Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

marktayloruk As a supporter of free enterprise, I agreed with Donald Crisp and wanted to knock Lynn's block off due to the chip on.his shoulder. He lòoked far too old to.have a young sister- I'd have made her his niece living with her grandmother.

dimplet Arthur Pierson, I forgive you. Now that I've finished watching Home Town Story, and figured out the back story, I'm having such a good laugh, tears are coming down my eyes. Actually, it's the viewer commentaries that deserve the credit for the latter.However, midway through, I would have strangled you, if you were still alive. It was starting to look like a real insult to journalism, a hatchet job on the so called liberal establishment press. There is nothing realistic about what this Blake Washburn character does, namely putting personal opinion pieces on the front page, along with opinionated headlines. No publisher would put a failed politician as the executive editor of a paper where he would be covering the guy who defeated him. The John Hale, Jr. character makes amends for this travesty, submitting his resignation, like a true journalist. I had to turn this off and pick it up the next day, I was so ticked off. I spent the day mystified about how such a simplistically propagandist film could come out of Hollywood. It was 1951, the height of the Communist witch hunt in Washington, started by a Congressman from California named Richard Nixon. So perhaps this film was made to appease the right wing gods who were throwing Hollywood writers and actors in jail. I was having trouble imagining someone actually paying money to watch this in a movie theater, even as a B movie second show. I just didn't make sense. One viewer may have hit the nail on the head when he likened it to the movies he had to watch in 7th grade social studies class. For this movie was actually produced by, believe it or not, General Motors, along with something called Wolverine Productions. I found this on the TCM site, but "The Deputy"'s 2004 review on IMDb has this detail: "The film production was supervised by the head of GM's film division, John K. Ford. The film was meant as corporate propaganda for GM ...." OK, now things are starting to make sense. Sure, as propaganda (or as Americans put it, PR) the movie is a bit obvious and clunky. But, hey, capitalism is entitled to pat itself on the back, as long as it's paying the tab -- about $200,000. It's not clear where this was actually shown back in the Fifties. Social studies classes? Hey, with Marilyn Monroe in a tight sweater, the guys are going to stay awake! Could that be the clever reason she's in there? The script is pretty bad, but acting by Hale, Donald Crisp and Monroe saves the film. Of course, the great irony is that Monroe's brief appearance has given this stinker -- which, for all we know, may never have been seen in the Fifties outside of GM's boardroom -- immortality. None of us would be watching this today if it weren't for her, except perhaps on a Christian propaganda station. I wonder if they are, indeed, running it? After all, it's not every day you get to see Marilyn Monroe playing a vestal virgin.

kcweber The cover of this DVD caught my eye as I was walking by the bargain bin. Being a Marilyn fan I was caught by the large "Starring Marilyn Monroe" on the cover along with an equally large photo of a young Marilyn. I decided for $3.99 it was worth buying.I'm not sure if this constitutes a "spoiler" or not, but Marilyn is in 3 scenes and speaks 3 1/2 (maybe 4) lines of dialog. Not exactly what I'd call a "starring" role. But then, she is wearing tight sweaters in her scenes, so I wasn't totally disappointed (there, I said it).It was also nice seeing The Skipper (Alan Hale Jr.) wearing something other then a blue shirt and a captain's hat.Being only about an hour long (it was the first half of a double feature, the other half being a James Cagney film), I didn't feel like I had wasted time seeing the movie. In fact, the story really wasn't that bad, the packaging was just a little misleading.

manuel-pestalozzi I found this a quite watchable little movie, with a moping Marilyn Monroe as „padding material". It features a pocket sized Citizen Kane and a dramatic incident which reminded me of Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter.Shot synposis: An unexperienced young man without influence who got elected senator to his state's legislature solely because of his war record, is defeated by the son of a local entrepreneur. He returns to his home town, gets hold of a newspaper (owned by his uncle) and tries to „nail" the big enterprise run by the father of the new senator in that town. The issues are environmental pollution and high profits for the owners. He doesn't succeed in getting any leverage to nail the enterprise but that does not weaken his grim determination. Then his kid sister gets trapped in a caved in mine shaft during a school excursion led by the former senator's estranged fiancée (solid performance by Marjorie Reynolds). The entrepreneur personally pilots the plane with the severely injured girl to the state capital. The girl gets well, the former senator is reformed ... and all's well that ends well.Its easy to see that Home Town Story was made for propaganda purposes. Big business is presented as something good and powered by altruism and patriotism (and a little hunger for more profit). The main character's motive is personal frustration, and yet he wants to make his newspaper spicier and more appealing for a wider public. He is an entrepreneur, too, and sees his revenge binge as a tactic for improvement. After some venomous editorials the entrepreneur visits the former senator in the newspaper building and tries to speak some sense into him. His speech and demeanor present the entrepreneur as a calm, even minded man who is open to discussions, it is a really good and convincing performance. He says, among other things, that his father in the Old Country worked from dawn to dusk, dying at 40 as an old man, whereas he himself is 60 already and feeling in tiptop shape. Today we laugh about stuff like that on both sides of the Atlantic, however, as far as propaganda goes, I've seen and heard worse.There are weird loose ends in this movie. It is made clear that the accident occurs because two workers of the big enterprise (we're always talking about the same one) were too lazy to repair a danger sign that had fallen down. So the crew of the school bus did not see it. I guess in the US of today this would be a classic case for a damage claim – as demonstrated in the aforementioned movie The Sweet Hereafter. In this movie the entrepreneur by piloting his private plane with the injured kid atones for everything that might have gone wrong, and no one investigates the incident any further. Tempi passati! Another reviewer called this an awful movie. I do not agree, I think especially the accident and the ensuing rescue operation are exceptionally well edited, probably with very little material to work with. The whole episode has a very modern feel and is really suspenseful.