Month: December 2014

Orlak, The Hell of Frankenstein (1960)

ORLAK, THE HELL OF FRANKENSTEIN (1960)
Article #281 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-21-2001
Posting date: 5-7-2002

Frankenstein meets a convict in prison who helps him escape.The convict then uses the professor’s monster to take revenge on those who sent him to prison.

Considering that this movie only seems to exist in a unsubtitled Spanish language version, it’s a bit of a miracle that it’s as easy to follow as it is; sure, you miss a few details, but the plot is pretty straightforward, and the acting is such that even if you don’t know the exact words, you get the gist of what they’re saying. This may actually be an advantage when dealing with the comic relief in the movie; you can pretend the gags are funnier than they probably were. I also want to recommend the experience of watching a foreign film like this once in a while (unsubtitled and undubbed); it gives you an idea just how much is lost in the dubbing process. This isn’t a classic by any means, but it is a solid and fun Mexican variation on the Frankenstein legend.

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Not of This Earth (1957)

NOT OF THIS EARTH (1957)
Article #280 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-21-2001
Posting date: 5-6-2002

An alien from another planet masquerades as an earthling in order to get the blood he needs to survive.

This is an efficiently directed, well-written variation on the vampire theme directed by Roger Corman and written by Charles B. Griffith. It holds up quite well with time, keeping the interest level throughout, and it is filled with excellent performances, including a scene-stealing bit by Dick Miller as a vacuum cleaner salesman. Paul Birch plays the alien, Beverly Garland his nurse, and Jonathan Haze his servant. It’s a shame this one has never had an official release on video; it’s one of Corman’s best early efforts. In contrast, the latter day remakes of this film are all too easy to find.

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Nightmare in Wax (1969)

NIGHTMARE IN WAX (1969)
Article #279 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-20-2001
Posting date: 5-5-2002

A mad wax museum artist is putting up displays of actors from a movie studio; unfortunately, the actors always end up missing.

I was going to describe this one as a cross between MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM and HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER with Cameron Mitchell, but it doesn’t quite capture the feel. It may be a comedy; it’s hard to tell. After seeing the scarred Cameron Mitchell sitting in a bar and being flirted with by several beautiful ladies (including one of the dumbest blondes I’ve seen in a movie in years), or seeing the scene where the museum tour guide walks around and interacts with the wax figures in the museum (and I can’t tell you how much I was hoping that this character was about to be the next victim), or watching Cameron Mitchell getting very interested in a rubber tire, or the ending which would deserve a Rubber Brick award if I would have had the strength left to be appalled by it, I decided that the movie is actually one of those starving animals you see in the street that you take into the house and give it some food so it won’t die of malnutrition. Heaven knows the poor thing doesn’t seem capable of taking care of itself.

Sad. Very, very, utterly sad. No movie should be left out in the rain as long as this one was.

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Necromancy (1972)

NECROMANCY (1972)
(a.k.a. THE WITCHING)
Viewing date: 12-19-2002
Posting date: 5-4-2002

A woman and her husband move to a small town that is run by a Satanic cult.

Bert I. Gordon takes another stab at horror with this witchcraft opus at least partially inspired by ROSEMARY’S BABY (one of the video titles to this movie is ROSEMARY’S DISCIPLES). I’ve never considered Gordon a great director, but his science fiction and fantasy movies have a certain charm to them; I’m less taken with his horror work, however, and this movie certainly doesn’t change my mind. It’s talky and dull until it gets near the end, where it starts getting messy and confused.

I do have to reserve some judgment on this one; the copy I was able to snag was a reissue made about a decade later that added several ridiculous nude sequences, though as far as I can tell, the movie was left largely intact other than that. There’s a scene with rats in it, which shows that Bert I. Gordon had seen WILLARD. Orson Welles is on hand; I hope he took home a good paycheck.

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The Mysterious Island (1929)

THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1929)
Article #277 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-18-2001
Posting date: 5-3-2002

An inventor finds himself the victim of an attack by soldiers who want to use his submarine invention to rule the world.

This movie is largely silent, but with sound sequences, which gives the whole thing a rather unusual ambience. I suspected it wasn’t going to be a faithful adaptation the minute I saw that all the names of the characters were Russian-sounding (it takes place in the fictional country of Hetvia), and sure enough, outside of the fact that a submarine plays a role in the story and there’s an island involved, it has nothing to do with the Verne novel, despite the fact that he’s given credit. The scenes with sound are stiff and unconvincing in comparison to the silent sequences, showing how primitive sound was in its early years. The story is so-so, but the spectacular underwater sequence in which (so I’ve read) a huge cast of dwarves was employed, is memorable indeed. A giant octopus gets into the action, as well as a slurpasaurus (though I suppose, technically, the gator wasn’t supposed to be a dinosaur, but just a big sea monster). Lionel Barrymore plays the inventor.

