Month: September 2015

Forever, Darling (1956)

FOREVER, DARLING (1956)
Article #905 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-6-2003
Posting Date: 2-3-2004
Directed by Alexander Hall
Featuring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, James Mason

A guardian angel comes to the rescue of a couple whose marriage has hit a rough spot.

On top of the TV show which brought them fame, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz made a couple of movies together as a team; this one and THE LONG LONG TRAILER. This is the lesser known of the two, and it’s a fairly minor piece of fluff. Actually, Desi gets the funniest moments in an earlier scene where he comes home and roundly insults Lucy’s dinner guests, one of which is Natalie Schafer who is best known as Mrs. Howell from “Gilligan’s Island”. After that, most of the gags are the type of slapstick gags you might expect on the TV series, except that the movie’s leisurely pace keeps them from building up any real sense of comic frenzy. I do like the fact that James Mason plays the guardian angel, and that he looks like James Mason because that’s what Lucy imagines her guardian angel would look like (Desi’s would look like Ava Gardner). Science fiction fans should also keep an eye out for John Emery (from ROCKETSHIP X-M) as a psychiatrist, and John Hoyt (ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE) as Desi’s boss at the insecticide factory.

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Fog Island (1945)

FOG ISLAND (1945)
Article #904 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-5-2003
Posting Date: 2-2-2004
Directed by Terry Morse
Featuring George Zucco, Lionel Atwill, Veda Ann Borg

An industrialist framed for embezzlement invites a group of people to his house on an isolated island to wreak vengeance.

This isn’t the only movie to feature both Zucco and Atwill, but of the others, THREE COMRADES doesn’t appear to be a horror movie in any respect (I haven’t seen it, though), and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN never featured them in the same scene; in this one, they share the screen several times. It’s another poverty row horror from PRC, and as usual, it doesn’t look quite as cheap as it probably was, at least partially due to the nice sets in use throughout. The story has some nice points, particularly when the guests receive an assortment of curious party favors that are supposed to lead them to a treasure, but things get a little confusing at times and certain characters seem extraneous. Otherwise, it’s a fitfully amusing revenge movie with horror overtones.

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The Face at the Window (1939)

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW (1939)
Article #903 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-4-2003
Posting Date: 2-1-2004
Directed by John King
Featuring Tod Slaughter, Marjorie Taylor, John Warwick

A bank clerk is being framed for a series of ghastly murders caused by a villain called “The Wolf” involving a horrible face appearing at the window.

Tod Slaughter’s over-the-top melodramas aren’t really horror movies for the most part, but they are lurid enough to get at least marginal consideration in the genre. This is one in which the horror elements are much more overt, particularly that of the truly hideous face at the window. Slaughter chews the scenery a little less than usual in this one, partially because his character is a little more refined than his usual roles, but fans needn’t worry; he still gets plenty of opportunities to be not only evil, but ludicrously evil. Ultimately, I would have to say that of the Slaughter movies I’ve seen, this one is probably my current favorite.

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The Embalmer (1966)

THE EMBALMER (1966)
(a.k.a. IL MOSTRO DI VENEZIA)
Article #902 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-3-2003
Posting Date: 1-31-2004
Directed by Dino Tavella
Featuring Maureen Brown, Elmo Caruso, Jean Mart

A murderer in Venice is killing and embalming women for his collection, but the only one who believes in his existence is a journalist.

This movie has some good ideas; the movie takes place in Venice, and the murderer’s lair is in an old monastary in the catacombs of Venice; he leaves through an underwater entrance in scuba gear, and drags the womens’ bodies underwater to his lair, thus leaving no trace. He also is dressed as a monk with a skeleton mask, which allows him on occasion to pose as one of the many corpses of monks lying around the area. However, the pacing on this one is incredibly lethargic, the dubbing is bad, the comic relief duo is more annoying than funny, and the fight choreography towards the end is quite bad. It also has a somewhat downbeat ending that will either impress you (if you’re impressed by that sort of thing) or annoy you (because it was unnecessary). At any rate, I emerged from this one knowing why Dino Tavella’s name is not as well known as Mario Bava’s.

