Month: October 2014

The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)

THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN (1964)
Article #120 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-14-2001
Posting date: 11-27-2001

Dr. Frankenstein revives an old creation of his, but employs a hypnotist to help establish a connection with his mind. The hypnotist uses the monster to take revenge on villagers who offended him.

One of the reasons I’m engaged in this movie-watching project is to take the time to familiarize myself with some types of movies of which I don’t have a working knowledge. This is my way of saying that I really don’t know the Hammer movies all that well; my local creature feature never ran the Hammer horrors, and ouside of the Quatermass series, I’ve never really made much of an effort to see and understand them. Hopefully, as this project of mine continues, I will see many more of them and gain a sense of their strengths and their world.

From the many comments I’ve read about this movie heretofore, I gather that this isn’t the place to start. After watching it, I felt neither elation nor disappointment; it seemed like nothing more than a pleasant way to kill an hour and a half. Peter Cushing was good, as usual, but on the downside, I didn’t feel the script brought anything new to the table; it all seemed like a standard horror-by-the-numbers story. Also, the monster makeup was crummy, but I have to admit that I have yet to find a Frankenstein monster whose makeup was anywhere near as interesting as that of the original Jack Pierce creation.

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Dr. Renault’s Secret (1942)

DR. RENAULT’S SECRET (1942)
Article #119 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-13-2001
Posting date: 11-26-2001

A man visits his fiancee who lives in a French village. There he meets Noel, a strange hulking manservant of his fiancee’s uncle, Dr. Renault. When the man switches rooms with a local drunk, and the drunk is murdered, suspicion falls on Noel, who is very attached to the man’s fiancee.

I saw this one years ago, and back then it didn’t make much of an impression on me; seeing it recently turned out to be a revelation. I now consider this movie to be a little gem, anchored by two outstanding performances; first, by J. Carrol Naish as Noel, who plays the part much like he would later play Daniel in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, with an overwhelming sense of sadness and longing. It also contains one of my favorite performances by George Zucco as Dr. Renault, who makes the character seem so likeable in the first half of the movie that the revelations in the second half really do come as surprises. The unexpected presence of Mike Mazurki as the real villain of the story, Rogell, adds to the fun. The story gets a bit messy at times, but it has some unique and interesting touches to it. All in all, a worthy little SF/Horror movie.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945)
Article #118 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-12-2001
Posting date: 11-25-2001

A young man, fearful for the loss of his youth, wishes that a portrait of his would age instead of him. The wish comes true, as the picture starts reflecting the effects of time and debauchery instead of his own body.

Of all the famous authors I know of, Oscar Wilde seems to be one of the last ones I would have thought to have penned a classic horror novel: however, I am not surprised that the one he did write would have been along these lines. I don’t think the Dorian Gray story is quite as compelling to horror fans as certain other classics, and I think part of the reason is that it covers a lot of the same ground as the more adaptable Jekyll and Hyde story, in that they both deal with the seduction of man by his own innate evil, as well as taking place in the same basic milieu. Still, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie, and though I haven’t read the novel in many years, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that many of the witty nuggets of conversation voiced by Sir Henry Wotton (George Sanders—now that is exquisite casting) are from the original novel. It is fascinating watching the gradual transformation of Hurd Hatfield’s Dorian Gray from an innocent young man into a truly amoral cad. The use of occasional color (in the close-ups of the actual picture) is also a nice touch. Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury, and Peter Lawford also show up in the cast.

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Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936)
Article #117 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-11-2001
Posting date: 11-24-2001

A timid student of dead languages loses the woman he loves to a friend with a much more aggressive philosophy. When he discovers an ancient technique to turn men into zombies, he adopts his friend’s aggressive technique and uses the power to try to gain the woman back.

After seeing a few of the Halperin Brothers’ movies, I really have to admire their ambition; while most of the other low-budget horror movies of the time were content with an “old dark house” and a few murders, the Halperins really tried to fill their movies with wonderful ideas and concepts. Yet, despite the novel ideas and the occasional atmospheric moment, the sheer creakiness of their directorial style drags them down, and never so badly as it did in this one; it is shot so uninterestingly and unfolds so slowly that everything that was potentially good about it shrivels up to nothing. And we’ve seen the floating eyes of Bela Lugosi too many times; they add nothing to this movie. Dean Jagger (who plays the lead in this movie) definitely went on to better things.

