

- #Thou shalt not kill film movie#
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Budapest-born Auer’s feature film debut The Crime of Doctor Crespi is a Poverty Row gem, particularly a stunning funeral sequence told in first-person point of view. The studio-bound facsimile of small-town America, preceding Frank Borzage’s similar late-career Republic effort Moonrise by almost a decade, creates a pleasing otherworldly effect.

#Thou shalt not kill film serial#
Auer directs and, besides one explosive action sequence in the third act which looks like Republic’s serial unit may have intervened, does a good job modulating the rhythm.
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It’s a routine programmer through-and-through, its plot not dissimilar from RKO’s Full Confession from the same year, however the well-crafted direction and earnest uplifting tone make it a soothing picture. Must he abide by the Catholic seal of confession he was mistakenly entrusted? Only Reverend Chris Saunders (Bickford) knows the truth, but here’s the attention-grabber: In a delirium, a Catholic confessed the murder to Saunders, a Protestant priest. When Julie turns up murdered, Allen is the prime suspect. The film takes place in a small town where adrift young man Allen Stevens (Owen Davis Jr.) is torn between two women, the saintly Mary Olsen (the other, lesser known Doris Day) and the barmaid at the local watering hole The Gangplank, Julie Mancini (Sheila Bromley). It’s the story of Hungarian Cardinal’s József Mindszenty’s conspiracy against the Communist regime’s brutal occupation.Īs of the November 1939 trade papers, Thou Shalt Not Kill was known as “The Narrow Path.” For reasons unknown, Republic Pictures replaced this superior title with the more sermonizing one mere weeks prior to the film’s release. Guilty of Treason (1950) This intense Eagle-Lion film with stark cinematography by John L.
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Although the movie is notoriously corny-it frequently crops up on lists of the all-time worst movies-it is endearing if approached from the right angle. The Babe Ruth Story (1948) Bickford plays Brother Matthias, the real-life mentor of young George Herman Ruth (played by William Bendix) in reform school. The Song of Bernadette (1943) Bickford was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Abbé Dominique Peyramale, the staunch defender of the visionary Bernadette of Lourdes. The film is loosely based on the Canon City prison riot of 1929 and Father Patrick O’Neill’s life-risking effort to bring the melee to an end. Mutiny in the Big House (1939) A genuinely good Monogram drama where Bickford plays a prison chaplain fully committed to redemption. Deep sea diving suits, underwater footage of sponge harvesting, a gigantic killer manta ray, and an even-deadlier Raquel Torres are the sweltering trappings of this exotic melodrama. The Sea Bat (1930) In one of his first screen roles, Bickford is a wanted murderer disguised with a cleric collar in the West Indies. Here is a rundown of his religious roles, from the phony to the pious: While Western and Action pictures were his bread and butter, several canny producers exploited this look in a different way: Charles Bickford also makes for a convincing man of God.
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In an interview just prior to his death in 1967-at a point when the dogged actor owned three businesses while starring in TV western The Virginian-he laid out his ethos: “I got an impression early in life I was born into a jungle and the way to survive is fight.” This hardscrabble attitude was written on Bickford’s weathered face, scraggly hair, and imposing figure. On and off-screen he was brusque and hardworking, the antithesis of the dandified Hollywood type.

In fact, if a story would be at home in a men’s magazine, or my preferred term “armpit slick,” Bickford could probably don a grease-stained t-shirt and lead the picture. Charles Bickford looks like a dockworker, copper miner, exterminator, or wheat harvester-all jobs he held prior to landing in Southern California in the fledgling days of sound film.