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Elephant Boy (1937)

ELEPHANT BOY (1937)
Article #901 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-2-2003
Posting Date: 1-30-2004
Directed by Zoltan Korda and Robert Flaherty
Featuring Sabu, W. E. Holloway, Walter Hudd

A boy from India has dreams of being a great hunter, and joins his father and his elephant on a safari.

This is the movie that introduced Sabu to the world, and though he has great screen presence and decent acting ability, he still hadn’t quite mastered the English language yet, and his accent was so thick that I had trouble understanding him at times. This made it a little difficult to follow the plot at first, but when you get down to it, the plot is pretty basic; it’s your boy-with-a-dream story crossed with a boy-and-his-dog story, except that in this case the dog is fifteen feet tall, has two great big white tusks and a trunk. The plot is also fairly slow in coming; the movie is nearly half over before things really start happening in this regard. On the other hand, the plot isn’t really important; the spectacle is what matters, and we get an abundance of great elephant footage, at least partially due to the participation of famed documentarian Robert Flaherty. The fantastic aspects of the movie are a little harder to pin down, but they seem to revolve around Sabu’s almost mystical rapport with the elephants. Certainly, a key sequence in the second half of the movie when a large herd of elephants congregates and engages in a dance moves the movie into fantastic territory, even if the possibility exists that the event is just a dream. Nonetheless, this sequence is the best part of the movie, and makes the somewhat slow beginning more palatable.

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Damn Yankees! (1958)

DAMN YANKEES! (1958)
Article #900 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-1-2003
Posting Date: 1-29-2004
Directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen
Featuring Tab Hunter, Ray Walston, Gwen Verdon

A fan of the Washington Senators sells his soul to the devil to become a star hitter for the team and win the pennant for them.

I’m not really keen on baseball, nor am I a particular fan of musicals, so I have to admit I didn’t really look forward to this one; certainly, the idea of selling my soul to the devil in order to make my favorite team win holds no resonance for me whatever. As a musical, it’s decent enough; the songs are good, and for the most part they actually do flesh out the narrative and the characters, and the primary exception is so well choreographed and performed that it works just as well. But the story ends up leaving me cold, and I think the reason for this is that Tab Hunter’s performance doesn’t make me really feel anything at all for his character. The other actors fare much better, particularly Verdon and Walston, though if the devil is this ineffectual our immortal souls are in no danger whatsoever. And the ending, where the story bends over backwards to give everyone but the devil a happy ending, feels rushed and is more than a little lame.

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Comin’ Round the Mountain (1951)

COMIN’ ROUND THE MOUNTAIN (1951)
Article #899 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-31-2003
Posting Date: 1-28-2004
Directed by Charles Lamont
Featuring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Dorothy Shay

An escape artist discovers he is the grandson of a hillbilly named Squeezebox McCoy, and may be the heir to a fortune.

There are a few laughs to be had in this Abbott and Costello outing, in particular during a discussion between Bud and Lou about a forty-year-old man in love with a ten-year-old girl. However, most of the movie is fairly lame hillbilly slapstick combined with Dorothy Shay’s novelty musical numbers. The part of the story that moves this one into the realms of the fantastic is when the boys encounter a witch (Margaret Hamilton—how’s that for typecasting?) to get a love potion; this is also one of the better scenes, as the witch makes a voodoo doll of Lou and Lou returns the favor. It’s also fun to see the boys team up with Glenn Strange again; here playing Devil Dan Winfield, who ends up drinking the potion at one point (and you don’t want to know with whom he falls in love). It’s not the boys’ best by a long shot, but it has its moments.

