Month: May 2015

The Sword and the Dragon (1956)

THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON (1956)
(a.k.a. ILJA MURAMETS)
Article #590 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-26-2003
Posting Date: 3-21-2003

This is the story of Ilja Muramets, a hero who fights againt the evil Mongol Kalin.

This reminds me a little of the 1939 version of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, in that a great deal of the pleasure I get from watching it is the result of the sheer scale of the undertaking; the ads claimed that 100,000 people were involved in the making of this movie, and after taking a gander at some of the crowd scenes, that may not be quite the exaggeration it seems. Granted, the fact that I watched a dubbed, badly faded print does somewhat blunt its effectiveness, and I also wonder just how badly the movie was cut when brought to the U.S.; it runs a hair over eighty minutes, but IMDB does not list an alternate running time, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that the original ran quite a bit longer. The special effects aren’t always convincing, but at least they have the same grandness of scale as the rest of the production, so I’ll let that slide. Besides, it also contains the largest human pyramid in movie history, and that must count for something.

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The Rocket Man (1954)

THE ROCKET MAN (1954)
Article #589 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-25-2003
Posting Date: 3-20-2003

An orphan comes by a magical space gun that helps him in a fight to save the local orphanage.

Look at the title. Be aware that the cast features John Agar, Anne Francis and Beverly Garland in it. Know that the script was co-written by Lenny Bruce. Read that plot description again. Know that the movie is one of those small-town, feel-good, light comedies about nice decent folk being manipulated by a corrupt politician who not only engages in fraud, but also drives drunk and almost runs over a child. Then you can do as I did as I watching this one; scratch your head a lot.

Not that the movie itself is all that strange; once you’ve got its number, it’s fairly easy to figure out. It’s just that (after considering the cast and the writer) I went into it expecting—well, I’m not sure what, but it wasn’t this. Not that it’s awful; there are a couple of good laughs in it, but I just wasn’t adaquately prepared.

What I found most interesting about this one is that more than any movie I’ve seen, this one confounds the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy. The ray gun used by the kid and the appearances of a ghostly spaceman are the only fantastic elements in the movie, but despite the science fiction trappings, these things work in a purely fantasy way; the gun is used only four times in the movie; the first two lead you to believe that it stops time for a short period, but the last two indicate that it has powers of a much more varied variety. At one point, the spectral spaceman describes it as a kind of Aladdin’s Lamp, and that’s probably a key clue to classifying this one. Despite the SF trappings, this movie is pure fantasy. If you know that, you’ll be better prepared for handling this movie when it comes your way than I was.

Actually, it’s movies like this that keep this project interesting.

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Repeat Performance (1947)

REPEAT PERFORMANCE (1947)
Article #588 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-24-2003
Posting Date: 3-19-2003

A woman who has just committed a murder wishes she could live the last year of her life over again and is granted that wish.

The idea of someone going back over a bad year in her life and trying to change things is a potentially interesting idea, but the second I heard the word “destiny”, I had a pretty good idea of what the upshot of the whole thing was going to be, and though the story does have its share of novel twists, it really never veered off the course of what I ultimately expected. It’s not this aspect, though, that really made the movie difficult for me; it was the fact that the whole story is done in that pure soap-opera style that I find almost nauseating, where everyone is so high class and polite, and where everyone engages in chattery small-talk merely to fill in the dead spaces in the soundtrack (which is one way of saying that practically every character in the cast is painfully shallow and obvious), and where our heroine repeatedly tries to be nice and happy with her husband (who hates her) merely so we can watch him snub her and then so we can feel sorry for the poor woman—I’m sorry, but I just find this type of movie unbearable and tedious. It reminded me of a Douglas Sirk movie like THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION; pretty, proper and reverent, but mannered, artificial and soulless. This is the type of movie that needs some teeth in order to effectively inflict the bite of the premise.

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The Psychopath (1966)

THE PSYCHOPATH (1966)
Article #587 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-23-2003
Posting Date: 3-18-2003

A series of murders are committed in which dolls that resemble the victims are left on the scene.

The title of this movie clearly harks back to PSYCHO and there are certain story elements that resemble the ones in that movie, but since the script is by none other than Robert Bloch (who wrote the original story for PSYCHO), this is more acceptable. In fact, the movie has its fair share of surprises in line; though you might figure out the identity of the murderer, you’ll never really know for sure until late in the movie. At first, it doesn’t even seem much like a horror movie, the first half playing out as it does more like a crime movie than anything else, but when the murders really get going in the second half, it swings into horror. The only real fly in the ointment here is Margaret Johnston’s performance; I found it strident and unconvincing; however, the script is strong enough to overcome this problem. And it does have a nice creepy ending to it all.

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My Son, the Vampire (1952)

MY SON, THE VAMPIRE (1952)
(a.k.a. OLD MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE)
Article #586 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-22-2003
Posting Date: 3-17-2003

A mad scientist known as “The Vampire” ends up getting shipped the wrong crate; his real shipment (which contains a robot) was shipped to Mother Riley.

Bela appeared in a horror comedy with Abbott and Costello. He also appeared in movies with the Bowery Boys, the Ritz Brothers, Abbott-and-Costello wannabes Brown and Carney, and Lewis-and-Martin wannabes Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo. On top of all this, he tops it off by appearing in one with Arthur Lucan, a British drag comedian who played Old Mother Riley in a series of very lowbrow comedies. It does make you wonder what Bela had in mind, but I actually think that he liked doing comedies; in fact, he seems to be having an immense amount of fun here, especially in a scene where he flirts with Mother Riley and tempts her with steak and liver. Sure, the movie is silly and stupid, but it’s done with a fair amount of energy, and a few of the gags do come through all right, though some will just leave you scratching your head, especially if you’re not attuned to British humor. Still, if you like to see Bela have fun, this isn’t a total waste, and the curiosity value is strong enough that I think it’s worth catching at least once for Lugosi fans. Incidentally, the “MY SON, THE VAMPIRE” title was for a sixties rerelease of the movie in which an Allan Sherman novelty song of that title was grafted onto the proceedings in the opening scenes.

