Month: March 2015

The Animal World (1956)

THE ANIMAL WORLD (1956)
Article #430 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-19-2002
Posting date: 10-12-2002

A documentary about animals.

No story here; just lots of footage with animals in it. It starts out with a direction, recounting the evolution of animals through the ages, but it eventually settles on random footage of animals, with narrators occasionally adding voices to the animals or telling stories about them. If this sounds like it could get a bit tiresome, it does, but it does help if you like to look at animals, though some of the bullfight footage is bound to be unpleasant. It’s included here for having some stop-motion dinosaur animation near the beginning of the movie, and a shot of the Earth being blown up at the end (they’re talking about man being the only animal who destroys himself). Irwin Allen would later move on to more conventional fare.

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Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951)

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN (1951)
Article #429 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-18-2002
Posting date: 10-11-2002

Two detectives help an escaped convict who was framed for the murder of his manager. In order to elude the police, the convict takes a serum that makes him invisible.

This is probably the best of the several horror-oriented followups that Abbott and Costello made in the wake of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. Like that one, this has a definite storyline, even if the concept of an invisible man trying to prove his innocence was used before. Nonetheless, a storyline gives the viewer something to follow when the gags fall flat; it also pushes the story in some different directions so we don’t have a succession of “Lou is scared” gags; having Lou pose as a boxer in an attempt to catch the real criminal (Sheldon Leonard) gives them a pretty good framework for some of the later gags, particularly the extended fight sequence in the last third of the movie. Arthur Franz plays the convict/boxer, and William Frawley is on hand as the chief of police. There are several other nice character parts throughout the movie.

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West of Zanzibar (1928)

WEST OF ZANZIBAR (1928)
Article #428 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-17-2002
Posting date: 10-10-2002

A magician’s legs become paralyzed when he is hurt in a fight with a man running away with his wife. When the wife shows up later dead in a church with a child, he vows to use the child to get revenge on the man who injured him.

After THE UNKNOWN, this is my favorite of Lon Chaney’s collaborations with Tod Browning. Once again, it’s more lurid melodrama than actual horror; the most horrific element of the plot is having one of the characters disguised as an evil spirit to scare African natives into dropping the ivory tusks they are transporting. However, the story itself is so depraved and the African setting exudes such a sinister dark atmosphere that it becomes a horror movie in spirit if not in plot. Once again, I find it hard to take my eyes off of Chaney, whose ability to evoke both deep horror and intense pity is as strong as ever. This was remade only a few years later with Walter Huston in the Chaney role as KONGO.

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Visit to a Small Planet (1960)

VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET (1960)
Article #427 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-16-2002
Posting date: 10-9-2002

A student from outer space decides to take a field trip to Earth to study the inhabitants.

This movie was based on a satirical play by Gore Vidal; it shouldn’t take more than a glimpse at the cast list to figure out that whatever satirical elements remain in the finished product are going to be coincidental. This is pretty much the case; most of the story has indeed been doctored to the talents of its star, Jerry Lewis, though hints and glimpses of satire remain around the edges.

Watching Jerry Lewis at this time in my life does remind me why I liked him when I was a kid; it also reminds me of how vital it was that I had been a kid when I was first exposed to him; if I had been any older, I would most likely have loathed him. For all that, this movie is quite watchable; I expected to be embarassed by Jerry’s antics, but I wasn’t. The reason for this may be that, no matter how potentially embarassing any given gag might be, Jerry threw himself into it with a gusto and commitment to the gag that belied any embarassment on his part, and I think this is a crucial point, because if I had at any time sensed embarassment on his part, I would have felt the same. Another interesting thing about him was that occasionally he would set aside his usual persona to pull off more sophisticated gags, such as during the point when he helps his host keep his job by blackmailing his boss. This is quite admirable, in a sense, and it does show that the man possessed some acting talent; unfortunately, it also revealed that his usual persona was nothing but a persona, which may explain why you never really believe the character. And also why, though I find this movie watchable enough, I never find it more than tepidly funny.

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Gamera Vs. Gaos (1967)

GAMERA VS. GAOS (1967)
Article #426 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-15-2002
Posting date: 10-8-2002

A giant vampire-like bat monster arises out of the area near Mount Fuji and terrorizes Japan. Gamera comes to the rescue.

All right, we have this giant flat-headed vampiric bat creature who flies through the air, shoots laser beams, and feeds on human blood. His weaknesses: he can’t stand the sunlight and is unable to turn his head. Therefore, the following plan is used to dispatch him; a vat with a fountain is installed on the top of the building with a rotating roof that is filled with artificial human blood. When the monster is attracted to the vat, he stands on the roof to drink the blood. The roof will then rotate rapidly, rendering the monster dizzy and unable to move until dawn, when the sunlight will dispatch with him. This is considered a more feasible plan than building a giant ultraviolet ray gun. Everyone believes the plan will work and it almost does (this I find hard to believe). The plan was devised by a six-year-old child (this, however, I do believe). Of course, there’s a lot more to the movie than this, but for some reason, my mind comes to a screeching halt at this point; what can you say about a movie that so obviously tosses plausibility to the four winds? You can say it was made for a six-year-old child. Which it was.

