure no one in Chicago drank booze, and brought down infamous gangster Al Capone while doing so.
What distinguishes Tracy in pop culture, aside from his yellow trench coat and matching yellow fedora, along with his two-way wrist radio watch, is the strange rogues gallery he's always up against. They're criminals with distinctly odd and loathsome features. Flattop, Itchy, Measles, Rhodent, Pruneface, Ribs...there are literally hundreds of villains in the Dick Tracy-verse spanning decades. Crime is just as ugly on the outside as it is on the inside.
As Hollywood possesses the talent to turn a popular character into a silver screen icon, they took the fictional police detective and made some movies around him. But Tracy's on-screen high point dwindled after the sixties.
The 1945 movie Dick Tracy, Detective wasn't Tracy's first on-screen performance. His film debut was in 1937 with the serial Dick Tracy which consists of 15 chapters. In that series, the detective locks horns with the infamous "Spider Gang" through 15 different cases while also searching for his brother, Gordon.
Other 15-episode serials came out between 1938 and 1941 - Dick Tracy Returns, Dick Tracy's G-Men, and Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc.
The 1945 movie, Dick Tracy, Detective, was the first in a four-part installment of film-noir pulp style movies. It's followed by Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946), Dick Tracy's Dilemma (1947) and perhaps the most famous title of the series, Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947). I say "famous" because the film stars Boris Karloff (Frankenstein) as the villain.
Morgan Conway plays Tracy in the first two films. Ralph Byrd, who played Tracy in the 15-chapter serials, reprises the role in the last two films.

Dick Tracy vs. The Mole (1941)

Of course, I'll be watching all four films in the series, starting with this first.
Tracy also appeared in the TV series, Dick Tracy from 1950 to 1951 starring Byrd once again.
Incidentally, Byrd was always the actor closely associated with the yellow trench coat wearing detective, perhaps until Warren Beatty took the role in 1990.
In 1967, a pilot episode was filmed for a live action Dick Tracy show produced by William Dozier and starring Ray MacDonnell. Dozier also produced the famous TV series Batman. At the time, Batman was suffering from low ratings which was a determining factor in ultimately scrapping Dick Tracy.
Based on the pilot, which can be watched online, it looks as though the Dick Tracy series would have had a similar style to Batman. On a side note, the show would have starred a young Eve Plumb who went on to play Jan Brady on The Brady Bunch. 
The Dick Tracy Show was a short-lived animated series from 1961 to 1962, and includes the voices of Everett Sloane and Mel Blanc.
Though named for Dick Tracy, the show really centers around his detectives fighting against the rogues gallery the comic strip is known for. The only time audiences see Tracy is in the beginning of each cartoon. All Tracy does in each episode is sit behind a desk and hand out assignments.
Also, each detective in the cartoon is a racial stereotype audiences will easily find offensive - Joe Jitsu, Hemlock Holmes, Heap O' Calorie, and Manuel Tijuana Guadalajara Tampico "Go-Go" Gomez, Jr. I think their names pretty much speak for themselves.
Still, I was given the complete set of animated shows for Christmas one year. They carry a little nostalgia for me as they used to air them on a local station out in the Bay Area back in the early 90s when Tracy again surfaced into the spotlight with the movie Dick Tracy starring Warren Beatty and Madonna. I touched upon the movie's impact earlier on this blog.

Why Dick?
I picked an early Dick Tracy film to be my first movie to watch and discuss as I sit through more than 30 titles in what I'm calling "Comic to Movie" because the character holds a special place in my comic-loving heart. I saw the 1990 film upon its theatrical release. I was eight years old, and I became a fan despite not having heard of the detective before then. I looked to my dad, who was very familiar with Dick Tracy, for some history and insight to this new-found hero. Dad was born in 1938 so he was a witness when Tracy was in his heyday.
In fact, I still have my Dick Tracy action figures which were released alongside the Warren Beatty movie. Those toys are a story in and of themselves.
Those are the only toys from my childhood that I managed to save all these years. They were spared the trash can after I moved out of my mom's place, and are still in my possession. Also, with my dad having been a fan of radio serials, and owning various collections of serials on cassettes, Dick Tracy was a favorite of his. I listened to these old radio shows from an era I never lived through. In a word, they're a lot of fun. So, there's definitely a handed-down appreciation and fascination that has stuck with me all these years.

