Month: September 2015

Terror (1924)

TERROR (1924)
(a.k.a. TERREUR/PERILS OF PARIS)
Article #925 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-26-2003
Posting Date: 2-23-2004
Directed by Edward Jose
Featuring Pearl White, Robert Lee, Henry Bandin

Criminals attempt to get hold of an element known as Radiominium.

I don’t know a whole lot about this Pearl White thriller, but one source claims the movie runs 65 minutes; since my print runs only thirty-eight minutes, I would guess that this, like TERROR ISLAND, is a couple of reels short. This goes a ways toward explaining sudden breaks in the action that I encountered while watching it. It’s fun enough despite the confusion, and at least part of the reason is that Pearl White was a fun performer; instead of playing a helpless ingenue who keeps getting rescued, she herself is willing to tussle with the bad guys. Outside of the Radiominium, there is a strange looking car that adds to the science fiction elements in this obscure little movie. It definitely has an interesting twist at the end which plays up its theme of ‘Terror of Failure’, which seems a rather an odd choice for a theme of a thriller.

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The Last Warning (1929)

THE LAST WARNING (1929)
Article #924 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-25-2003
Posting date: 2-22-2004
Directed by Paul Leni
Featuring Laura La Plante, Montagu Love, Roy D’Arcy

A murder is committed onstage during a performance of a play called ‘The Snare’. Several years later, the theatre reopens in an attempt to stage the same play.

I was having a strong sense of deja vu while watching this bizarre silent movie, and for good reason; I had already seen the 1939 remake called HOUSE OF FEAR. My copy has a bizarre, dissonant soundtrack that is like nothing else I’ve heard during a silent movie; this music along with the almost-psychedelic opening made me think that I was watching a sound movie at first, so I was quite surprised when the first character opened his mouth and title cards started to pop up. It’s all done with an a great deal of style; in fact, it’s almost excessive. Certainly, the middle part of the story in which a succession of scare scenes occur without any real sense of rhyme nor reason is a case where style without substance becomes tedious. I’ll probably watch it again some time to enjoy the stylish direction, but if I want to watch it for the story, I’ll probably opt for the remake.

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Siren of Atlantis (1949)

SIREN OF ATLANTIS (1949)
Article #923 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-24-2003
Posting date: 2-21-2004
Directed by Gregg Tallas
Featuring Maria Montez, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Dennis O’Keefe

Two foreign legionaires discover the lost civiliation of Atlantis in the middle of the desert.

I’m quite fond of the earlier versions of L’Atlantide from 1920 and 1932, mostly for the subtle poetry they used in telling their stories. This is not to say that this version of the story doesn’t try for subtlety or poetry; it’s just that when it does, it slops them on in great big greasy spoonfuls so that the end result isn’t sublime beauty but rather monumental silliness. Which to some extent is what I’d expect of a Maria Montez movie, though I would have thought they would have shot this on in color like her movies with Jon Hall. At any rate, you’ll definitely want to be in the mood for a Montez film when you watch this one. And as much as I enjoy watching Henry Daniell at work, he’s a lot more effective if they give him dialogue that isn’t quite as oily as this. This is not my favorite take on the story.

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Strange People (1933)

STRANGE PEOPLE (1933)
Article #922 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-23-2003
Posting date: 2-20-2004
Directed by Richard Thorpe
Featuring John Darrow, Gloria Shea, Hale Hamilton

Several people are called to a spooky mansion late at night, and discover that they all sat together in the same jury during a murder trial.

Once the characters start recognizing each other from the trial, you know what’s coming, and so do they; in fact, the characters harp so persistently on the fact that they’re in an ‘old dark house’ situation (where a murderer out for revenge picks off his victims one at a time) that this should clue you off to the fact that things aren’t what they seem. And indeed, they’re not; in fact, the plot twists in this forgotten horror are almost sublimely jaw-dropping, and there is something so charming in the silly audacity of this movie that it wins me over. Actually, it starts winning me over even earlier; when a woman is preparing to leave the house, she is stopped by a man who waxes so melodramatically about the terror that may be waiting for her out in the rain that I was tempted to write down the whole speech and quote it here; the reason I didn’t is that it turns out to be a joke that is best left untold until you have a chance to see the movie yourself. As far as forgotten horrors, this one is a knockout, but a sense of humor is an absolute must for this one. The only two names I recognized in the cast list were Walter Brennan (as the radio repairman) and Jack Pennick (as the plumber); if you don’t recognize the name of the latter, you’ll know him instantly when you see the face.

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Pandora’s Box (1929)

PANDORA’S BOX (1929)
(a.k.a. DIE BUCHSE DER PANDORA)
Article #921 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-22-2003
Posting date: 2-19-2004
Directed by G.W. Pabst
Featuring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer

A free-living woman brings tragedy to all who become involved with her.

I’ve covered a couple of movies by G. W. Pabst already; this one is considered his masterpiece, though I think this may be even more the result of Louise Brooks’ unforgettable performance as Lulu, a woman who never really considers the consequences of her actions until disaster occurs and the price must be paid. It’s not a horror movie, but a drama in which horror elements only come in to play near the end when Jack the Ripper becomes part of the action. It’s full of surprising touches, unexpected plot twists, and strong performances. Francis Lederer is also on hand; he would later appear in THE RETURN OF DRACULA and TERROR IS A MAN.