And let’s face it; whatever the plan was, you knew it wouldn’t work; with a title like GAMERA VS.GAOS, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know it’s going to end with a knock-down drag-out fight between the titular monsters; heck, a six-year-old kid could figure it out.

Still, I was entertained.

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The Crawling Eye (1958)

THE CRAWLING EYE (1958)
(a.k.a. THE TROLLENBERG TERROR)
Article #425 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-14-2002
Posting date: 10-7-2002

Strange deaths are occuring on the Trollenberg mountain. An investigator from the United Nations shows up to look into the situation.

This British science fiction thriller has some of the feel of a Quatermass movie; like them, it was also based on a TV serial. It’s actually quite good, though the direction is a little stodgy and the special effects suffer quite a bit towards the end of the movie. The creatures are some of the most disgusting things this side of FIEND WITHOUT A FACE, and maybe I should count my blessings that the special effects aren’t any more convincing than they are. There’s a nice sense of depth to the story; some of the characters have definite histories with each other, and one can see that this might have made for a very interesting TV series. The most memorable scene is a real humdinger; it’s the opening scene of the movie, and was later parodied in an episode of the cartoon “Freakazoid”.

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Captive Women (1952)

CAPTIVE WOMEN (1952)
Article #424 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-13-2002
Posting date: 10-6-2002

Mutants and Norms battle for supremacy in a post-apocalyptic future.

The first five minutes of this movie feature extensive nuclear bomb footage and endless philosophizing narration, which goes on for another minute and a half after the title credits are finished rolling; obviously, they wanted to make sure we got the message. What follows is pretty standard fare; it could serve equally for a Sword & Sandal epic or a caveman movie, except there’s a lot of speechifying about mutants being people, too. It’s not particularly good, but it is entertaining enough, with Robert Clarke and William Schallert on hand for those seeking familiar faces. What is most interesting is that is may be the first primitive-civilization-after-the-apocalypse movie, a genre that would really thrive in the eighties, but was fairly rare at this point of time. It’s not the first movie to take place after a nuclear war (that would be FIVE), but it’s the first one to conceive of a whole society after the war. As such, this movie, minor as it is, has a place in the history of science fiction cinema.

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Bowery to Bagdad (1954)

BOWERY TO BAGDAD (1954)
Article #423 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-12-2002
Posting date: 10-5-2002

The Bowery Boys find Aladdin’s lamp. Comedy ensues.

Hey, it’s another Bowery Boys movie. Leo Gorcey makes with the malaprops. Huntz Hall gets big muscles and then gets a hat stuck on his head. The genii drinks too much. Gangsters with guns and Arabs with big long knives are after them. Many people are bonked on the head. It’s all done for laughs, hilarity, and hijinks.

Bowery boys movies can be like Sword & Sandal movies; they are what they are, and once you understand that, commentary is pointless.

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Sabu and the Magic Ring (1957)

SABU AND THE MAGIC RING (1957)
Article #422 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-11-2002
Posting date: 10-4-2002

A stable boy comes by a magic ring that summons forth a genie, who aids him in putting an end to a plot to kill the Caliph.

From what I gather, this puny little Arabian nights movie was originally a couple of episodes from TV edited together into a single movie. Actually, the whole thing flows smoothly enough that you don’t get that sense of it jumping into another episode at any point; I suspect the two episodes were meant to work as a whole. Sabu plays a character named Sabu, and the whole thing rides on his charm. You can’t help but notice that there are only a handful of sets; most of the movie takes place in a marketplace and a stable area nearby. And though the genie is supposed to be particularly powerful (he claims he’s an Ifrit; he eats genies for breakfast), his magic feats have been definitely scaled down to TV size, though I would definitely love to see that rule book for ifrits and genies that he has. Nothing great here, but an enjoyable little time-passer in its way.

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Berkeley Square (1933)

BERKELEY SQUARE (1933)
Article #421 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-10-2002
Posting date: 10-3-2002

A man who inhabits a house that has been kept in its original condition for 150 years walks through the door one day and travels back in time 150 years to inhabit the body of his look-alike ancestor.

Leslie Howard stars in this early time-travel romance, based on a stage play by John Balderston. To give you an idea of the movie, you are almost thirty minutes into it before the time travel incident occurs, and that first thirty minutes is loaded with talk. For that matter, the next thirty minutes is also loaded with talk, most of it centered around how odd the man is and how he seems to know things that haven’t yet occurred. It’s only in the last third of the movie that it really seems to take shape, but my patience has worn a bit thin by that time. And though the movie does flirt with such themes as how horrible modern life is (in a dizzying montage of contemporary images of violence that make for one of the most energetic moments in the movie), it doesn’t romanticize the past; it’s obvious that the man finds many aspects of the past equally unpleasant. All in all, it’s a photographed stage play that really needs more cinematic touches to bring it to life. There are some interesting things to be found here, but it really helps to be patient.

One interesting piece of trivia that was told me when this was first posted is that this was H. P. Lovecraft’s favorite movie.

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