Jail Bait [1954] [DVD]Lyle Talbot (actor) Steve Reeves (actor)
Format: all-region dvd (worldwide) Runtime: 68 min Quality: Excellent
Despite the sexploitation title, schlockmeister Ed Wood Jr's follow-up to his legendary Glen or Glenda is an unusual crime melodrama with a surprise ending. Gangster Timothy Farrell coerces the plastic surgeon father of the accomplice he's killed to alter his face so he can avoid detection.
Like every Wood film, the facts behind it are more entertaining than actually watching it: Bela Lugosi was too ill to play the surgeon so silent star Herbert Rawlinson took over only to die the day after filming, future Hercules star Steve Reeves makes his feature debut, and the score is the same one used in Mesa of Lost Women.
The aggressively sexual command implicit in the title is somewhat mitigated when you realise that those three words are usually surmounted by a drawing of Uncle Sam: it's the US Army recruiting slogan.
Drama starring Dana Andrews and Dorothy McGuire. A small community faces the prospect of its menfolk going
away to fight in the Korean War. One wife in particular is hit hard, having endured her husband's absence during the Second World War. |