Mike Mazurki as 'Splitface' and Morgan Conway as Dick Tracy.

So, the movie
This is the quintessential film noir crime movie. And for fans of this genre, it being a Dick Tracy story makes it hit home.
Watching Dick Tracy, Detective is like reading a pulp fiction crime novel. Such books aren't meant to be read as pieces of well-written, thought provoking, brilliant literature. They're not. They're a quick escape from reality. You buy the book for a cheap price, You jump in and forget your problems for a good hour or so - however long you need - with your favorite hero in a situation you'd likely never deal with in real life, and then it's business as usual when the book is over. A movie like this is the same kind of experience.
The story doesn't waste time jumping into the action. Nor does it hold back on the seriousness of crime. Murder is murder, and that's what the audience is paying to see.
Dick Tracy, Detective has one murder victim after another.
When a young woman is found dead, it doesn't take Detective Tracy (Morgan Conway) too long to determine the suspect to be escaped convict, Splitface (Mike Mazurki.)
Our antagonist is the epitome of mafioso. He's got a long scar splitting his face from his forehead to his cheek.
Splitface, who escapes from jail, is seeking revenge on anyone who has crossed him someway or another.
As soon as the murderer realizes Tracy is closing in on him, Splitface kidnaps his girlfriend, Tess Trueheart (Anne Jeffreys.)
The film manages to produce great intrigue and drama, though the story line is a simple one, common among classic film noir crime flicks.
Conway plays a decent Tracy who's so wrapped up on fighting crime and solving the mystery at hand while struggling to pay attention to the other important things in his life - his relationship with Tess Trueheart, and just living a life outside his police work.
He plays the detective as being completely sure of himself. He knows he'll solve this crime. So, why worry. When something goes wrong in Tracy's line of thought, it makes it that much more of a serious deal. It's his job and his version of Tracy takes it straight to heart.
Otherwise, the plot is cut and dry. You know what to expect overall. Still, the intrigue is there and enough to grab audiences attention.
It's a fun film, and a trip into an era I never lived through but still enjoy. The noir style is so ingrained in American culture that it's still familiar. I look forward to the next in the series. 

Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe (1990)

You're a good person, Tommy. You can learn to control your power. You can speak.

Director
Damian Lee

Cast
Jesse Ventura - Abraxas
Sven-Ole Thorsen - Secundus
Marjorie Bransfield - Sonia Murray