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The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)

THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1942)
Article #585 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-21-2002
Posting date: 3-16-2003

Kharis is transported out of Egypt to wreak vengeance on the defilers of Ananka’s tomb.

The final ten minutes of this movie isn’t too bad, even if it is all too similar to one of an earlier Universal classic (substitute a mansion for a mill) and uses crowd footage from some of those earlier classics. It’s the first fifty minutes of this one that was hard for me to get through; despite a fairly decent size cast, there is hardly a single interesting character in the lot, and the dialogue they are given is utterly forgettable. The character I was most interested in (George Zucco’s ancient priest) is dead fairly early on. It’s impossible to gauge Lon Chaney Jr.’s performance in this one; the mummy is such a characterless threat, and little is done to make him anything more than that here. At any rate, it makes me appreciate how lively THE MUMMY’S HAND was in comparison.

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The Lost City (1935)

THE LOST CITY (1935)
(Serial)
(a.k.a. THE LOST CITY OF THE LIGURIANS)
Article #584 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-20-2002
Posting date: 3-15-2003

The center of Africa seems to be the source of bizarre natural disasters, and a team is sent out to investigate the cause. They discover strange experiments being performed in an underground city.

Now this is some serial; I spent the first couple of episodes giggling over the ripeness of both the script and the acting (William “Stage” Boyd practically steals the movie as the main villain), and then settled down for the rest of the serial to just enjoy the story. Despite the fact that a certain amount of cheating does come into play into resolving some of the cliffhangers, it’s handled in such a clever way that I didn’t feel cheated in seeing how the heroes escaped their perils. In fact, there’s an immense sense of fun and energy in this one, and I sense for the first time really just what many of the other serials I’ve seen seem to be missing. Not only that, but there are plenty of science fiction and horror elements this time around, rather than a single one that barely comes into play at all. This may be my favorite serial to date.

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The Monster that Challenged the World (1957)

THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD (1957)
Article #583 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-19-2002
Posting date: 3-14-2003

An insect-like monster is let loose on the world as a result of an underwater earthquake.

For some reason, this fifties monster movie doesn’t get much respect, but I think it holds up extraordinarily well. For one thing, I think the characters are unusually well drawn for this type of movie, and they’re given a dimension and a sense of realness that adds a lot to the proceedings; I actually feel real sadness in the scene where the secretary can’t bring herself to try to comfort her pregnant friend on the loss of her husband because she herself has never quite recovered from the loss of her own. In fact, all throughout, the characters are treated as if the screenwriter and the actors really cared about them, rather than just seeing them as means to an end or plot devices. The monster itself is a little mechanical, but considerable skill is used in setting up the monster attack scenes, particularly in the one near the canal that always makes me jump. Tim Holt, Casey Adams and a surprisingly restrained Hans Conreid are all on hand for this one. And even if the monster never really does get around to challenging the whole world, this is one of my personal favorites of the era.

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Monster from Green Hell (1958)

MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL (1958)
Article #582 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-18-2002
Posting date: 3-13-2003

A test rocket into space crash lands in Africa, unleashing mutated giant wasps.

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Hey, look! A movie in which rocket scientists do battle with giant wasps in Africa!

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Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?

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Unfortunately, they have to make a four-hundred mile safari through the wilds of Africa to reach Green Hell, the home of the giant wasps.

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Sounds boring, doesn’t it?

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Guess which description above gives a better idea of what watching the actual movie is like?

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Hint: I put enormous gaps between my sentences, thus increasing dramatically the amount of empty, dead white space here, for a reason.

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Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

MESA OF LOST WOMEN (1953)
Article #581 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-17-2002
Posting date: 3-12-2003

The ads for this movie featured a picture of Tandra Quinn, and asked the cinematic question “Have you ever been kissed by a woman – LIKE THIS?” In the movie, she kisses nobody, but she does an eccentric dance, for which she is shot.

The movie also features about fifteen minutes of the most awful narration imaginable by Lyle Talbot. It’s not his fault; it’s just the words he was given.

The soundtrack consists of a constantly strumming Spanish guitar, punctuated by the sound of a gorilla trying to play the piano. Okay, I don’t know for sure that it was a gorilla at the piano, but I do know that George Barrows is in the cast. The soundtrack is so “impressive” that no less a personage than Ed Wood lifted it for use in his movie JAIL BAIT.

The movie features the most ingenuous, congenial, courteous and well-mannered psycho in screen history. It’s a pity he isn’t scary.

The movie pioneered a rarely-used cinematic technique; once everyone is stranded on the mesa, the action is enhanced by having close-ups of dwarves edited in at random. I think the technique is rarely-used for a very good reason.

Jackie Coogan is in the movie. He has a deformed left eye just above the big black mole on his left cheek. When he’s being friendly, he’ll take off his glasses so you can get a good look at it.

The oriental character? Speaks in aphorisms.

A woman at one point finds she’s being stared at by a crowd of dwarves and beautiful women. She makes sure to give them several seconds in which to all run for cover before she informs her companions by yelling “Look!”

There’s a big spider in here somewhere. There’s also Katherine Victor, Mona McKinnon, Dolores Fuller, John George and Angelo Rossitto.

Put it all together, and you have the closest approximation I’ve ever seen to a fever dream I had once when I was running a temperature of 112 degrees.

It must be seen to be believed, but that only goes to show that sometimes disbelief is a good thing.

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