WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)

Solely based on the lurid posters and DVD cover, you would think that WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS was a straight up pre-PSYCHO horror movie about a serial killer preying on innocent women. But, just like how Jesus says in Matthew 7:46: “And Jesus said unto Asmodeus, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’”, so should you not judge WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS by it’s artwork.

After a mildly startling opener featuring a poor woman who just wants to take a bath without getting murdered, we’re introduced to media mogul Robert Warwick who’s so attached to his job that he has his literal death bed in his office! He has two regrets in his life: one, his shitty douche of a son (played brilliantly by Vincent Price) and two: not officially naming faithful TV anchorman Dana Andrews as the person to take over his empire when he croaks…which he does like 5 seconds later. His death puts Price in charge and his first order of business is pitting his main bosses into an all out war with each other. And that includes one dude who’s long-dicking Price’s own wife! Goddamn! Added to all this (don’t forget we still got a serial killer running around) there’s a subplot about Andrew’s fiancé, Sally Forrest, who also works at the news network and happens to live across the hallway from Price’s wife’s fuck shack! And, if that wasn’t enough, you have writer Ida Lupino getting in the middle of everything. It’s awesome.

As always, I went into the movie totally blind and I ended up having a lot of fun. I was straight-up shocked by the star-power in the movie (both in front and behind the camera) and very impressed by the maturity of the script. Overall, I found WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS to be a great discovery (to me, at least) and recommend it to fans of older Hollywood. The only thing that really stood out as a negative was Sally Forrest's hair.

Not part of the review, but a few interesting(?) things that I discovered while reading about the movie: the original 1953 novel, named "The Bloody Spur" (no clue what the fuck that means) was written by Charles Einstein who is the half-brother of both Albert Brooks and Bob Einstein! The killer was played by John Drew Barrymore, who is the son of John Barrymore and the father of Drew Barrymore!

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956)

For those of you who don't know, the Ten Commandments are ten rules listed in the Christian Bible that it says humans should live by.  A few of them make sense like "Thou shalt not kill." (yeah, no shit!) and "Thou shalt not commit adultery.", but others like "...the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates..." are just silly.

Anyway, although the title of the film is THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, there's actually very little Commandments action going on.  Nope, the vast majority of the movie is about a dude named Moses.  Moses was born in Egypt way the fuck back in the day.  Around the time that he's hatched there was a prophecy that a great deliverer would be born to lead the slaves out of bondage.  So, the guy who owned all of slaves, the evil Pharaoh puts out a decree that all newborn male slave children shall be murdered.  Goddamn!  Moses' mother places lil' baby Moses in a basket and sends him afloat down the Nile river.  As Fate would have it, within one minute of being yeeted into the Nile, the evil Pharaoh's adult daughter (of all people) finds Moses and raises him as her own child.  Awww.  The End.

Oh sorry, that's actually just the beginning of the film!  Moses soon grows up to look like Charlton Heston and it's down to him and the Pharaoh's legitimate son, Yul Brynner, as to who will take over once the Pharaoh dies.  Things are looking pretty good for Moses, but then he fucks up and before you can say "I really wish Twenty One Pilots would cover Phil Collins' 'One More Night'" Moses is now a slave himself!  What the fuck?  Talk about a rags to riches and back to rags again story.

For being an older film THE TEN COMMANDMENTS is still very entertaining.  Yeah, it's as historically accurate as DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?, but who cares.  Solid acting by an impressive cast (I think Anne Baxter is the highlight of the movie), great sets, an insanely huge amount of extras, animals all over the place, wildly imaginative story, badass costumes, strong direction, groundbreaking special effects and a quick pace that makes the 220 minute runtime fly by.  I've seen TTC a few times over the years and I'd gladly watch it again right now.  My only real gripe is the ten plagues of Egypt stuff is passed over way too quickly.  It shows a little bit about water turning into blood and the hail storm, but it completely skips over the frogs and boils and locust!  Lame.  Still, it's easily worth multiple watches.  Check it out.