Month: June 2015

Hand of Death (1962)

HAND OF DEATH (1962)
Article #665 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-9-2003
Posting Date: 6-8-2003

A scientist experimenting with a combination nerve gas/hypnotic agent becomes poisoned with it and develops a lethal touch.

This movie was out of circulation for years and only recently began making the rounds again. I’m glad it has, but that’s largely because I’m a bit of a completist about these things, not because it was particularly good. It’s a pretty pallid affair; it’s reminiscent somewhat of THE INVISIBLE RAY or THE 4D MAN, but it has more the feel of THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON. The most interesting moment is when John Agar has a nightmare about scientific paraphernalia and white rats, and it has a certain amount of curiosity value in that one of the victims is Joe Besser (as a gas station attendant) and an almost-victim is Butch Patrick (Eddie Munster). John Agar also wears the monster outfit himself. Other than that, it’s standard and predictable low-budget fare.

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Pursuit to Algiers (1945)

PURSUIT TO ALGIERS (1945)
Article #664 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-8-2003
Posting Date: 6-7-2003

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are bodyguard escorts to a prince who is the target of assassins.

The criteria by which I include movies in this series is that the movie is listed in one of my movie guides that purport to cover Horror, Fantasy and/or Science Fiction movies. So far, all of the movies I’ve covered have some slight connection to these genres (and in some cases, very slight indeed), but the connection is there. This is the first movie that leaves me baffled as to why it would be included in a book that covers those genres. I’ve covered one other of the Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies (SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SPIDER WOMAN), and there was enough of a real horror element there to make it qualify; that is not the case here. It’s not even really a mystery; it’s more of a thriller than anything. This is not to say that the movie isn’t entertaining; both Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce had a lot of fun with their roles, and there is also some nice work from Martin Kosleck here. I also spotted John Abbott (THE VAMPIRE’S GHOST) in a smaller role. Entertaining, but I’m afraid it doesn’t even qualify as fantastic cinema marginalia.

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The Eternal Return (1943)

THE ETERNAL RETURN (1943)
(a.k.a. L’ETERNEL RETOUR)
Article #663 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-7-2003
Posting Date: 6-6-2003

A man finds a wife for his uncle, but ends up falling in love with her himself when he drinks a love potion.

Though it’s directed by Jean Delannoy, the script was written by Jean Cocteau, the man responsible for LA BELLE ET LA BETE, and though it lacks the visual splendor of that classic, it still does well enough. It also features Jean Marais from that movie as one of the lovers. It is based on the story of Tristan and Isolde, but I have to confess to not being familiar with that story, so I can’t make any comparisons at all. It’s a beautiful, moving and sad love story, and the only fantastic element is the love potion (the bottle is marked “Poison”) that figures into the plot, so its fantastic element is rather slight. The most memorable character, though, is the unpredictable dwarf son of the relatives, played by Pieral, who also appeared in the 1956 version of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.

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The Scoundrel (1935)

THE SCOUNDREL (1935)
Article #662 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-6-2003
Posting Date: 6-5-2003

An unmitigated cad destroys the lives of those around him, but when he dies…

For those waiting around for the fantastic elements in the story, you’ve got a ways to go; they don’t manifest themselves until about three-quarters of the way through. Still, it was a little easier for me to be patient while accompanied by the likes of Noel Coward, Stanley Ridges, Alexander Woollcott, and especially Lionel Stander, one of the most distinctive character actors of all time. The real star, though, is the wonderful witty script by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who also directs. The acidic humor in the dialogue goes a long way towards alleviating the fact that you’re dealing with a singularly unpleasant character throughout the movie, and since the ultimate message of the movie is pretty simple when you consider it, it’s a good thing getting there is half the fun. This is another example of some of the odd areas that an exploration of fantastic cinema can take you.

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Ladies in Retirement (1941)

LADIES IN RETIREMENT (1941)
Article #661 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-5-2003
Posting Date: 6-4-2003

A servant with two dotty sisters murders her employer when she threatens to throw them out of the house.

With a title like LADIES IN RETIREMENT, I wouldn’t be surprised at anyone passing the movie by under the belief that it was some sort of woman’s comedy. It is actually a gothic thriller; it’s not a horror movie, though it does have a certain touch of horror in the plot (involving a “ghost” at one point in the proceedings), but gothic thrillers do have certain similarities with horror movies; in fact, the opening scene of the decrepit house surrounded by ground fog would be perfectly in place in a horror film. In some ways this movie reminds me of NIGHT MUST FALL, with many similar characters and situations and based on a stage play as that one was. However, I find this one less self-consciously poetic; in fact, I was enthralled by it. The key is in the characters; they are an interesting and at times an unpredictable bunch. Ida Lupino is great in the lead role, but her two sisters (one dotty, the other hostile played by Edith Barrett and Elsa Lanchester respectively) steal the movie; they are definitely loose cannons, and when Lupino gets them to swear on a bible (a great scene), you know for sure that any secret they’ve promised to keep will come out before the movie is over. Yes, it is a bit stagey and talky, but the acting and the characters make it work, and I found myself really caught up in the whole thing. Chalk this one up as another find.

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The Corsican Brothers (1941)

THE CORSICAN BROTHERS (1941)
Article #660 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-4-2003
Posting Date: 6-3-2003

The parents of two siamese twins (that have been separated surgically) are killed as part of a vendetta. Years later, the brothers plan vengeance for their parents’ death.

This period action piece is based on a book by Dumas, and, despite the above description, has a strong fantasy element; one of the twins is capable of feeling all the emotions and physical feelings of the other. This may seem a mere gimmick at first, but as the story progresses, it ends up playing an pivotal role in the development of one of the twins, and this kind of attention makes the fantasy element important indeed. Both the brothers are played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and he does a good job with two quite different characters. Akim Tamiroff is on hand as the villain, and he’s having a grand old time of it himself. I found it quite satisfying; fun, exciting, and with a little more meat on its bones than you might expect.

