We're No Angels (1955)

Joseph, Jules, and Albert (Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray, respectively) have just escaped the prison on Devil's Island, but they haven't made it off the island yet. Trying to lay low until an opportunity arises, they finagle their way into the local general store, first as messengers, then by offering to fix the roof.

The first 20-25 minutes, I wondered if the movie touting Bogart was a bait-and-switch, because what he and the other two do is mostly peer through the skylights at the trials and tribulations of the family running the store. The manager is ineffectual and indecisive, worried his cousin Andre (who owns the entire chain of stores and is played with extreme stiffness and arrogance by Basil Rathbone) will sack him. The daughter is mooning over the Andre's son Paul, who she parted from a year ago, but is sure still loves her. The wife loves her husband, but is frustrated with how life has turned out.

Oh, and Andre and Paul are on the steamship in the harbor, and will be inspecting the store's finances, just as soon as they get around the quarantine.

So, what starts as the convicts trying to help the store make sales because it will give them more money to swipe when they make their escape, gradually becomes them helping the family have a lovely Christmas, and then trying to protect the family from first, Andre, then Paul (John Baer's babyface conceals just as heartless a skinflint as Andre.)

Bogart takes the fast-talking spiel he uses when laying everything out at the end of a detective movie, and spins it into a con artist who can get a bald man to spend 117 francs on a sterling silver comb set. It'll be a great thing to leave to your family! But I have no family. That's even better! Just constantly twisting and turning until the guy's head is spinning.

Ustinov is the funniest, whether because he got the best lines, or possibly just how he delivers them. Somewhere between a sadsack and upbeat, soft spoken either way. Not optimistic, but not miserable, either, despite their circumstances. Since his character was apparently a safecracker (albeit I think he's in prison for murder after catching his wife in bed with another man), Ustinov also breaks into various lockboxes, safes and locked doors with movements not unlike someone trying to work a pinball machine without getting "TILT."

The ending is probably a concession to the rules against allowing criminals to be seen as benefiting from their crimes in movies. In-story, you could probably attribute it to them being institutionalized. Though their criminal past is played for gags at times (Bogart says he owned a factory selling canned air), the movie reminds you periodically that Ray's character beat his uncle to death with a fireplace poker for refusing to give him some money. Bogart makes comments about how, 'he's a criminal, they're murderers,' or, 'I'm the murderer, they're maniacs,' while the other two grin or loom intimidatingly. But Bogart also expresses surprise the guard they attacked in their escape survived, which Ustinov attributes to poor prison cuisine sapping their strength.

It's a little odd the movie keeps reminding us of that, but I guess it's to make the ending fit, and also to play into the idea even violent people, who might be considered among the worst, aren't beyond doing some good.

Take My Blood, But Leave Me My Platelets

You're consigning him to a job in a cubicle?

The first volume of Momo the blood taker starts with a brutal double murder. The bodies are dismembered and arranged artfully on a table set for a romantic dinner, the blood largely drained from their bodies. The lead investigator, a Mikogami Keigo, is at first glance the sort of protagonist you see in hour-long network TV dramas. He's observant and remarkably insightful, but also a disorganized mess who can't get into the crime scene initially because he forgot where he left his identification.

Keigo doesn't dismiss the suggestion of the rookie on his team that this could, somehow, be vampires (still considered things of myth and scary stories here), because Keigo knows vampires do exist. One with two faces killed his wife in a similarly artful way a decade ago, but let Keigo live because his blood wasn't ready. He's spent his off-hours since then hunting that vampire, and figuring out how to kill them. He even gets the one responsible for the murders that start the volume (turns out it was the cop who wouldn't let him in the crime scene.) At which point, the one he's been after appears, and Keigo has his chance.

Yeah, no chance at all. Two Face (The manga refers to him as "The Man With Two Faces", but I'm not gonna keep typing that) there is the real deal, no demi-vamp ("moroi", he says) like the ones Keigo's killed. He's waiting until he thought Keigo's blood would have the right taste of despair, and what better way to season it than letting the guy burn a decade believing he was building himself into someone who could take revenge for his murdered love, only to learn he's still helpless? Even when Keigo tries to bite the vamp out of sheer determination, it turns out to be some shadow image.