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Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders (1953)

CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS. ATOMIC INVADERS (1953)
(Serial)
Article #920 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-21-2003
Posting date: 2-18-2004
Directed by Franklin Adreon
Featuring William Henry, Susan Morrow, Arthur Space

A mountie does battle with spies intent on setting up a missile base in the wilds of Canada.

All right, I’ll admit I’m used to serials having only slight science fiction elements as most of them do, but with a title like CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS. ATOMIC INVADERS, I certainly expect the ‘Atomic Invaders’ to have something science fictional about them. In truth, they’re just spies, and the fact that they’re in Canada to build a secret missile base for use in an attack on the United States is the only thing even remotely science fictional about this one, and it’s not near enough. It’s even devoid of the entertaining science fiction gadgetry found in other serials. On the plus side, one of the advantages the later serials had was that the episodes were shorter, and that forced them to trim out unnecessary scenes; it doesn’t prevent them, however, from including episode ten, which is made up of recycled footage from the other episodes. The first few episodes take place in the snow-covered North, which does give it a unique setting, even if some of the scenes look like people standing in front of a painting full of snow, but once the action switches back to the woods, the serial becomes rather repetitive and snore-inducing. This one is not a high point in the history of serials.

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Escape in the Fog (1945)

ESCAPE IN THE FOG (1945)
Article #919 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-20-2003
Posting date: 2-17-2004
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Featuring Nina Foch, William Wright, Otto Kruger

A woman has a dream of a man being attacked on the Golden Gate bridge on a foggy night, and then meets the man who was in her dream when she awakes.

The fantastic element in the movie is that the dream comes true, and by saying that I don’t think I’m really giving too much away, as the dream comes true early enough in the proceedings that I don’t really feel I’m giving away the ending, and since the movie up to that point is clearly leading to the moment when the dream comes true, it doesn’t come as a surprise. Other than a possible minor science fiction element involving a recording mechanism hidden in a clock, that is the only fantastic element in this story, which is mainly a wartime espionage potboiler; in fact, the dream sequence seems more of a plot device to cause things to happen at a particular moment than anything else, and any themes of precognition in the movie are minor at best. The movie itself is sporadically entertaining, but not particularly memorable.

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The Chronicles of the Gray House (1925)

THE CHRONICLES OF THE GRAY HOUSE (1925)
(a.k.a. ZUR CHRONIK VON GRIESHUUS)
Article #918 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-19-2003
Posting date: 2-16-2004
Directed by Arthur von Gerlach
Featuring Gertrud Arnold, Lil Dagover, Rudolf Forster

Two brothers fight over possession of the estate of their deceased father.

The Gray House actually looks more like a castle than a house, but that’s a minor point. I actually have two copies of this one. The longer one is a little more than an hour and a half, has German title cards in one of those impenetrable German fonts, and has music (various edits of Beethoven’s fifth symphony). The shorter one has no music and runs less than half the length, but has English subtitles, which gave me a chance to figure out certain details of the plot that I might otherwise have missed in the longer version. You can see that the longer one goes into more detail about the relationship between the two brothers. There are also lots of scenes of documents being crumpled and ripped up in the longer version (it happens enough that I saw fit to mention it). It’s basically a somewhat operatic drama; the only fantastic content involves the appearance of a ghost at a crucial moment in the proceedings. If the whole movie feels a bit similar to a Fritz Lang film, this may be attributable to the fact that it was written by Thea von Harbou, who wrote the scripts for many of Lang’s early movies.

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La Jetee (1962)

LA JETEE (1962)
(a.k.a. THE JETTY/THE PIER)
Article #917 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-18-2003
Posting Date: 2-15-2004
Directed by Chris Marker
Featuring Jean Negroni, Helene Chatelain, Davos Hanich

In a post-apocalyptic world, scientists experiment with sending subjects through time in order to save the present.

I’ve always thought the trailers I’ve seen for the movies TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE and RAT PFINK AND BOO BOO were tacky, largely because they consisted in their entirety of stills; yet here I am watching a movie made entirely of stills (save for a few seconds of footage at one point) and I’m entranced. I’ve never seen Terry Gilliam’s TWELVE MONKEYS, which is a remake of this remarkable French short, but it’s easy to see why he was attracted to it in the first place; it’s a great story, haunting and memorable, but being a foreign short, it was also unlikely to have been seen by many people. The use of stills, narration and music to tell the story is pretty daring; it almost feels more like reading a story or a graphic novel rather than watching a film, but the impact of the story is not lessened in any way. This one is well worth hunting out for anyone interested in classic foreign science fiction.

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The Curious Female (1970)

THE CURIOUS FEMALE (1970)
Article #916 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-17-2003
Posting Date: 2-14-2004
Directed by Paul Rapp
Featuring Angelique Pettyjohn, Charlene Jones, Bunny Allister

In the future, a group of rebels fight against the dystopian regime of the master computer by watching dirty movies from 1969.

To get an accurate idea of what this movie is like, I’d suggest you ignore everything but the last four words of the above plot description; the science fiction aspects of this movie only exist to give the movie a chance to end on a lame joke. All we have here is your basic late-sixties softcore porn movie, and it’s of minimal interest to fans of fantastic cinema, unless you just absolutely have to see the movie because of Angelique Pettyjohn. At least ORGY OF THE DEAD is sporadically entertaining…

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