Spence and King Gable search for Texas Tea...a review!

Most environmentalists will cringe while watching oil wildcatters Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable basically win and then lose fortunes while pockmarking the landscape with their oil rigs. The two pals do a lot of frettin' and fussin' over the incomparable Claudette Colbert who eventually has eyes only for Clark the King. Unfortunately, Clark has some eyes for the shapely and sultry Hedy Lamarr (can't disagree with the King on that!).

I am a big fan of all these worthies, but something just doesn't add up with Boom Town...it seems to want to be too many things at the same time, perhaps. You could call it a Western, drama, comedy, or romance...but it seems to miss the mark more often than not in attempting any of these. The four stars seem wooden and predictable in this, even the awesome Tracy....Gable plays Gable and Colbert seems too glamourous for the dowdy role of wife meekly following Gable who is wildcatting in more ways than one. The film moves at a frenetic pace, perhaps to mimic the roller-coaster fortunes of the oil industry in the salad days of the early twentieth century....but it does leave one sort of out of breath and doesn't allow for much in the way of character development.

Frank Morgan shows up to basically play the same archetype character he played in the Wizard of Oz

along with Chill Wills as a straight shootin' deputy sheriff who ends up working for Gable as a cook. They provide some nice comic moments to balance out the chest thumping of Gable and Spence, but Boom Town will never supplant Gone with the Wind or Captains Courageous for me.

TH Reviews rating: Call it 3.5 stars out of five!

Fritz Lang did some wonderful Hollywood films in the early forties after he escaped from Hitler's Germany...the silent auteur made a great transition to American talkies and The Woman in the Window is a wonderful example. Like much of Lang's work (and of course Alfred Hitchcock's) we begin with a simple man in simple circumstances that become more and more complicated as the choices he makes transforms his life with often twisted and dark consequences to those choices. In Woman, Lang begins with a simple middle-aged man longing for adventure and excitement outside his often staid and mundane life. He will get much more than he bargained for....

I am becoming more and more a fan of the great Edward G. Robinson who takes a more sedate turn not as his usual heavy or gangster, but as a meek and mild assistant professor who takes an unexpected dark path for his mid life crisis. Joan Bennett, a favorite of Lang's, is gorgeous but reveals a talented acting depth to her enormous glamour.

Be careful, though! Lang will take you into some interesting dark corners with this one...there is a wonderful twist at the end that almost makes this dark comedy...along with the almost textbook Noir touches. Fritz Lang is as good as Hitchcock was in dropping in little revealing details that drop dark hints as to mood, motivation, and relationship. Dan Duryea shows up as a slimy, blackmailing hood (did he ever play a nice guy?!) and you have a marvelous

little dark confection for your Noir appetites!

TH Reviews Rating: An easy to grant five of five stars!!