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A Game of Death (1945)

A GAME OF DEATH (1945)
Article #276 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-17-2001
Posting date: 5-2-2002

A big-game hunter is shipwrecked on a deserted island with a madman who hunts human beings for sport.

This is an unnecessary remake of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. Not only are its best scenes done the same way as that movie, but it also seems to be borrowing actual footage from the original (never a good sign). It’s also not as well acted as the original, though Noble Johnson appears in both this film and the original. Normally, I would expect something better from Robert Wise, but its early enough in his film career that I prefer to chalk it up as a learning experience for him. After all, imitation is one of the methods for learning any craft.

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The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940)
Article #275 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-16-2001
Posting date: 5-1-2002

When a king is tricked by his evil adviser into losing his crown, he befriends a thief and tries to win the hand of the daughter of a sultan.

Though it shares many elements in common with the 1924 movie of the same name, it’s not really a remake; the storyline is entirely different. However, with all the obvious imagination, skill, and care that went into this production, it always leaves me a little disappointed; I guess I never really get caught up in the magic of the proceedings. It may be one of those movies I would just have to see on the big screen to really appreciate, or maybe it’s one I would have enjoyed more if I had seen it when I was a kid. For one thing, the plot has always seemed oddly structured to me; I have trouble adjusting to the plot shifts, especially the fact that the first third is told in flashback from the prince’s point of view, followed by a shift to the present, and then followed by a long sequence where the prince vanishes from the action and we have Sabu’s encounter with the genie and his raid on the temple. All these sequences work well enough individually, but I find the shifts between them somewhat jarring. I also dislike the pastel color scheme in use throughout the movie (I tend to prefer bright colors), but it appears that I may simply not have a good print of the movie.

As it is, despite great performances from all concerned, especially John Justin, Sabu, Conrad Veidt, and Rex Ingram, and a wealth of truly great moments (particularly the temple sequence with the giant spider) I never really get lost in the story. Maybe someday, if I catch it in just the right mood…

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Terror Is a Man (1959)

TERROR IS A MAN (1959)
(a.k.a. BLOOD CREATURE)
Article #274 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-15-2001
Posting date: 4-30-2002

The lone survivor of a shipwreck finds himself on an island where a scientist is performing strange experiments on an animal.

I’ve never quite known what to make of this off-beat variation on the Dr. Moreau story. In fact, off-beat doesn’t seem like the right way to explain it; it’s not what happens that is unusual, it’s how it is handled. It almost seems like it isn’t trying to be a horror movie; the characters are fleshed out quietly and subtly, and it refuses to make easy moral statements or decisions. I don’t think it’s quite successful, but I think it’s trying for something out of the ordinary; if it were more successful, I might be able to tell just what it is. As it is, it’s still one of the better horror films to come out of the Philippines that I’ve seen.

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Terror in the Haunted House (1958)

TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE (1958)
(a.k.a. MY WORLD DIES SCREAMING)
Article #273 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-14-2001
Posting date: 4-29-2002

A woman has awful dreams about an old house. She marries a man she meets after a whirlwind romance, and when he takes her home, it turns out to be the house she dreamed about.

Filmed in a process called Psychorama, in which subliminal images are flashed on the screen to create an atmosphere of dread, this is one of those movies that is supposed to be really scary and ends up being really annoying. In some ways, it reminds me of GASLIGHT; it’s one of those movies in which the lead female character is required to be in a perpetual state of fear and dread throughout the entire movie, and quite frankly, I’ve never liked those types of movies; rather than scaring me, they leave me feeling tired and impatient. This problem is only compounded by having almost all the characters behave suspiciously all the time, irrespective of whether they have a reason to act that way or not. In fact, this movie is so obvious about trying to scare you, and attempts to do so without a modicum of wit, that it inspires boredom rather than terror; all in all, this is one of the most boring movies I’ve seen. You’ll have more fun trying to stop the movie whenever the subliminal pictures flash up so you can get a good look at them.

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Target Earth! (1954)

TARGET EARTH! (1954)
Article #272 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-13-2001
Posting date: 4-28-2002

A city is invaded by robots from another planet.

This movie is a recipient of the DS Bait-and-Switch award, for movies that start out promising and then go down the tubes. In this case, the first few minutes of the movie, where a woman awakens from a failed suicide attempt into a world of dead silence, really sets up an air of tension; it is an exquisitely directed and memorable scene. This gets you through a slightly uneven first third, but after that the movie becomes a talky, interminable bore. The addition of a human villain in the final act comes across as desperation rather than clever plotting; ultimately, there’s very little here to hold the interest. I’ve also never been able to figure out why it is that people have trouble figuring out that the invaders are robots; they always seem so surprised to find out, when I take one look at them and think “robots.” I think this strange phenomenon has popped up in a few other movies, though THE MYSTERIANS is the only other one that comes to mind.

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