The New Pictures, Jan. 17, 1949

(2 of 3)

Siren of Atlantis (United Artists) may bring a moment of comfort to romantics who believe in the lost continent of Atlantis. It seems that the continent can be found this year somewhere near the Sahara Desert, within easy camel lope of a Foreign Legion post. Atlantis turns out to be populated by a carefree tribe whose principal activities are beating the tom-tom, drinking large quantities of a potent juice called arrack, and ogling the dancing girls. In their more solemn moments, they sometimes pause to embalm unwelcome visitors in molten gold.

The big wheel in this novel civilization is a slinky siren named Antinea (Maria Montez). When a couple of the Foreign Legion boys (Jean Pierre Aumont and Dennis O'Keefe) blunder into her boudoir cooking for a missing French archeologist (he shows up eventually, tidily gold-leafed in the Visitors' Gallery), she plays them off against each other. Then she plays both off against the old embalming fluid.

Strong men go mad over the lush Antinea, which is a great mistake. Under her spell, Legionnaire Aumont kills his pal in a fit of jealousy. When he in turn gets buried in a sandstorm, Antinea is left to a pulsating game of chess with the household embalmer, whose tongue has been cut out—because he talked out of turn. For determined viewers who stick it out to the very end, the newsreel may still save the day.

Whiplash (Warner). The hero of this gory battle royal (Dane Clark) gets tagged on the jaw, slugged with a blackjack, kicked in the head and punched orie-eyed in a boxing bout. Since most of this mauling is done by thugs who work for the husband of his beautiful, frozen-faced girl (Alexis Smith), poor dear Dane suffers without a whimper. Toward the end, there is some talk of sending him off to a hospital to have his head examined—an idea which might have saved a lot of trouble earlier in the story.

While the producers of Whiplash seem chiefly interested in illustrating the varied arts of mayhem, they were not able to resist dragging in a little Moral Problem. Clark, the human punching bag, is getting the treatment because he wants to rescue Alexis from her sinister mate (Zachary Scott) and retire from bad fights to paint bad pictures. The catch is that the wicked husband is paralyzed from the waist down, and thinks up his villainies in a wheelchair. No hero can sock a man in a wheelchair; no heroine can divorce him. How to get rid of him? Whiplash solves the problem in characteristically brisk and brutal fashion by having him mashed to a pulp, wheelchair & all, by a taxi.

One Sunday Afternoon (Warner) is an old story with its face lifted for the third time.* At this point, it wears a starchy mask, and its smiles creak painfully. It is an idyl of the Gay Nineties, and the costumes have a bustley charm; but the girls who wear them are addicted to Technicolor simpers. The love stories of the two young couples (Dennis Morgan and Dorothy Malone, Don DeFore and Janis Paige) reach a high point when they go for a spin in the park in a horseless carriage—a singularly low-voltage form of sparking. Not much else happens to them except that they pair off and get married. One lad goes to jail for a short stretch, while the other becomes an alderman. It seems likely that the jailbird gets the best of the deal.