Month: April 2015

Gold (1934)

GOLD (1934)
Article #460 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-18-2002
Posting date: 11-11-2002

I wish I could give more of a plot description, but beyond the fact that a process is discovered that changes lead into gold, I can’t really say much more of what the movie is about. The problem is that my print is in German, which is not my native language, and though the movie looks very interesting, much of the plot is dependant on dialogue, and I spent much of my time watching this was spent in the dark. I suspect the movie is very good, and even those who don’t understand German should be able to appreciate some great special effects and a high level of excitement that comes into play in the last third of the movie. Brigitte Helm is there in the mix, looking quite fetching, as well. Someday, I’ll have to sit down with someone who understands the language who can help me sort through the story, and then my commentary will be more useful.

Incidentally, some of the special effects footage from this movie was borrowed for the fifties science fiction movie, THE MAGNETIC MONSTER.

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Voodoo Island (1957)

VOODOO ISLAND (1957)
Article #459 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-17-2002
Posting date: 11-10-2002

An expedition investigates the disappearance of several men on an island believed to be the source of voodoo practices.

This late-fifties Karloff horror vehicle saves most of its best moments for the last fifteen minutes of the movie, so if you’re going to wait for them, you should be prepared for an enormous amount of talk. This in itself wouldn’t be so bad; the script does take a real stab at giving us an interesting array of characters to work with, but the actual dialogue is at times painfully self-conscious; even Karloff seems a little lost at times with the clumsy lines he’s given. Reginald LeBorg’s pedestrian direction isn’t much help, either. However, the presence of Karloff (and Elisha Cook) does help quite a bit, as well as the fact that the story itself avoids being more than just a compendium of voodoo cliches, and the carnivorous plants are fun. This is just one of those movies that calls for a little patience.

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The Night Caller (1965)

THE NIGHT CALLER (1965)
(a.k.a. NIGHT CALLER FROM OUTER SPACE/BLOOD BEAST FROM OUTER SPACE)
Article #458 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-16-2002
Posting date: 11-9-2002

A strange sphere from outer space lands on our planet; it turns out to be a matter transportation device that brings a sinister alien monster to our planet.

The first half of this “alien-on-the-loose” epic, where scientists investigate a meteor that turns out to be a small cold sphere, is the better half of the movie; it starts the fuse burning and leads you to believe that you’re watching an effective little thriller. Things don’t run quite so smoothly in the second half, though; despite an interesting progression of the story and some quite good character roles, one is left with the feeling that the fuse is being left burning too long without adaquate pay-off; in short, it starts getting dull. And the denoument, though it manages to be a bit of a surprise, also manages to be lame, anti-climactic, loaded with message, and at odds with the rest of the movie, and it garners a Rubber Brick award for movies with bad endings. And though I won’t go as far as to say that the movie’s theme song stinks, I will say that there are some movies where a theme song is distinctly out of place. Like this one. This one is best watched for the good moments and for John Saxon.

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Cabiria (1914)

CABIRIA (1914)
Article #457 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-15-2002
Posting date: 11-8-2002

Cabiria is the daughter of a Roman nobleman who is separated from her family during an eruption of Etna, and ends up taken prisoner by pirates and sold as a sacrificial slave. She is rescued, and then becomes a slave to a Carthaginian princess.

This Italian film is only marginally fantastic cinema; it’s inclusion is probably due to some slight science fiction content at one point (Archimedes designs a mirror weapon designed to set fire to the Roman fleet), and to its role as the granddaddy of all sword-and-sandal movies. It’s also the first appearance of the character of Maciste, here the powerful and loyal slave of a Roman who is committed to the rescue of Cabiria; he is for all practical reasons the real hero of the movie. The whole story is told as a backdrop against the wars between Rome and Carthage, and there’s some amazing spectacle; my favorite moments include the whole scene within the temple of Moloch (the set is absolutely stunning), and a scene where the wall of Carthage is scaled via a ladder made of soldiers and their shields. This movie was apparently highly influential on D. W. Griffith and inspired at least partially his work on INTOLERANCE. By itself it is a wonderful example of how far cinematic storytelling technique had progressed, and it still holds up just as well today; if a scene by scene remake were made today, I’m not sure anyone would notice the difference, other than the addition of sound and color.

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Frankenstein (1910)

FRANKENSTEIN (1910)
Article #456 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-14-2002
Posting date: 11-7-2002

Frankenstein tries to create a perfect human being but ends up creating a monster.

Anybody who has seen the famous still of Charles Ogle in the role of the monster has gotten a better look at the creature than you get in the movie. Pretty basic retelling of the legend, though the ending strays quite a ways from any of the other versions of the story and is probably far more convenient than sensible; the doctor gets off scot-free. The main plus here is an excellent soundtrack, which adds immeasurably to the proceedings.

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The End of the World (1931)

THE END OF THE WORLD (1931)
(a.k.a. LA FIN DU MONDE)
Article #455 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-13-2002
Posting date: 11-6-2002

A comet is on a collision course with the earth.