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The Return of the Ape Man (1944)

THE RETURN OF THE APE MAN (1944)
Article #116 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-10-2001
Posting date: 11-23-2001

While experimenting with suspended animation, a scientist revives an ape man found in the polar regions, and decides to give it half a new brain in order for him to communicate with it.

For me, this was by far the goofiest of the Monogram horrors Bela Lugosi made during the forties. Despite the title, it has nothing to do with the earlier Monogram movie THE APE MAN. The fun starts with the opening newspaper headline, which talks about the disappearance of a “noted wino” (those may not be the exact words, but you get the gist), which makes me wonder just how slow a news day this was.

This also backs up my earlier claim that in the Monogram horrors, Bela Lugosi was apt to do things the hard way. In order to prove the effectiveness of his suspended animation process, he decides that he needs to find an ape man frozen in a block of ice for thousands of years; what is amazing is that he actually manages to find one. He replaces half the brain of the ape man with half the brain of John Carradine, and ends up with an ape man who not only murders, but can play the piano.

George Zucco was originally supposed to play the ape man, but Frank Moran took over when Zucco backed out; this was a wise decision for Zucco, because this is the movie with the infamous scene where, when the ape man exits the lab through a high window, you get a clear view of…uh…well, whatever is under his animal skin. There are some who believe he’s not wearing anything underneath (which would most likely have been historically accurate), but my print isn’t clear enough to verify this; let us hope, in this case, that historical accuracy was not in force here, and we’re seeing nothing more than the ape man’s BVDs.

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The Return of Dr. X (1939)

THE RETURN OF DR. X (1939)
Article #115 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-9-2001
Posting date: 11-22-2001

When a reporter discovers a dead woman, he calls in the story to his newspaper. Unfortunately, the body vanishes and the woman later turns up alive. The reporter eventually discovers that the woman was treated by a mysterious doctor and his suspicious assistant.

The title would lead you to believe that this is a sequel to DOCTOR X, but ouside of the existence of synthetic blood to parallel the synthetic flesh of that movie, there is no real connection. This movie is notorious for being Humphrey Bogart’s sole foray into horror; reportedly, he was given the role as punishment by Warner Brothers, and he hated it. Actually, he doesn’t do a bad job in the role, but I’m glad he didn’t take to horror; if he had, it would have most likely denied the world his great performances in several classic movies. The movie itself is quite interesting; it was one of those movies that really keeps you guessing as to what explanation you’re eventually going to be given for the mysterious events. This one is worth a look.

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Queen of Outer Space (1958)

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958)
Article #114 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-8-2001
Posting date: 11-21-2001

Whan a space station is destroyed by a mysterious ray, several astronauts in a rocket ship investigate. They are pulled onto the planet Venus where they discover a race of miniskirt-wearing, man-hungry women and their queen with a mutilated face. From then on, you’re too distracted to pay attention to the story.

Ben Hecht was responsible for the story idea. It was written by “Twilight Zone” regular Charles Beaumont. William Beaudine, Jr., the son of William “One-Shot” Beaudine, was assistant director. I mention him because I originally mistook him for his father, who is the only one of these people I’d suspect would be involved with a project like this. There have been several movies where space-farers have encountered mini-skirt wearing all female societies on other planets, and they’re all pretty dumb; this is no exception, but at least it feels as if it was intended to be a comedy. The special effects are pretty cheesy, especially the spider in the cave that always seems to appear in movies of this ilk. And then there’s Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Actually, pointing out flaws in movies like this is like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s also like trying to play the role of Hamlet in a production that also features Pamela Anderson in the role of Ophelia; you can do your damnedest, but you’ll eventually realize that no one is paying any attention to YOU. I have a word for movies like this—they’re “centipede” movies. I call them this because the second you hear the word “centipede,” all you can think about are the legs.

