Month: April 2015

Scared Stiff (1953)

SCARED STIFF (1953)
Article #500 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-28-2002
Posting Date: 12-21-2002

A nightclub singer and his busboy friend get involved with gangsters and a haunted castle.

This is a remake of the Bob Hope movie THE GHOST BREAKERS tailored for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Now I’ve never really believed Jerry Lewis was without creativity, and there are a couple of nice bits of his here; one involves him talking to himself in a mirror in which his reflection ends up breaking the two-dimensional surface, and the other is his imitation of Carmen Miranda (who also appears in the film). However, putting him in a haunted house comedy is not a good idea; these types of movies sooner or later end up relying on having the comedian get his laughs by being scared in over-the-top ways, and since Lewis’ regular persona is already one of over-the-top mugging, this just makes it worse, and he is really tiresome in this one. I was hoping that I could say it was one of those movies that you would end up looking forward to the musical numbers just to get away from him for a bit, but besides the opening number with Dean Martin, Lewis is incorporated into all the other songs, so there’s no avoiding him. There’s a bit of nice atmosphere in the haunted house scenes, but compare the zombie here with Noble Johnson’s great zombie from the Bob Hope version, and you can’t help but come up disappointed. The best laugh I had in the movie is from an unexpected cameo near the very end.

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Black Friday (1940)

BLACK FRIDAY (1940)
Article #499 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-27-2002
Posting Date: 12-20-2002

In order to save the life of his friend, a doctor transplants part of the brain of a gangster into his head, then becomes obsesses with getting in touch with the gangster part of his personality to find some stolen money.

Karloff was originally intended for the Stanley Ridges role, with Lugosi in the role of the doctor; however, Karloff wanted the role of the doctor and got it, and since the producers didn’t feel Lugosi was up to the Stanley Ridges role, he was given a minor role as a gangster, and Stanley Ridges took the role of the English professor/gangster. I wouldn’t be surprised if this incident hadn’t fueled somewhat Lugosi’s resentment of Karloff, and one wonders what the movie would have been like if the casting had gone in the original direction. As it is, it’s one of the lesser of the Karloff/Lugosi collaborations. Karloff and Ridges do very well indeed, but Lugosi isn’t really given much to do at all. It’s not a bad movie, by any means; it’s just rather ordinary, more in line with Karloff’s Mad Doctor movies at Columbia than with the earlier triumphs at Universal.

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House of Secrets (1936)

HOUSE OF SECRETS (1936)
Article #498 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-26-2002
Posting Date: 12-19-2002

An American returns to England to claim a house he has inherited, only to find it occupied, and then encounters a conspiracy to keep him from going into the house.

The title of this movie sounds like it promises some good old-fashioned “old dark house” mystery fun, but that’s not really what it is. Instead, the movie seems to be some sort of experiment as to how long you can string the viewer along about mysterious goings-on before you finally show your hand. Hitchcock could pull this kind of thing off, but this movie falls short; it keeps you in the dark for sixty-five minutes (the movie runs about seventy), and I found myself getting horribly annoyed at the half hour mark. In order for this sort of thing to work, you can’t rely on the mere curiosity of the viewer to hold his attention; you have to make the events that happen in the interim striking enough to keep his interest at a high pitch. This movie offers a handful of interesting characters, a tepid romance, and an undernourished subplot about hidden treasure, and it ain’t near enough. It doesn’t help that the denouement and final revelation isn’t particularly satisfying either, though it does provide the science-fiction element that merits this movie’s inclusion in the marginalia of fantastic cinema.

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Death from a Distance (1936)

DEATH FROM A DISTANCE (1936)
Article #497 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-25-2002
Posting Date: 12-18-2002

A murder is committed in a planetarium, and a possible witness to the crime is named in the papers.

