MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN (1950)

After winning a brand new house in part 2, Pa Kettle now wins an all-expenses paid trip to New York City for him and Ma. Problem is they can’t find anybody to babysit their 15 hellspawn. Fortune raises its head though once again when Pa bumps into a fleeing bank robber (Charles McGraw) who agrees to babysit the children. The only thing the bank robber wants in exchange is for Pa to give an “empty” bag to his brother in NYC. The bag actually holds 50,000 clams, 49,997 cabbages and 3 duckets. All kinds of wacky things happen next.

MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN holds up surprisingly well for its age. It’s also surprising just how much is packed into its 79-minute runtime! I mean there is all kinds of non-stop stuff being added to the story and even more impressive is…all of it is funny. One gag that cracked me up was when Pa was at the top of a skyscraper and he pours a cup of water off the side to see how long it would take to get to the bottom. Later on, him and Ma are walking down the sidewalk when the water hits Pa in the head and he remarks that it took longer that he thought. Haha. What the fuck is that joke? Classic. I also got a kick at out of how psychotic the children were. They were like fucking Jigsaw to everybody. They tricked one guy into scrubbing his face with sandpaper. They kidnapped two cops then tied them up and tried to kill them in a bonfire and another dude they bound upside-down and were about to dunk his head into a pot of boiling water!

Super-fast pace, tons of great jokes, strong cast, awesome vintage NYC sights, fun story. MAPKGTT might not be the kind of movie you can watch over and over, but for the occasional visit, it's a lot of fun.  I also really enjoyed seeing the normally serious Charles McGraw in a comical role.

Part 1 - The Egg and I (1947)
Part 2 - Ma and Pa Kettle (1949)
Part 4 - Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951)
Part 5 - Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952)
Part 6 - Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation (1953)
Part 7 - Ma and Pa Kettle at Home (1954)
Part 8 - Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki (1955)
Part 9 - The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956)
Part 10 - The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957)

THE NARROW MARGIN (1952)

Police detectives Charles McGraw and Don Beddoe are assigned to escort a mob witness (Marie Windsor) from Chicago to Los Angeles on a train.  Not even twenty feet outside her front door, Beddoe is gunned down, so now it's up to McGraw to get her the rest of the way all by himself.  They safely get to the train only to discover that there's an unknown number of mafia hitmen with itchy trigger fingers on board.

At only 71 minutes, THE NARROW MARGIN doesn't mess around, but still, despite the quick pace, I just couldn't stretch my imagination enough to believe that the police would allow a single cop to escort this supposedly super important witness across country by himself.  Not only that, but they knowingly allow all of these armed killers on board a normal passenger train?!  I call shenanigans.  I understand that the 1950's is light years away from the present time, but still the story seems pretty far-fetched to me.  That said, the acting and the camerawork are both good and I was mildly entertained.

THE NARROW MARGIN is not a bad film, just too improbable for me to get into.