The New Pictures

Jupiter's Darling (M-G-M). Esther Williams' pictures are generally just so much water over the dame. This one tries to be different. Esther spends more than half of it on dry land. She even tries to act--a spectacle almost as alarming as that of the Burmese fish that climbs trees.

The story, a sort of musical cutoff on The Road to Rome, by Playwright Robert Sherwood, is an amiable bit of pig Latin. Esther is cast as Amytis, betrothed of Fabius Cunctator (George Sanders), the Roman dictator, in 216 B.C. But Esther is bored. Then all at once Hannibal (Howard Keel) crushes the Roman legions and marches on the city. "Ah," cries Esther, "wotta day!" She sneaks out to meet the enemy on her own terms. Hannibal orders her put to death. Esther takes off her cloak. He orders her put to bed. The tactical problems she presents are so engrossing that Hannibal forgets all about his warlike intentions. Rome is preserved.

So much for history. By way of entertainment, the picture offers Esther poised in classical scanties by the side of a lotus pool. And in case Esther isn't enough, there is a herd of elephants painted blue, green, yellow, lavender and gamboge.

Doctor in the House (J. Arthur Rank; Republic) is a delightful example of formaldehyde humor, the kind of grisly, hospital-corridor hilarity that makes a patient wonder, in the darkness of the night, if that jovial doctor of his really understands that a man's only liver is a very serious organ.

Doctor tells the story of how four young Englishmen (Dirk Bogarde, Kenneth More, Donald Sinden, Donald Houston) get through St. Swithin's medical school--or don't. The curriculum, it would appear, is little more than a course of jokes about medical students, and some of them are funnier to see than they ever were to hear.

There is, for instance, the one about the medical student who, during a murder scare, takes a ride on a crowded bus with a bulky package that proves, amid screams and general pandemonium, to contain a skeleton. There is the portentous purchase of the first stethoscope: "No, no. I think that's a little old for you, sir. What about this one? . . . Oh, yes. That's very much more you, sir. Comfy? Comfy?" There is the usual lecherous intern (named Benskin and known as "the ravishing reindeer") and the redheaded night nurse ("You succulent starched uniform with a soft center"); the inevitable cold turkey of a head nurse ("You will not walk upon any part of the floor that has recently been polished") and a ruddy great bear ("Sister, how in Hades do you expect me to operate with this jam spreader?") of a head surgeon (James Robertson Justice).

The only real trouble with Doctor, in fact, is that the fun is almost too fast and furious. One minute somebody is dippy on ether fumes, the next he is nursing a stuffed gorilla in an ambulance; and before the audience can say cholecystelectrocoagulectomy, a flowerpot shatters on the dean's skull, and the hero crashes through a skylight into bed with--that's right--the head nurse herself.

All in all, though the picture is perhaps a little rough on the medical profession, it should be a most effective and pleasant cure for hypochondria.

Crashout (Hal E. Chester; Filmakers) is a crime-doesn't-pay movie that consists of one long chase complicated by another. The first begins with a smash-bang crash-out of six convicts from prison. The second begins soon after, when their wounded leader promises them a share of the loot he has hidden away if they do not abandon him. While the crooks pursue the hidden loot, the police pursue the crooks.

After 91 minutes of running time, with never a halt in the breathless, double-barreled chase, virtue wins out. What makes Crashout palatable are some peppery moments of suspense and a couple of well-spiced performances by William Bendix and Arthur Kennedy as two hard-boiled yeggs.

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