I don't love this, because I generally dislike these characters that can somehow anticipate and manipulate every move and individual makes, especially if it's over a period of literal years. But I guess if Keigo hadn't unwittingly danced to the tune, the vamp would have just found someone else to satisfy its palate.

Anyway, Keigo's dying and a little girl (that'd be Momo) with a lance appears and runs the vamp through, then asks Keigo if he wants to live. And since Two Face somehow isn't dead (he seems able to transfer himself to other bodies), Keigo says yes. So now he's got a sire that's 200 years old, but she looks about 8 and when he wakes up she's wearing lingerie and, geeeeeeez. At least Keigo is as bothered by the whole situation as me and tries to hustle out of there. But it's not so simple to return to his past life, and there's going to be some complications in his finding his target.

The volume ends on a cliffhanger that could go a couple of different ways. There's at least one other mystery person watching all this, whose motives or affiliation I can't figure. We just see them in a couple of panels, making cryptic remarks. Which still makes them less annoying than Momo's familiar, a demon thing the size of a chihuahua, but with a cow skull for a head. It's very loud and obnoxious, but also is easily frightened by both Momo and Keigo, and responds by pissing itself. I was sick of it after 5 pages.

Sunday Splash Page #351

 

"Gams to Die For," in The Mask Returns #2, by John Arucdi (writer), Doug Mahnke (artist), Chris Chalenor (colorist), Pat Brosseau (letterer)

The first Mask mini-series ended with Lt. Kellaway burying the mask in his basement after finally realizing how much it was controlling him. The second mini-series begins with Kellaway trying to retrieve it to save himself from a gang of hitmen sent by a mob boss in retaliation for Kellaway's Big Hero Moment in the restaurant (though none of them realize he was "Big-Head" at the time. Kellaway gets shot just as he unearths it, and the killers take the mask, figuring it's valuable. One of them slips it on their getaway driver, a nervous stuttering guy, and Big-Head's back on the loose and soon running Don Mozzo's mob while Mozzo is hiding from any heat in Miami.

Kellaway does survive, but spends most of this mini-series in a coma. Which puts the focus on Kathy, who gave the mask to the lieutenant in the first place. She gets herself close to this new Big-Head, and convinces him to remove the mask. Her attempt to take it and leave quietly fails, as you can see, but she does escape.

Likely because she saw what the mask did to first Stanley, then Kellaway, Arcudi writes Kathy as the most reluctant to use it. Even Kellaway, after everything in the first mini-series, still decided to lock himself in the basement and try to dig up the mask rather than just escape out the back door. Kellaway justifies it with the idea there might be gunman covering the back door, but the smirk Mahnke draws suggests Kellaway's eager to use the mask against the guys. In contrast, when Kathy's locked herself in the attic, a bunch of goons after her, she's curled up in a corner, tears running down her face as the sounds of the guys busting down the door interrupt each panel. There's no glee or excitement, just a desperation to not die.

After that, she tries and fails to destroy it, and only puts it on again when some of Mob Boss Big-Head's earlier actions prompt a rocket launcher retaliation that injures innocent people. Of course, even then she busts out a big machine gun and drags a guy by his broken arm until he brings her to where Don Mozzo's hiding, fully intending to kill Mozzo. She exerts a level of control, but only to the extent she's a green-faced Punisher, capable of wondering where she keeps pulling absurdly large firearms from. When she's not in "control", Mahnke dispenses with the scowls and draws her wide-eyed with different sized pupils, running around with a flamethrower hooting like Daffy Duck.

The mini-series ends with Kathy rejecting the mask, having accepted you can't use it for "good", because it takes too much effort to fight the mask's will. Both the mask, and Walter (who she'd been fighting the entire final issue) appear to get lost in the bay after Kellaway makes a dramatic last-second save (with his partner's car.)