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Ulysses (1954)

ULYSSES (1954)
Article #659 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-3-2003
Posting Date: 6-2-2003

An amnesiac man washed up on the shores of a kingdom across the waters from Ithaca turns out to be the great hero of the Trojan War, Ulysses.

This adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey was made before the Hercules cycle of movies featuring Steve Reeves kicked off the whole Sword and Sandal craze, so it doesn’t quite belong to that trend, despite its having been made in Italy. It features two English-speaking stars, Kirk Douglas in the title role, and Anthony Quinn as one of Penelope’s suitors. It’s more thoughtful and overtly poetic than the later S&S movies, though there is still quite a bit of romance in the mix; however, that was all in the original story. It also retains the story’s awkward but somewhat necessary structure of telling most of the adventures in the form of a flashback (this is a good two-thirds of the movie), but this is necessary in order to establish the situation with Penelope’s suitors early enough in the story so that out interest is piqued by the urgency of the situation. Interestingly, the actress playing Penelope and the actress playing Circe are the same woman. The scenes with Polyphemus the cyclops are pretty memorable, as well as Ulysses’s encounter with the sirens. It’s not a personal favorite of mine (actually, among the books of Homer, I prefer The Iliad myself), but it’s a pretty solid and fun affair.

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Tormented (1960)

TORMENTED (1960)
Article #658 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-2-2003
Posting date: 6-1-2003

A jazz pianist fails to save the life of a jilted lover who is blackmailing him to come back to her, and then finds himself haunted by her ghost.

This Bert I. Gordon-directed ghost story has some very interesting ideas, but despite that and an interesting island setting, there’s something about the way the whole thing unfolds that strikes me as rather dull and dreary. It could be really wonderfully ambiguous if it had decided to take the tack that the ghost may be merely a figment of the pianist’s imagination; this would make it fit in better with the subplots having to do with his attempts to cover up the incident that only result in him actually turning to murder to do so. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the ghost part of the story was tacked onto a somewhat noirish melodrama; I certainly find that part of the story more interesting than the somewhat silly ghost antics. With all the remakes being made these days, I wish they would take more time looking at movies like this; ones with good ideas but that never quite worked out the first time are the ones that most need to be remade rather than already established classics. Unfortunately, they would also be harder to market, so it’s highly unlikely that would happen. Richard Carlson plays the pianist.

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The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)

THE 3 WORLDS OF GULLIVER (1960)
Article #657 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-1-2003
Posting date: 5-31-2003

Gulliver gets lost at sea and ends up at the kingdoms of Lilliput and Brobdingnag.

I’ve covered several Harryhausen movies so far, and even if I haven’t always liked the movies as a whole, I’ve always enjoyed Harryhausen’s creations (I was going to say creatures, but the word really doesn’t appy to EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS) and they have been the best things about the movies. I would imagine that Harryhausen fans wouldn’t be disappointed by any of those movies. This one, however, is the first Harryhausen movie that might disappoint them. It’s not that the stop-motion work is bad; it’s that there is so little of it in the film. Outside of a crocodile (or alligator; I’ve never been able to tell them apart) which Gulliver fights late in the movie, the only other stop-motion creation is—a squirrel. And he has only about twenty seconds of screen time. This could hardly be satisfying for those tuning in expecting the usual Harryhausen fare.

As for the movie itself, I have to give it a little credit. Most adaptations of the Gulliver story seem satisfied with covering the Lilliput story and ending there; this one at least gets to Brobdingnag (though I notice only one attempt to pronounce the name occurs in the movie). The third world of the title appears to be his home land of England, which might be a little disappointing to those expecting a third voyage. The original Gulliver story had four voyages in all, but I suspect part of the reason they are rarely filmed is that they can’t be made into children’s stories as well as the Lilliput story. “Gulliver’s Travels” is not a children’s book; it is a savage satire, and the farther you get into the book, the more uncompromising and misanthropic it is.

Also to its credit is that the movie retains some of the satirical touches. On the down side, I don’t think it really knows what to do with them. In fact, I’m not sure the movie really knows what it is; it tends to swing back and forth between satire, children’s story, adventure, and preachy moral lesson. The gigantism special effects look very nice, but the movie’s lack of focus causes my attention to wander too much. This may be Harryhausen’s most disappointing movie.

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The Thing from Another World (1951)

THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)
Article #656 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-31-2002
Posting date: 5-30-2003

An alien spaceship crash lands in the arctic regions, and scientists recover the body of one of the residents. However, the resident is not dead…

Despite the director credit to Christian Nyby, it is commonly believed the real director of this movie is Howard Hawks, and I fully believe this to be the case; however, I do think it’s a bit of a shame that one of that director’s only forays into fantastic cinema isn’t officially credited to him. If there’s any one thing I love about this movie, it’s how the rapid-fire dialogue keeps things moving even in scenes where there is little plot development; the wit and cameraderie behind the dialogue is enough to hold your attention. It also knows how to build suspense; characters deep into important conversations are repeatedly interrupted by news of new developments or hints of an imminent attack by the alien in much the same way these things might happen in real life. There are some wonderful performances here, particularly from Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, and Douglas Spencer. Quite frankly, I could blather on endlessly about how much I love this movie, so I’ll just list some of my favorite moments: the scene where the men on the ice figure out the shape of the spacecraft, the unexpected and jarring appearance of the alien at the door, the scene where Carrington shows the scientists the result of his planting the seeds, and the discovery that the temperature is going down in the base that is mistaken by the reporter for a slur on his breath. For me, there is no alien invasion movie that I have loved as well as this one.

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