Month: January 2015

Silent Running (1971)

SILENT RUNNING (1971)
Article #340 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-18-2002
Posting date: 7-5-2002

A crewman takes drastic measures to save the last forest in existence, a forest that is preserved on a space station going around the orbit of Saturn.

After watching this movie, I popped into the user reviews on IMDB and got the definite impression that a lot of people love this movie. Actually, I can see why, and by all rights, I should love it, too; it’s science fiction, it involves ecology, which I do think is an important cause, the special effects are great, and there are some individual scenes that work very well indeed. However, upon my first viewing of the movie, I was so disgusted with it, I trotted off an angry and rather dismissive review which I have now thrown out and rewritten. Not that I love the movie now; I just felt my first review was unfair, and largely based on my distaste for propagandistic movies of any type. I’ve now had a long time to consider the movie and I feel better able to write something that better expresses just what were the problems I had with the movie.

At heart, there’s a central contradiction to this movie that drives me crazy. On one level, it’s a message movie about the environment; on another, it’s a portrait of a man who engages in extreme measures for his cause. Unfortunately, the first level involves turning the Bruce Dern character into a hero, while the second leads me to believe he is unbalanced, at least partially homicidal, and not a healthy person by any means. I have serious trouble reconciling these two outlooks. I also have serious problems with a movie that tries to get me to hate most of the human characters, and then turns around and tries to make me fall in love with three robots by anthropomorphizing them (I detect more than a hint of misanthropy here), and when at one point the Bruce Dern character spent five minutes fretting over his inablility to figure out why the forest is dying when I had been able to zero in on the reason within two seconds, I lost any and all motivation to like the character or the movie. Thus, the potentially powerful end to the movie left me feeling just empty and depressed, and not in a cathartic sense.

This being said, I’m sure some people will believe that my dislike for this movie marks a serious lapse of taste on my part, and maybe they’re right. All I can say is I wish I did like it; it would have made writing this Musing a lot easier. As it is, one thing I can say is that I thought longer and harder about this review than anything else I’ve written for this series, and any movie that can inspire me to that much effort must be worth viewing for no other reason that it does make you think. And that is a lot more than many other movies do.

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The Canterville Ghost (1944)

THE CANTERVILLE GHOST (1944)
Article #339 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-17-2002
Posting date: 7-4-2002

A ghost will only be freed from his curse if one of his kinsman will perform a brave act in his name; unfortunately, he belongs to a clan of cowards. His hopes arise when an American nephew shows up during World War II.

This comedy was based on a story by Oscar Wilde, but the presence of American GIs fighting Nazis show that changes were made to cause it to fit in with the tenor of the period. This kind of fluff role must have been a little disappointment to Charles Laughton after some of his classier roles during the thirties; in fact, he had wanted to make a film about Beethoven, but the powers that be deemed this idea to be more commercial. He does well enough, though, as do Margaret O’Brien and Robert Young in their roles. The movie lapses into slapstick at times, and there’s a little too much dwelling on the differences between Yanks and Brits for my taste, but it works quite well overall. Nothing fantastic, but entertaining nonetheless.

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The Boy With Green Hair (1948)

THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR (1948)
Article #338 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-16-2002
Posting date: 7-3-2002

A war orphan wakes up one morning with green hair, and he tries to adjust to the changes it makes in his life.

This fantasy-with-a-message is very popular among certain people, but the first few times I watched it, I found it unfocused and disappointing. I fully expected to find it the same way when I watched it this time, but was quite surprised to find myself enjoying the movie immensely. The movie has a number of great subtle moments, and some fine acting, particularly from Dean Stockwell as the boy, and Pat O’Brien as Gramps. I think I found it unfocused because I was less apt to spot certain subtleties back then, and these subtleties add immensely to the story. Also, the child’s sense of feeling out of place seemed to have a greater resonance at this time in my life; this gives a depth and dimension to what could have been a very preachy and tiresome film.

SPOILER

One observation I made in this viewing of the movie was that we are hearing the story through the telling by the child, and as such, there may be a certain ambiguity as to whether the child told the strict truth; I think this may be an interesting point, if you consider how the boy feels about his discovery that he is a war orphan.

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The Blue Bird (1940)

THE BLUE BIRD (1940)
Article #337 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-15-2002
Posting date: 7-2-2002

A little boy and girl go out in search of the bluebird of happiness.