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A Christmas Carol (1938)

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938)
Article #898 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-30-2003
Posting Date: 1-27-2004
Directed by Edwin L. Marin
Featuring Reginald Owen, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart

Three things no one needs: 1) Last week’s TV schedule, 2) Paper toothpicks, and 3) One-sentence plot descriptions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

I don’t know how many versions of this Dickens Christmas perennial are out there, but I suspect that if I covered them all in a row, it might well take two to three weeks to finish them all. As far as the ones with which I’m familiar, this one isn’t quite up to the later Alastair Sims version, but is worlds better than the Seymour Hicks version from a few years earlier. The basic rules for pulling off a version of this story are simple; 1) get the spirit right, 2) know what the key scenes are in the story, and 3) have a decent Scrooge. This one does a solid job with the story, and as such is very effective. In some ways, it’s hard to go wrong with this story; the basic theme that choosing to engage in the joy of the Christmas season actively contributes to the joy of oneself and others is very resonant, and there is always something healing about watching a good version of the story. This version is certainly no exception.

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Carefree (1938)

CAREFREE (1938)
Article #897 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-29-2003
Posting Date: 1-26-2004
Directed by Mark Sandrich
Featuring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ralph Bellamy

A psychiatrist agrees to analyze his friend’s girlfriend, and ends up falling in love with her.

This is one of the pleasant surprises about taking a fairly wide view in this survey of fantastic cinema; I really didn’t expect to be covering any other Fred Astaire movies than ON THE BEACH or GHOST STORY. But here I am, touching upon one of those wonderful RKO musicals he made with Ginger Rogers during the thirties, and it gets in the gate by featuring a certain amount of hypnotism, a scene that takes place in a dream, and a sequence where Fred Astaire’s mirror reflection talks back to him. The plot is pretty nonsensical, but that’s not why you watch a movie like this; you watch it to see Fred Astaire dance, with or without Ginger Rogers, and this is an experience I find heavenly. In fact, if this movie is a disappointment at all, it’s because there’s not enough dancing and a little too much comedy, though in all honesty the comedy is pretty good. Ralph Bellamy once again finds himself in the role of a boyfriend whose girl is destined to fall in love with the leading man, as he was in HIS GIRL FRIDAY.

Quite frankly, the magic of watching Fred Astaire dance makes me want to take up the art itself. For that matter, I’d take up golf if I could play it while dancing like Fred Astaire (as he does here).

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The Brass Bottle (1964)

THE BRASS BOTTLE (1964)
Article #896 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-28-2003
Posting Date: 1-25-2004
Directed by Harry Keller
Featuring Tony Randall, Burl Ives, Barbara Eden

An architect discovers a genie in a brass bottle, who then proceeds to turn his life upside down.

My perception of Burl Ives as a performer over the years has been one of pleasant family-friendly blandness, and my most striking memories of his work bear out this perception (the snowman’s voice in the TV special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” where his presence added a proper touch to the proceedings, and as the lovable grandfather in the godawful science fiction opus of 1981 EARTHBOUND, which embodies all too well the nightmarish depths that pleasant family-friendly blandness can lead to). I was very startled to learn that one of his most famous roles was playing Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, a role that is the very antithesis of pleasant family-friendly blandness, so I must come to the conclusion that his later persona was one of choice rather than one of being incapable of anything else.

Now, pleasant family-friendly blandness has its uses, but some movies need a little more than that, and this is one of them. I am a little in awe of how inoffensive this movie seems, considering the plot touches upon such subjects as women’s underwear, belly-dancing, and the consumption of sheeps’ eyeballs. At any rate, my copy of the movie opened with the trailer for the film, and the trailer pretty much told me everything I needed to know about it. The only thing that keeps this from being a true shopping-cart movie is the absence of the Disney name or any of the regular Disney performers (Fred MacMurray, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Joe Flynn, etc). The most interesting aspect about it is a piece of trivia; Barbara Eden would go on to fame playing a genie herself in “I Dream of Jeannie.”

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