Planetariums must have been a very rare commodity in 1936; a comment is made during the movie that only three of them existed at the time. It does make for an interesting setting for a murder, but the movie is more than a tad creaky, and the opening lecture is almost guaranteed to put you in a slumber; fortunately, the murder happens just in time and we get to meet a fairly interesting array of characters before it’s all sorted out. Despite being considered a forgotten horror, there’s precious little horror here; there is, however, a smidgen of science fiction which once again I can’t give away as it plays into the final revelations. Not bad, but it does help to be prepared for its creakiness when you go into it. And the title does end up being very accurate indeed.

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Bulldog Drummond at Bay (1937)

BULLDOG DRUMMOND AT BAY (1937)
Article #496 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-24-2002
Posting Date: 12-17-2002

Bulldog Drummond tries to find the kidnappers of the designer of a secret airplane.

This is the first movie I’ve seen from the Bulldog Drummond series; he’s played by John Lodge here, though the role would pass through several other actors. It’s an okay B-thriller, but nothing special; since these Musings articles get posted sometime after I’ve seen the movies, I most likely have forgotten the details of the plot by now. Victor Jory does a nice turn as the villain, and I really liked Claude Allister as the comic relief Algy Longworth. The fantastic elements are minimal in this action thriller, and only come to play in the last few minutes of the movie, so I won’t go into any details; in terms of fantastic cinema, it’s marginal but entertaining.

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The Master Mystery (1919)

THE MASTER MYSTERY (1919)
Article #495 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-23-2002
Posting Date: 12-16-2002

When an executive in a business that makes its money by buying inventions and holding them from production gets stricken with conscience, he is poisoned by his partner, and a power struggle for the company ensues.

I’m beginning to get the impression that there was a greater variety of serial plots during the silent era than there was during the sound era; in fact, the above description doesn’t sound like a serial at all in some ways. Not to worry; there are plenty of serial-like thrills on hand, especially as one of the main villains is a robot (called an automaton; this was before the word “robot” was coined). In fact, “cyborg” may be a more correct term, as the story implies that the mechanical man is the housing of a human brain; the actual truth of the matter remains a secret until the end of the story. The real novelty of this serial, however, is the presence of Harry Houdini as the hero (the serial was also referred to as “The Houdini Serial”). This would be just ordinary gimmick casting except for the fact that the serial makes good use of Houdin’s abilities as an escape artist by making them the centerpieces of the cliffhangers. There are no cheats here; they revolve around seeing Houdini actually escape from the bonds that hold him prisoner. This is a wonderful idea, even if it gets a little repetitive. There are a few flaws here; there are too many moments where the heroes stupidly trust untrustworthy villains (“I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf. If you visit me at this address, I will turn evidence over to you!”), and the middle gets pretty muddled, though the latter problem is at least partially the result that the serial does not exist in its entirety. It was originally 15 episodes; the copy I have claimed it has been edited into eleven episodes, but I only count ten, and the number of the last one is nine, so go figure. At any rate, the strengths outweigh the weaknesses here, and I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

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The Return of Dracula (1958)

THE RETURN OF DRACULA (1958)
Article #494 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-22-2002
Posting date: 12-15-2002

Dracula goes to a small California town and begins his search for new victims.

On the surface, this low-budget vampire story seems nothing more than the basic Dracula story transplanted to California, and on the level of plot, that’s pretty much what it is. But there’s a lot of creativity at work here; the whole movie seems oddly paced, but this ends up making it just seem all the more unsettling. There are also a lot of touches that flesh out the vampire cliches and draw the viewer into the situations; the way that the men getting ready to stake the vampire wait until the rays of sunlight actually start coming over the horizon, the rather startling detail that the vampire’s victims hear his voice talking to them while we viewers don’t hear a thing, and the way the immigration man twiddles his cigarette lighter all fascinate and draw us into the story. The best touch though is Francis Lederer’s performance in the title role; his character has a very natural, offhand old world charm that seems totally unforced and easily explains how he can exude such a fascination over others; it has all the elements of Bela’s performance of Dracula without once feeling like an imitation of Bela, and he is absolutely hypnotic. All of which comes together in a movie that shows just what can be done with thought, care and creativity in lieu of a large budget.