This is the movie Shirley Temple got to do instead of THE WIZARD OF OZ; she definitely got the worst of the deal. Though it tries to emulate that movie to some extent, with a black-and-white beginning turning to color later on, it lacks the energy and inventiveness of that movie. It’s precious and charmless, overly manipulative and preachy, contrived and turgid. The best scene (a forest fire) is the only time the movie has some life; it also kills off the only interesting character, the cat as played by Gale Sondergaard. It might be a movie your your children would want to see, but you most likely wouldn’t want to sit through it with them.

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The Projected Man (1967)

THE PROJECTED MAN (1967)
Article #336 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-14-2002
Posting date: 7-1-2002

A man experimenting with matter transmission experiments on himself with disastrous results.

It sounds a bit like THE FLY, only it doesn’t have the strengths of that movie; here, he becomes your average monster who can kill with a touch, and he takes vengeance on those who sabotaged his experiments. It’s not a horrible movie, but it’s all pretty humdrum and a little tiresome and predictable. It largely reminds me of other movies I like better, such as THE 4D MAN, for example.

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The Bloody Vampire (1961)

THE BLOODY VAMPIRE (1961)
Article #335 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-13-2002
Posting date: 6-30-2002

The daughter of a vampire hunter goes undercover as a maid in a castle believed to be run by a vampire.

This movie begins with an incredibly atmospheric sequence involving a carriage moving silently in slow motion; it’s a simple effect, but wonderfully mood-setting. The rest of the movie can’t equal it; it is talky and slow-moving, with some interesting ideas and moments, but it’s too long for its own good. The ending is quite interesting; it amounts to what might be termed a stalemate between the forces of good and evil. The movie is supposed to be related to INVASION OF THE VAMPIRES, a movie I haven’t as yet seen, so I can’t say for sure; it may be either a prequel or a sequel to that movie. Interesting, but flawed Mexican horror movie.

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Blood of a Poet (1930)

BLOOD OF A POET (1930)
Article #334 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-12-2002
Posting date: 6-29-2002

Plot? Well, it all happens during the length of time it takes a chimney to fall (I didn’t figure this out from watching the movie; I just read it somewhere).

If you’ve seen other movies by Cocteau, you’ll recognize his style; it’s certainly quite individual. This is a very personal movie, which is one way to say that he understands it more than I do. The fact that my copy is not subtitled may have something to do with it, but I doubt it; this bizarre assortment of strange images and events is surreal and dreamlike, and probably isn’t intended to make any sense in the way we’re used to defining it. It works, nonetheless, because the imagery is so powerful and strong, and it’s certainly one I plan to see again.

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Valley of the Zombies (1946)

VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES (1946)
Article #333 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-11-2002
Posting date: 6-28-2002

A man needs blood to keep himself alive, and kills and embalms his victims.

This was another stab by Republic at the horror market. It’s certainly better than the horribly dull CATMAN OF PARIS, with Ian Keith giving a ripe performance as Ormand Burks. Keith was apparently one of Lugosi’s rivals for the role of Dracula. There’s a lot of priceless silly dialogue here, but since the movie aspires to be something of a comedy, the laughs may be intentional. The Valley of the Zombies of the title is only referred to in passing; there’s only one Zombie, and he acts more like a vampire crossed with a mad doctor. A slight, but strange B horror flick.

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The Spy With My Face (1966)

THE SPY WITH MY FACE (1966)
Article #332 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-10-2002
Posting date: 6-27-2002

THRUSH comes up with an agent that is the exact duplicate of Napoleon Solo, and uses him in a scheme to steal top-secret information.

I don’t know if this feature-length version of the TV show “The Man from UNCLE” is actually made up of episodes of the series or not, but I do know that it looks more like a TV show than a movie. I’ve never really seen much of the show, but the movie gives me the impression that it was James Bond Lite, lacking the flashy gimmickry of those movies. Entertaining enough, I suppose, but I have to admit I’ve never really been a big fan of the genre, though many of them do qualify as borderline science fiction with its emphasis on gadgetry of all sorts.

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Bowery at Midnight (1942)

BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT (1942)
Article #331 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-9-2002
Posting date: 6-26-2002

A professor by day runs a flophouse by night, which is actually a front for his criminal activities.

This Monogram Bela Lugosi vehicle is probably one of the more serious ones in the bunch, and in some ways isn’t even a horror movie; it’s more of a crime thriller, in the same vein as THE HUMAN MONSTER. The DVD I have claims it has Lugosi in a dual role, but that really isn’t the case; the two characters are the same person, and the movie doesn’t really set that up as a surprise. There is at least one very fantastic aspect of the movie which involves the experiments that the doctor whom Lugosi keeps in the basement performs on the dead bodies of the victims; however, to reveal that would give away far too much. The movie is a little dull now and then, but overall it is a pleasant surprise.

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