Month: October 2015

The H-Man (1958)

THE H-MAN (1958)
Article #950 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-21-2003
Posting Date: 3-19-2004
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Featuring Yumi Shirakawa, Kenji Sahara, Akihiko Hirata

When a suspect in a narcotics case vanishes leaving nothing but his clothes behind, police are baffled. They are unaware that a blob-like creature that dissolves and eats people is on the loose.

There were several blob movies made during the fifties; the surprising thing is that many of them were quite good and that the plots had a fairly decent amount of variety to them. This was Toho’s take on the subject, and it was directed by the man who also handled many of the best Godzilla movies. The attack scenes are very effective, particularly during a sequence aboard a seemingly deserted ship, and they’re as creepy as anything in CALTIKI THE IMMORTAL MONSTER or some of the other blob movies. The movie’s main problem is that the monster footage is surrounded by a rather uninvolving crime story about narcotics dealers. This is acceptable during the first part of the story when the mystery of the left-over clothing drives the mystery, but once the monsters have manifested themselves, it would have been better if the crime subplot had been placed on the back burner. Instead, the focus remains largely on these aspects of the story rather than on the monster hunt. Nonetheless, there are many effective scenes, and the tone is somewhat low-key for a Japanese monster movie. You can even forgive the poor dubbing and the overuse of Paul Frees.

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Egghead’s Robot (1970)

EGGHEAD’S ROBOT (1970)
Article #949 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-20-2003
Posting Date: 3-18-2004
Directed by Milo Lewis
Featuring Keith Chegwin, Jeffrey Chegwin, Kathryn Dawe

A child uses a robot to substitute for him in a cricket game.

Adventures in Movie Hunting: One of the ironies of this whole project is that sometimes you spend a goodly amount of time hunting for movies that you suspect will prove to be ordinary and forgettable at best. I eventually found this one at Sendit.com (formerly Blackstar) on a double feature of movies by a group called the Children’s Film Foundation, and that was after stumbling across it on a google search, because you can’t search for it directly on the site. It’s fifty-three minutes long and consists entirely of by-the-numbers kiddie slapstick alternating with cricket footage, a game which (as I am not of British heritage) makes no sense to me whatever. Watch a robot mow the lawn really fast! Watch a robot accidentally uproot all the flowers in the garden, and then (through the magic of running the film backwards) put them all back in! Watch the grouchy groundskeeper fall into the pool of muddy water three (no, make that four) times! It’s not really awful, but the above description should give you a fairly good idea of what the whole thing is like. For robot completists only.

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Invasion of the Animal People (1959)

INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE (1959)
(a.k.a. TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN/RYMDINVASION I LAPPLAND)
Article #948 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-19-2003
Posting Date: 3-17-2004
Directed by Virgil Vogel & Jerry Warren
Featuring Barbara Wilson, Sten Gester, Robert Burton

A meteor that crashes in the snow-covered wilds of Lappland turns out to be a spaceship, and a giant hair-covered animal is on the loose.

This movie was a Swedish/American co-production; the Swedish version was called RYMDINVASION I LAPPLAND; the American version was supposed to be called TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN, but was never released here until Jerry Warren got his mitts on it, editied in his own footage, and called it INVASION OF THE ANIMAL PEOPLE. IMDB treats all three versions as a single entity; since I have both the Jerry Warren version and the one known as TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN, I decided to watch them both for this entry in the series. The original version is no classic, but it has some wonderful moments; if the spaceship looks animated in the opening sequence, it nonetheless looks great when it plows through the snow for its landing. The shots of the monster are amazing for what was no doubt a low-budget movie; the twenty-foot monster actually looks that size, even in scenes where he is paired with the normal size humans. The motivations of the aliens never become clear, but the movie is coherent (if somewhat padded) and the Lappland footage is beautiful. It’s worth a look.

The Warren version is largely worth a look only to see just what kind of damage he could wreak with his horrible editing. He loved removing exposition from the movies he edited and replacing it with his own; the trouble is that exposition was his weakest point, as it usually involves a couple of people sitting and talking endlessly and vaguely about whatever it is they’re talking about. The end result is that very little information is conveyed to the viewer, since this directorial style causes the interest level in following the story to plummet and the desire to take a nap to rise dramatically. The Warren version is almost fifteen minutes longer than the original version, and the only thing that was added to the mix was the desire to not watch the movie at all; this is not a good thing.

A recent DVD version of this movie offers you both choices. From the comments above, you should have a good idea which one to opt for.

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I Married an Angel (1942)

I MARRIED AN ANGEL (1942)
Article #947 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-18-2003
Posting Date: 3-16-2004
Directed by W. S. Van Dyke II
Featuring Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton

A womanizing Count is urged to marry in order to make the bank investors feel secure, and then dreams that he marries an angel from heaven.

All it takes is one look at the names of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, and you should know what you’re getting into here; lots of operetta-style warbling. I’m no fan of this kind of thing, so I was very grateful for the presence of Edwart Everett Horton, who manages to brighten anything he appears in. Though I can’t exactly say it was dull, the sickly sweetness of the first half of the movie was hard to bear, but somewhere at the halfway point, it starts to get satirical when the Count holds a dinner party and the angel’s propensity for always telling the truth causes her to inadvertently insult all the guests. From here it then spirals into such utter weirdness that I can understand why this would prove to be the last time Eddy and MacDonald would work together. Other familiar faces include Reginald Owen (who played both Sherlock Holmes and Ebenezer Scrooge) and Douglas Dumbrille.

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I Eat Your Skin (1964)

I EAT YOUR SKIN (1964)
(a.k.a. ZOMBIES/VOODOO BLOOD BATH)
Article #946 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-17-2003
Posting Date: 3-15-2004
Directed by Del Tenney
Featuring William Joyce, Heather Hewitt, Betty Hyatt Linton

A writer, his boss, and his boss’s wife land on a Caribbean island to get a story, and encounter a scientist and zombies.

When producer Jerry Gross decided he needed a companion movie for his gory thriller I DRINK YOUR BLOOD (it sounds like it should be about vampires, and it’s actually about rabid hippies), he dredged up this Del (HORROR OF PARTY BEACH) Tenney movie and slapped its new title on it (it sounds like it should be about cannibals, and it’s about crusty zombies). This title is more exploitable, but inaccurate; no flesh-eating goes on in this movie. It’s a tad livelier than it might have been, thanks to an energetic soundtrack, but it doesn’t really cover up the fact that the dialogue is awful, the plot is hackneyed, and the acting is at a fairly low level. Those looking for some of the gore of HORROR OF PARTY BEACH will be disappointed; except for an unexpected decapitation, it’s a pretty bloodless affair.

It’s a strange movie in some ways; it seems to be somewhat influenced by the James Bond movies, as the hero surrounds himself with beautiful women and recites passages from his books (they’re supposed to be adventure stories, but the adventures never seem to leave the bedroom). In fact, the opening leads you to believe this is a comedy, but the comedy element vanishes once they reach the island.

Incidentally, the writer’s boss’s wife is played by Betty Hyatt Linton. It’s her only screen role, and once she opens her mouth, you can hear why; she has one of those voices that is guaranteed to cause migraines.

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