The Woman on Pier 13 (Robert Stevenson, 1949). This was the first film that Howard Hughes put into motion after taking over RKO Pictures, and its tortured trek to the screen was emblematic of his studio-sinking tenure. Originally titled I Married a Communist, it was intended to be a cautionary drama that mirrored Hughes’s anti-red vehemence. Elements of that picture remain in the occasionally didactic dialogue and a depiction of Community party bosses as relentlessly villainous as the mustachioed cads who tied damsels to train tracks in an earlier cinematic era. Under the direction of Robert Stevenson, the film plays as more of clenched crime thriller, with an oak-tree hero (Robert Ryan) who finds himself in too deep with a crime syndicate (those evil Commies) just as he’s finally found a lovely gal (Laraine Day) pure enough to help wash away any past indiscretions. The film is stiff and clearly compromised by dueling instincts of what it should be. It’s more a curiosity from the Second Red Scare era than a successful work of creative art. There is at least a fun performance by Janis Carter, playing a Communist operative with a wicked wit and a come-on charm that’s effective at leading lunkish saps into the web of the Party.

Lisa Frankenstein (Zelda Williams, 2024). Maybe more mash-up than movie, Lisa Frankenstein freely pilfers from a big batch of beloved nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties oddball comedies, Edward Scissorhands, Weird Science, and Heathers chief among them. Written by Diablo Cody, it feels like the script she’s been wanting to type up all along. A sullen, snappish teen named Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is smarter than everyone around her and longs for a boy whose swooning romanticism is on par with that of the died-too-young Victorian lads who are buried in a local cemetery. When one of those corpses (Cole Sprouse) unexpectedly comes back to life, Lisa befriends him and then feels her affection grow as the two secure replacement body parts for him through murderous means. Director Zelda Williams is a clumsy visual storyteller, but she does bring verve and conviction to the loopy proceedings. A scene where Lisa robustly sings along to a piano rendition of REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feeling” is wonderfully executed, in part because of the emphasis on Newton’s robust, decidedly amateurish performance of the song. Newton is strong throughout, as is Liza Soberano, playing Lisa’s popular, supportive stepsister.

Out of the Fog (Anatole Litvak, 1941). Adapted from The Gentle People, a 1939 stage play by Irwin Shaw, this film settles in at the Brooklyn waterfront where immigrants scrimp and save for their modest dreams. Jonah (Thomas Mitchell) and Olaf (John Qualen) are fisherman who are on the verge of upgrading from their ramshackle rowboat. Their plans are endangered when local thug Harold Goff (John Garfield, aping James Cagney’s tough-guy mannerisms) starts terrorizing them and demanding protection money. The indignity is compounded by Jonah’s daughter, Stella (Ida Lupino, seemingly trying to set a record with the speed of her line deliveries), entering into an ill-advised romance with the crook. Out of the Fog is a nicely nasty bit of business, coming as close as was possible under the Hays Code to arguing in favor of situational immorality as the working-class folks scheme to free themselves of their persecutor. Aided by the great cinematographer James Wong Howe, Anatole Litvak brings a marvelous sense of gloomy mood to the film.