Treasure of Monte Cristo

From seaman to seaman in five generations, that's how it has worked for the Dantes family. Glenn Langan plays the great great grandson of the fabled Count Of Monte Cristo who served up the coldest dish of revenge ever in literature. But Glenn hasn't got all those years to waste in the Château D'If like his ancestor. He's been scheduled to die in San Quentin for a murder he got framed for and for which his lawyer Steve Brodie had a big hand in framing.

Langan has no idea who he is nor that he is the heir to a fortune that's like the one Nicholas Cage found in National Treasure. But Brodie a bottom feeding shyster of an attorney has found out and means to get it for himself. In a truly complicated frame, with more plot that would usually characterize a Lippert Picture, Brodie ties a murder to Langan and then gets to represent him in court and throw the case to finish the job.

Figuring in all this is Adele Jergens playing her usual blond femme fatale who actually tricks Langan into marrying him. Kind of dumb, but Langan like a lot of us was letting his hormones talk for him.

This is a nicely done Lippert film much better than average with the obligatory appearance by Sid Melton. Try not to miss this one.

Glenn Langan is Edmund Dantes, a merchant mariner on leave in his home town of San Francisco, He runs into Adele Jergens. She is an heiress whose guardian keeps sticking her into asylums so he can hold onto her money. She offers him $10,000 to marry her, so she can gain control. He does so, and the next day is framed for murder. Now the story she tells the police is different; Langan picked her up, they got drunk and married in Reno, and that's all she knows.

It's a cheap Lippert production with little in the way of star power, but it's a nicely tangled little mystery in which, alas, many of its secrets are revealed in the title. Nonetheless, B director William Berke gets some nice performances out of the actors, as well as some nice location shots around San Francisco.

You wouldn't guess it from the title, but this is a film noir about an elaborate frame-up job. A seaman gets off his ship, rescues a damsel in distress, and finds himself on the hook for murder. The plot is fairly predictable but still engaging enough for a good time. However, don't go looking for classic noir. Bland characters, including an annoying ethnic stereotype. Glenn Langan is okay but rather generic, and a lot more could have been done with the Adele Jurgens character. Only Steve Brodie stands out as the sleazy attorney. Except for a terrific POV shot at the climax, the photography is serviceable but nothing special. The film clips along at a reasonable pace and is mildly entertaining -- nothing more.

Not bad for a bad show, but the improbabilities get a little massed up into absurdity, and the protagonist is stupid enough to trust anyone and believe anything he hears. He gets married to someone he has never seen before in his life, she claims she is an heiress to a fortune of billions, and that her guardian with other thugs want to keep her hospitalised in an asylum to get at her fortune, while the protagonist questions nothing. Of course he is being framed in a grotesque set-up to get at his own fortune, which he has no idea that he has inherited. His lawyer tries to post him a letter of the details and gets slain after posting it, he survives but only as paralyzed in a hospital, until someone kills him off there. The hotchpotch of intrigue gets worse and worse, but it doesn't last too long, only 78 minutes, and then everything is cleared up, partly thanks to the protagonist's Italian friends in San Francisco. Everything happens very quickly, it is difficult to hang on to the bolting merry-go-round, and very much is lost in the way, especially all possible shades of individual characters. It is an interesting entertainment but no more, while only the music is terrific.

Treasure of Monte Cristo brings to mind certain images, elements, a a loose storyline. This particular story is very far from what the title could rightly be interpreted as offering. Glenn Langan is a handsome lead actor for sure, and initially looks like he's posing for a magazine shoot. He does begin to loosen up a bit and become more believable as the film progresses, but overall I don't think this was the part he was meant to play. There are several holes in the story/script and the direction of the film creates confusion to the degree that I found myself a bit confused at one point. The remainder of the cast is adequate at best. In the end this noir film is a bit too disjointed to recommend itself.