Gypsy Wildcat has both the pluses and minuses usually associated with the type of unsophisticated but colourful adventures associated with the Universal screen team of Maria Montez and Jon Hall.

The story line is incredibly lame (incredible than James M. Cain is somehow associated with it),with many of the attempts at humour painful, at best. On the other hand, a good print of this film can truly be a visual joy. This silly film about gypsies and corrupt barons has rich Technicolor and is consistently a pleasure for the eye.

And that includes the cast. Maria Montez was a beauty, no doubt, and even if no one will ever accuse her of being a good actress, somehow her exotic appeal, flashing eyes and grade school dialogue delivery seem very right for this kind of campy material.

Jon Hall, whose career highlight as an actor was seven years before when John Ford guided him to an effective performance in The Hurricane, looks dashing, in an Errol Flynn-kind of way, though he certainly lacked Flynn's flair and personality. As long as he isn't dressed as a clown (which, incredibly, he actually is in a couple of scenes),he's a decent leading man.

The film's second noteworthy virtue, along with its rich Technicolor and two stars, is an above average supporting cast of character actors. Peter Coe, as a gypsy in love with Montez and always helping her, doesn't make much of an impression. Leo Carrillo and Gale Sondergaard both look good, at least, even if their roles aren't much.

Douglass Dumbrille is his usual smarmy self as the film's chief villain, an autocratic official imprisoning the gypsies, but offering them their freedom if gypsy wildcat Montez will marry him. But the best of all comes when the film is nearing its end, with the typically endearing and bumbling performance of Nigel Bruce. Bruce brings this film its most successful moments of humour, and it's a joy to watch the man best remembered today as Dr. Watson in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films as he pretty much steals every scene he's in.

I'm happy to report that Gypsy Wildcat has a genuinely exciting climax, with director Roy William Neill (or was it a second unit director?) bringing a sense of fun and zest to a wild coach chase sequence. The sequence is also partially played for laughs, with hero Hall on horseback pursuing the coach, while inside that coach a bumbling Nigel Bruce is trying to marry Montez to Dumbrille.

The sequence is quite beautifully edited, as well as photographed and if what precedes it is not exactly the stuff of a Michael Curtiz epic over at Warner Brothers, this sequence partially compensates for that.

Overall, for those who enjoy unsophisticated undemanding adventure films of this kind, Gypsy Wildcat will probably satisfy them. It's a colourful time waster and an escape, which was, after all, its original intention when it was first released for 1944 wartime audiences. In that respect, the film still succeeds.

About a decade before the chain of fast food restaurants started, Maria Montez disguised dashing hero Jon Hall in clown makeup to hide his identity from evil baron Douglas Dumbrille. It's an ironic twist that adds more unintentional camp in one of a dozen similarly themed films where Montez is unaware of the fact that she's of royal blood and thus the subject of a greedy and lustful desire from Dumbrille who only need dispatch Hall to reach the subject of his sinister ambition

I've seen a good majority of Montez's films, and she's not the most subtle of performers, an exotic beauty with the stereotypical Latina temperament and the sex appeal to match. Equally attractive Jon Hall is paired with her in a good majority of these films, and if bland in the non-action scenes is still appropriately heroic. Wasted in important but underdeveloped parts are Leo Carrillo and Gale Sondergaard, more sly here than sinister. Peter Coe is a male version of the characters that Myrna Loy and later Rita Moreno played, that of the rejected live interest who becomes self sacrificing as they realize that they have no chance with the person they are desperately in love with.

As colorful and pleasing as many other similar swashbuckling adventures, this must have been something on the big screen. But in comparison to the other films that Montez made, it's rather ordinary. Perhaps because of the lack of humorous supporting characters makes it a bit of a disappointment, although it's certainly not bad. A musical number where imprisoned gypsies start to sing and dance out of nowhere is the camp highlight, while a final chase scene brings the much needed excitement. Droll Nigel Bruce comes on briefly as a rather flibbertigibbet sheriff. Dumbrille, who played many similar characters, chews the scenery with no shame, while Montez tones it down, making her more of a feisty pussycat rather than the gypsy wildcat.

Copyright 28 July 1944 by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. New York opening at the Criterion: 5 October 1944. U.S. release: 1 September 1944. U.K. release: 1 January 1945. Australian release: 29 March 1945. 8 reels. 6,744 feet. 75 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: Murderous Baron Tovar menaces a gypsy band but agrees to set them free if the beauteous Carla will marry him.

NOTES: Universal seems to have something against Maria Montez. Despite the Universal- acclaimed Queen of Technicolor's really enormous popularity (she, together with Abbott and Costello, are credited with saving Universal from bankruptcy),her movies are being re-issued on DVD at a snail-like pace.

COMMENT: Breathtakingly directed by Roy William Neill with all the gratuitous violence and dizzying camera-work for which this director is noted — plus a typical standout climax. Striking photography by the world's greatest Technicolor craftsman, Duke Greene, a rousing music score by Edward Ward, and a screenplay in which James M. Cain and Joseph Hoffman took a hand (let's hope that neither of these worthies contributed the labored scenes of low comic relief).

The acting, however, is not quite as forceful as we might expect. Dumbrille, for instance, is a big disappointment as the villain. It is a role right up his alley but he seems to have been bored with it, only coming to life in the latter part of the film. Mr. Bois' comic relief is just as tiresome as we had remembered it, but fortunately he disappears for quite a long stretch. Mr. Bruce is just as wearisome but fortunately his role is very small and he does at least bring out the worst (in a good sense) of Dumbrille.

Neill's direction is not nearly as dizzy or as violent as I remembered: the climax is not all that exciting; the atmosphere is Hollywood hoke. Script and dialogue have none of the ploys or passion associated with James M. Cain. But the music score has a bit of spurious gypsy romance and the Technicolor photography is chocolate-box pretty and Miss Montez is attractive even if her co- stars (Coe and Hall) are not.

"Ride, gypsies, ride!" exclaims the trailer, "to the thundering call of wild adventure!" What with "wild gypsy music to heat the blood" and "flashing eyes to tempt a saint", this "rousing tale of romance and adventure" features a Maria Montez, "more tantalizing, more alluring, more bewitching." And the visuals certainly prove the announcer's point. In her colorful gypsy dresses, Maria looks set to raise the Romany rye. You'd think every picture-goer worth his/her salt would rush the ticket office. I would. They don't make trailers like this any more.