Apparently, this movie is not readily available in its original version; a fifty-five minute version for English audiences is all that is available. I can only guess what the original is like; this one is unique. After a stiff, talky introduction featuring a scientist who lacks the abillity to sound natural on camera, the movie starts in earnest. It hovers somewhere between sound and silent cinema, with rushes of voices, bizarre dissonant music, title cards and a plot which seems to be there only to support a nonstop barrage of montage scenes. The editing is bizarre and jarring; it would probably be extremely difficult to recreate the original print as it almost seems like it would be hard to tell what was intended and what was just spliced and edited. Victor Francen has the lead role of the scientist who discovers the comet; apparently most of the footage involving Abel Gance himself is not in this version. It’s not an easy watch: I can only take so much montage at once, but it’s worth a look to anyone interested in unique cinema.

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Destiny (1944)

DESTINY (1944)
Article #454 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-12-2002
Posting date: 11-5-2002

An ex-convict finds himself on the run again after getting tricked into helping a bank robber.

This movie was built around a story that was left off of the movie FLESH AND FANTASY, about a farm girl’s encounter with a desperate criminal. The farm girl has psychic powers that cause nature to come to her aid. This is the fantastic aspect of the movie, but it doesn’t come into play until the last half of the movie, and I suspect these sequences were part of the original story, while the preachy scenes about trusting people were all part of the footage that was added to expand it to a full length feature. After watching this, I’d like to see what the short had been like without the added footage; the dream sequence involving the powers of nature is far and away the best thing in the movie. In this form, the movie is watchable, but somewhat muddled and (as noted before) preachy; it’s especially hard to believe when the warden gives the ex-con a sermon on learning to trust people as he’s releasing him from prison. I remember reading somewhere that in order to expand the movie, they had to change the character of the criminal, and I can see what they mean. Still, this is an interesting little oddity, and worth a watch.

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Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)

DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (1922)
(a.k.a. DR. MABUSE, DER SPIELER)
Article #453 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-11-2002
Posting date: 11-4-2002

A supercriminal is at large who makes a fortune by using hypnotism on gamblers.

The full length print of this movie runs almost four and a half hours, from what I hear; my version runs one hour and forty-five minutes. I don’t know whether I’ve got an edited version of the whole feature or whether it’s just one of the two features that it was broken into at one point. At any rate, I’m fairly confident I’m missing quite a bit, so I’ll refrain from coming to any conclusions until I’ve had a chance to get a complete copy of the movie and watch it in its entirety, but from what I’ve been able to tell, it’s fairly fascinating. Rudolf Klein-Rogge is great as Mabuse, and what is fascinating is that he ends up exhibiting more human values than you would expect. According to one source, what the shorter versions are missing are some of the depictions of social conditions in Germany at the time, which I believe would make some fascinating viewing indeed. Chalk this one up as a movie that I will revisit some time in the future.

Postscript: I wrote the above several months ago; since then, I have acquired the DVD version of DR. MABUSE, that runs close to four hours, so I can extend my commentary. It turned out that I had only watched the first half of the movie.

I suspect that this was the movie that put Fritz Lang on the map; he’d had some earlier works, but there’s a scope to this one that makes it a significant leap for him. Dr. Mabuse is one of the most fascinating supervillains ever, especially inasmuch as he is allowed a greater range of emotion than this type of character is usually allowed. His ultimate fate in this movie is fascinating, largely because it is unlike the fate of practically any other supervillain I’ve seen in cinema history. This one is definitely worth catching.

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The Crazy Ray (1925)

THE CRAZY RAY (1925)
Article #452 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-10-2002
Posting date: 11-3-2002

The watchman on the top level of the Eiffel Tower discovers that everyone in Paris is frozen in place.

According to the information that appears at the top of this movie, Rene Clair felt that French Cinema had gotten off the track and made this little film as an antidote to that problem. There’s really not much to it, but it manages to be quite amusing enough to fill its short running time. Clair would go on to direct several other interesing fantasy movies, and would eventually direct AND THEN THERE WERE NONE.

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The Leech Woman (1960)

THE LEECH WOMAN (1960)
Article #451 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-9-2002
Posting date: 11-2-2002

An aging woman discovers a potion that restores her youth; unfortunately it requres the fluid from a pineal gland of a man.

Well, this movie is certainly not what I’d call dull, but it is unpleasant and distasteful. Part of the problem is that the script seems downright misanthropic; you end up disliking almost every character in the story. The opening scene sets the tone with the married couple sniping at each other endlessly; it’s not only unpleasant , but badly acted and written, and I found it totally unconvincing. The rest of the movie isn’t quite so bad; you’re grateful when Gloria Talbot shows up and manages to make a minor and potentially dull character interesting and even sympathetic by sheer dint of her careful performance. The movie is no fun, which isn’t necessarily fatal for a movie. The trouble is, if it’s going to be unpleasant, it either needs to be insightful enough to give us the feeling that we’re seeing something very real and relevant to us as human beings (this one doesn’t), or it needs to make some sort of observation that makes enduring the movie worthwhile. The main observation that this movie makes (that a woman’s entire worth is centered around her being young, beautiful and loved by men, a belief shared by every character in the movie) is not only inaccurate, it is positively damaging to those who believe it.

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