I never heard of the 1990 movie Abraxes, Guardian of the Universe until a few months ago when I reviewed the Jim Belushi movie, The Principal. 
These two completely different movies have one thing in common. Belushi's character, Rick Latimer, from The Principal, has a cameo. That was about the only part I found interesting and enjoyable in this flick.
Otherwise, this movie felt like it was loosely pulling inspiration from Terminator in that an intergalactic bad guy from a different planet is on earth trying to kill a kid while an intergalactic good guy is trying to prevent that from happening. And the bad guy talks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. That might be due to the fact the actor playing the bad guy was born in Denmark (though, Arnold is from Austria.) The bad guy also has lines that were clear attempts at a catch phrase similar to "I'll be back" from Terminator. (i.e. "Have a nice day" .)  Again, I said "loosely."
I had to watch a version uploaded on a private channel on YouTube. I couldn't find a DVD copy. So, the quality in picture and sound was a little off, but I'm sure the movie, timed at an hour and a half, was complete.
The movie centers around two intergalactic police officers, Secundus (Sven-Ole Thorsen) and Abraxas (Jesse Ventura), from the planet Sargacia.
They're also known as "finders," and their race is similar to humans.
Like other finders, they both have an internal "answer box" which is also a scanner and a communicator. They use this internal device to test for what they call the "anti-life equation."
Though I don't believe this movie is based on any comic book story, the "anti-life equation" can be found in DC Comics where the villain Darkseid uses it to find sentient beings and control their minds. I couldn't determine if that was the same case with the equation in this movie or not.
Anyhow, in an effort to gain omnipotent powers and immortality, Secundus travels to Earth and looks for a "child producing member of the human race" (i.e. a woman) to impregnate with his offspring. He knocks up the first woman he finds, Sonia Murray (Marjorie Bransfield) by merely placing his open hand over her stomach. A glow emanates from his palm. And presto! A baby!
The offspring is meant to become "the comater" who will grow up to be a dangerous heir to Secundus, and the one who will figure out the answer to the anti-life equation.
Abraxas traps Secundus in order for the other intergalactic police to arrest him.
Just before she's about to deliver this child within minutes of becoming pregnant, Abraxas is ordered to destroy her before she actually gives birth. The clock is ticking down from minutes to seconds, and Abraxas can't bring himself to carry out the order. So, he let's her and the baby live.
Sonia quickly decides to keep the child, and with no shock or emotion at just conceiving and delivering him within the span of a few minutes.
She takes the baby home to her parents, who become angry at her for not knowing who the father is. They, too, are void of shock that she suddenly had a baby without ever showing signs of being pregnant.

Jesse Ventura as Abraxas.

Five years later, Sonia's son Tommy is a boy who looks older than five, and doesn't speak.
He possesses telekinetic powers, which are shown, but never really dealt with and don't serve much a purpose.
Secundus  meanwhile escapes from his prison, travels to Earth, and pursues Tommy. Abraxas in turn attempts to locate Secundus in order to destroy him before he reaches Tommy.
There's a lot of pseudo-scientific jargon thrown around and repeated, and even more story exposition in the form of Abraxas's narration right up to the end credits. The movie should have the title Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe: Jesse Ventura Will Tell You All About It. It throws the rule "show, don't tell" straight out the window. He speaks over nearly every scene from beginning to end, telling us what we could easily figure out by watching.
This, mixed with terrible scripted acting, especially from Ventura, makes the movie drawn out and boring.
Ventura has no emotion in his face, his body language, nor in his delivery. Watching soap bubbles pop one by one when doing dishes is more intriguing and generally fun to watch than Jesse Ventura's acting in Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe. The only sign he has personality here is the thin ponytail he sports in the film.
And much of the dialogue from Thorsen seems juvenile and amateur.
The intrigue, the SciFi story line, and the action isn't enough to stimulate my interest even by accident.

Sven-Ole Thorson as Secundus.

By the half-way point of the story, I found this movie to be painfully slow. I don't use that term loosely here. When I say painful, I mean it.
One particular scene left me feeling uncomfortable. In that scene, Abraxas is staying at Sonia and Tommy's place. It's night and he's lying bear chested in bed. Tommy walks into the bedroom and stares at Abraxas.
In Ventura's typical monotone method of line delivery, Abraxas says "I suppose you're not tired. Do you want to sit up here with me? I'll tell you a story. It's about two men who were partners."
I know the scene is meant to be something much more innocent. But it comes across as way more... eeooww. Surely, a producer had to have scratched their head with this terrible line of dialogue during the editing process.
This movie didn't try very hard. The only thing I managed to take away after watching it was that Jesse Ventura is more entertaining when he rambles on about conspiracy theories. And James Belushi's character Rick Latimer had a cameo in another movie I wasn't aware of. That was neat-o, I guess.


Coming soon...
With the popularity of comic book movies at its zenith, I picked out over 30 comic book movie titles to watch and critique. Some are obscure. Others, perhaps, largely forgotten. The rest are under-the-radar or simply hard to come by. These titles span several decades. Some of them date as far back as the silent film era. It'll be a comic book moviefest extravaganza! Stay tuned...