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Queen of Blood (1966)

QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966)
Article #113 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-7-2001
Posting date: 11-20-2001

The earth receives a message from an alien race informing them they will be sending them an emissary. When the aliens’ craft becomes stranded on Mars, the earth sends an expedition to rescue survivors. The lone survivor turns out to be a strange mute woman who has a special diet…

Several movies were made during the sixties that were built around Russian science fiction footage; this is probably the best of them. Granted, it would have probably been best if they had just tried to do a straighforward dubbing of the Russian movie, but I’d rather that they did what they did do (build a whole new movie around the special effects footage) than to try to incorporate part of the plot of the original movie with cut-ins of American actors that never interreact with the cast of the original (the Jerry Warren approach). It has a few familiar faces in it; Basil Rathbone, John Saxon, and Dennis Hopper are all there, as well as Forrest J Ackerman as an assistant to Rathbone. I quite like Hopper in this film; I found him distracting in Curtis Harrington’s earlier NIGHT TIDE, but here he adds some very nice human touches to his character. And Florence Marly, who plays the alien queen, really does leave you with that creepy feeling that despite her human form, she is totally alien on the inside.

Overall, I quite like the movie. I think it’s one of those that may have had an influence on ALIEN. I also find the ending quite intriguing in its way, despite the fact that it is an example of what I think of as the “typical seventies downbeat ending” only in a movie from the sixties. Nonetheless, I really wonder what is going to happen next, and this is one movie to which I would have liked to see a sequel.

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Psycho (1960)

PSYCHO (1960)
Article #112 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-6-2001
Posting date: 11-19-2001

No plot description here: if you’ve seen it, you know the plot; if you haven’t, the less you know going in, the better.

With that in mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that any serious discussion of this movie will involve SPOILERS to some degree. Furthermore, PSYCHO is one of those movies that has been written about and talked about so much that I doubt that I will have anything novel or interesting to say about it. Nonetheless, I’ll touch upon a couple of things that came to mind while watching the movie.

I’ve heard it said that Hitchcock considers the movie a comedy. I think I see what he’s talking about, but I myself wouldn’t consider it a comedy as much as a joke; specifically, a practical joke played on an unsuspecting audience, and, as we know, practical jokes are always the most fun for the person who perpetrates them. Hitchcock’s joke involves setting up specific expectations in the mind of the audience, and then pulling the rug out from under them. After all, Janet Leigh is initally set up as the main character of the movie, and look what happens to her.

The sad thing is that this movie is so well known and so widely discussed that I think it is next to impossible to watch it with a fresh and innocent mind; the first time I saw it, I knew about the fate of Janet Leigh beforehand, and there’s no way that scene can have the same impact if you’re expecting it (I will admit, however, to having been caught off guard by Martin Balsam’s fate). As good as this movie is, I actually think obscurity would enhance it; it would preserve the sense of surprise that this movie really needs in order for it to have it’s full impact.

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Prehistoric Women (1950)

PREHISTORIC WOMEN (1950)
Article #111 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-5-2001
Posting date: 11-18-2001

A group of prehistoric women dance themselves to exhaustion during the full moon. The matriarch can tell by this that they need to get some men into the tribe (apparently their cosmetician and hairdresser, whose existences I merely deduce from the evidence I see, do not qualify). They capture some men and keep them prisoner using their pet panther to keep them in line. However, when one of the men kills the panther, the balance of power shifts, and the men rule the women. They decide to take them back to their caves, but on the way they have to join forces to fight a turkey (the narrator calls it a dragon, but I’m calling it as I see it) and a giant called the Gwadi.

SPOILER

At the end, they decide to join forces and form a tribe of their own, and much (offscreen) enjoyment is had by all. No dinosaurs appear, not even a slurpasaur (and the dragon/turkey doesn’t count).

END OF SPOILER

Usually, I don’t go into this elaborate of a plot description, but there are just some movies that are best described that way; it tells you more about the movie than any commentary by me ever could. The lack of dinosaurs should give you a clue as to what aspect of caveman movies this one is going to emphasize, but be aware that it would get no more than the mildest of PG ratings nowadays.

This is what happens when you make a caveman movie without dinosaurs.

Also, beware narrators; you know you’re watching a bad movie when the narrator is telling you things that you can see with your own two eyes.

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