June 4: The Bishop Murder Case. Basil Rathbone plays Philo Vance, a private detective and an obvious knockoff of Sherlock Holmes. Vance goes around deducing all kinds of crazy things from the most minute observations, and is always right of course. I love Basil Rathbone but this movie wasn't very good.
June 4: Casino Royale. What a bizarre movie. David Niven plays James Bond as a stuttering prig trying to protect his virtue from a fate worse than death. Basically he spends the movie fighting off the ladies of Castle Anthrax. Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, and a couple of other guys also play James Bond. I found the idea of this movie much funnier than the reality.
June 5: The Kennel Murder Case. Another Philo Vance movie. This one was moved to Long Island and starred William Powell as Vance. Powell was better than Rathbone in this part, the Sherlock Holmes vibe was toned way down, but it didn't make me forget Nick Charles. Like The Bishop Murder Case, this was one of those convoluted murder mysteries where every speaking role is someone shifty who seems guilty at some point. After awhile the identity of the actual killer seems random, like the writer drew names out of a hat. The setting (a big dog show) provided lots of cute doggies though. They showed several more Philo Vance movies on TCM, but each one had a different lead, and the star ratings got lower with each movie. So I didn't record any of the others.
June 5: Bathing Beauty. Red Skelton is spurned by Esther Williams when she runs off to take a job teaching at an all girls school. So he find a legal loophole and forces them to accept him as a student. With a premise like that, this movie should have been much funnier. Xavier Cugat (who everyone calls "Coogie") and Harry James costar.
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