Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

ksf-2 A star studded cast -- Granger, Demarest, Lon Chaney, Allen Jenkins, Sheldon Leonard, Elisha Cook, Marvin Kaplan. Some bigtime hollywood names here. Bill brings a stray dog home after shopping for an anniversary gift for his wife, but she thinks the dog IS the gift. and this dog is special.... it's been trained to work for the mob. and they want it back ! it does get a little annoying. Bill spends a whole lot of time talking to the dog to get him to leave the bedroom, but for some reason, the dog doesn't seem to understand. that got annoying after a while. Fun premise, but so much time spent on stupid minor things. Script could have been so much better. just one mis-understanding after another. Demarest and Jenkins are the cops trying to railroad Bill (Granger). It's okay. Directed by George Beck... this was the one and only film he directed.

Robert J. Maxwell A romantic comedy in which a scruffy dog is a central player. Already I feel a suspicion of nausea uncoiling deep in my innards. A funny movie about a dog.But it's not the dog that keeps the film from being better than it is. It's the writer/director, George Beck, who does his earnest best to turn a feature film into a television situation comedy.Comedy is obviously not Farley Granger's forte. He's fine as an innocent and exploited schlub -- "Strangers on a Train," "Rope," "They Live By Night." Here he overacts, loudly, and the director should have reined him in. Not that he could have saved the script, which has him walking along a crowded sidewalk and talking to himself while everyone stares. I'm not even sure that Spencer Tracy could have handled the role as written.And something could have been done with the narrative. In itself, it has potential. A dog trained to sniff out dope at dropout points escapes and attaches itself to Granger and his wife, Shelley Winters. Rival teams of gangsters try to recover the dog. It's all in your face but with a bit more subtlety in the gags and the acting it could have been much improved.But Beck seems to think it's funnier than it is. I don't know how many minutes are spent on a scene near the beginning. It's the wedding anniversary of Granger and Winters. They want to make love but they can't coax the pestilent Archie out of the bedroom. Granger throws shoes into the hallway, tries to coax him out the door, tugs him along, but there is no getting rid of Archie. It's amusing, not funny, and doesn't deserve the screen time it gets. At that, it's an improvement over the incident in which Archie gets tangled in Granger's feet and Granger has to fall down a flight of stairs. Not even Ricky Ricardo was so humiliated.Some of the better scenes involve small parts played by familiar actors doing their usual shticks. Sheldon Leonard is a hard-boiled Damon Runyan hood, "Shortwave Bert." Elijah Cook, Jr., is the goggle-eyed loser and an unexpected Francis X. Sullivan is a big-time hood, "Fat Freddy."

wes-connors "Young newlyweds Bill and Kate Denny (Farley Granger and Shelley Winters) take in a stray dog named Archie. Archie is really a trained dog that is a go-between for two rival gangs of criminals. With a million-dollar counterfeiting scheme causing hostilities between the two gangs, our newlyweds and their adopted dog are thrown into the middle of the mix," according to the DVD sleeve summary. The more dramatically inclined co-stars have a lot of range, but it doesn't show in "Behave Yourself!" Most of the time, they seem out of their element. Made a few years earlier, with Cary Grant and Lucille Ball starring, this might have been a classic.***** Behave Yourself! (9/19/51) George Beck ~ Farley Granger, Shelley Winters, Margalo Gillmore, William Demarest

Erewhon A terrific supporting cast, plus Shelley Winters could and should have resulted in an outstanding, fast-paced comedy. But Farley Granger can't play comedy -- at least he can't here. George Beck's script is too busy, but that could have been dealt with by an able comedy director. However, Beck himself directed, and that's the element that sinks this mess completely. Everyone screams and overacts; even skilled muggers like William Demarest go off the deep end. It's almost painful to watch.