The Princess and the Pirate

In a way, this flick is astonishing: Bob Hope built a decades-long career out of this crap? It’s hard to believe that people back in the day were willing or able to find most of this sort of hambone shtick funny. Very few of the jokes, verbal or visual, truly hit the mark, and those that do are mostly bits and pieces (or pieces of bits) that were cribbed from funnier acts like the Marx Brothers. The only redeeming features here are a committed performance from Victor McLaglen as the villainous pirate The Hook, in which he hits all the buccaneer tropes with appropriate gusto, and the opportunity to ogle a particularly lovely Virginia Mayo, who looks like a million bucks in this two-bit comedy. You’re much better off watching a real pirate flick (Captain Blood or The Sea Hawk immediately spring to mind) or a superior contemporaneous comedy (The Court Jester would fit the bill) versus dredging your way through this drag. I’ll thank Hope for the memory of him walking the plank for this one. 

White Heat

Engaging but not particularly engrossing gangster flick. This is exactly the sort of role that Cagney is remembered for: the iconic mob boss, murderous and crazy and just charismatic enough to make the viewer wonder if maybe you should root for the psychopath after all. But most of the rest of this one is boilerplate crime drama. I'm not sure why this one is rated as highly as it is, other than Cagney's iconic presence (he does get off all the best lines), though I must admit that there's also some good direction at work here, too. You probably want to watch it to burnish your film historian bona fides, but I don't think it really goes much further than that. After all, it's hard to take seriously a villain--even an antihero--named "Cody."