84 Charing Cross Road (1987)

I love inscriptions on flyleafs and notes in margins. I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned and reading passages someone long-gone has called my attention to. 

Director 
David Hugh Jones

Cast
Anne Bancroft - Helene Hanff
Anthony Hopkins - Frank Doel
Judi Dench - Nora Doel
Ian MacNeice - Bill Humphries

84 Charing Cross Road, produced by Mel Brooks and starring his late wife, Anne Bancroft, relies mainly on audience appreciation of literature and writing. Otherwise, this movie is likely to be slow and boring. At least, that's what I fear for some people. In reality, it's a charming movie, funny enough and worthy of appreciation. As critic Gene Siskel put it in the Chicago Tribune, 84 Charing Cross Road "should be irresistible to anyone able to appreciate the goodness of its spirit and its spirited characters."
Roger Ebert, critic for the Chicago Sun Times, thought his school librarian might have enjoyed it...certainly more than he did atleast. Well, it's a personal favorite of mine and I wanted to include it here.
The story is based on true events surrounding American writer Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft), and the pen-pal relationship she builds with a small antiquated bookshop in London called Marks & Co. It starts off in 1949 and covers several years.
Hanff first hears of the bookseller specializing in out-of-print books from an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature. 
Looking for a specific book, she pens a letter to the proprietor, Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins). Truly in love with the gorgeous copy he sends back, the overseas friendship blossoms and continues on until the late 1960s.
The more she sends book requests and letters sharing her love of books and writing, and the more Dole and his coworkers reply back, the more Hanff yearns to fly over to London to see the shop for herself, meet the people who have helped build her library of antique books, and tour the England of English lit.
Hanff even sends them care packages during the food ration period in England.
She almost makes it to the U.K. for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, but pesky dental work drains her travel funds forcing her to send a raincheck.
This movie is just very appealing. Bancroft's New York wit works so wonderfully well off of Hopkin's genteel, sophisticated English mannerisms.

Anne Bancroft as Helene Hanff in 84 Charing Cross Road

While the shop clerks sip their tea selling old English literature, Hanff sips her gin while pounding out scripts for television on her typewriter and breaking the fourth wall asking "I hope 'madam' doesn't mean over there what it does here."
Doel calls her Miss. Hanff. Helene calls him Frankie.
So much springs from this very simple storyline. It's almost amazing. I read the book written by Hanff after I saw the movie. I was delighted to find out she wrote a sequel to the book entitled The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street.
In one scene in the movie, Hanff finds herself in the middle of a college protest. She argues with a police officer about how they're harshly treating the students.
"Why don't you go home and bake a pie," the officer yells.
"Oh, why don't you go home and bake a pie!" Hanff replies.
And at that, he arrests her.
When Hanff returns home and flips the TV on, she catches herself on the evening news being arrested. All she can do is laugh about it. Simple, but there's much to gain from such a scene about Hanff and the spirit of this movie.
This movie lacks action outside of the mail service delivering the correspondence between London and New York.
But Bancroft brings a liveliness - the spirit Siskel referred to -  trying as hard as she can to make it enjoyable to those outside the book and writing lovers in the audience.
I'm a personal fan of Bancroft and her portrayal of Hanff just brings it home for me. This is Bancroft at her best, showing just how versatile an actress she is, especially when compared to her other notable roles such as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate or as Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker. She's a face and talent I sorely miss seeing and hearing on the big screen.
Don't get me wrong. It's not a movie only meant for print enthusiasts. My point is audiences with a love of literature and writing are, as I said, likely to appreciate the movie more.
It's a movie that will inspire just as easily as it could put you to sleep. If you don't nod off, then there's a lot to enjoy and take away.

Anthony Hopkins as Frank Doel.