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The Legend of Spider Forest (1971)

THE LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST (1971)
(a.k.a. VENOM)
Article #493 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-21-2002
Posting date: 12-14-2002

An artist becomes obsessed with a strange woman whose lovers turn up dead.

By all indications, the story of this movie is fairly straighforward, yet I had the worst time following the plot. The problem was that it was directed in a jagged, busy style that makes it hard to figure out what’s going on at any one point. In fact, it relies so much on extreme close-ups that it starts to get really annoying after a bit; you see so many shots of the artist’s face and the big red scar that runs down his cheek in the second half of the movie that you think the make-up person was on the set complaining how long it took him to do that scar and insisting that it appear in close up once every three minutes. Important plot points get lost in the muddle, you lose sense of place and time, the fight scenes are impenetrable, and you just get tired of trying to keep track of things. The movie wears out its welcome long before its over.

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Lake of Dracula (1971)

LAKE OF DRACULA (1971)
Article #492 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-20-2002
Posting date: 12-13-2002

A woman encounters a vampire who she remembers from a childhood incident many years earlier.

Vampire movies are probably the most common horror theme. If I recall, Videohound has a whole book which consists of nothing but vampire movies; the fact that there are enough to fill a book says quite a bit. At any rate, out of curiosity, I made a rough count of what percentage of movies I’ve covered so far could be called vampire movies, and it comes out to roughly seven percent of them; that is actually a pretty respectable percentage.

Quite frankly, I’ve never been a particular fan of vampire movies, and I’ve always wondered why they are so common. Maybe it’s because that they are fairly easy monsters to make; just add fangs and white makeup and you have a vampire. Maybe it’s because they lend themselves to some strong metaphorical uses; I’ve heard people talk about vampires in relation to sex, drugs, and any other number of themes. There’s no doubt that the vampire concept has a wide appeal. On the other hand, the fact that there are so many also makes me wonder how many fresh ways are left to tackle the theme.

So here I am winding up to talk about LAKE OF DRACULA, another vampire movie. I kind of like it, but it may be nothing more than that it hit me in the right mood; I might have just been a little charmed to see a Japanese Dracula movie, for one thing. It doesn’t really add anything new to the vampire mix, though there are some nice touches here and there. But I know for a fact that I slept well the night before and was in a pretty easygoing mood on the day when I watched it; in other circumstances, I might have liked it less. So you might consider this one a bit of a toss-up, and someday when I give this another viewing, we’ll see how it holds up then. For now, it was a pleasant and somewhat enjoyable time-filler.

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I’ve Lived Before (1956)

I’VE LIVED BEFORE (1956)
Article #491 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-19-2002
Posting date: 12-12-2002

An airline pilot believes he is the reincarnation of a World War I pilot who died in a plane crash in 1918.

This is another of the reincarnation-themed movies that appeared in the wake of the Bridey Murphy case. It’s possible to get a little tired of these, because they tend to get a little predictable in some regards; you know there’s going to be someone wondering whether they are going crazy or not, and there’s going to be a lot of talk about whether the subject is really the person’s reincarnation or whether they read about the person somewhere and forgot they had the knowledge. That’s all here, or course, and it’s all very earnest; the movie takes itself very seriously indeed, perhaps too much so. Still, it does have some nice dramatic resonance, some good acting, particularly from Jock Mahoney, Ann Harding and instantly familiar character actor John McIntire. And the first twenty minutes of the movie really starts off with a bang, with the great dogfight in the pre-credits sequence, and the near crash that kicks off the whole story arc. Not perfect, but I think it’s one of the better takes on the reincarnation theme. The cast also features Leigh Snowden and another instantly recognizable character actor, Raymond Bailey.

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