Month: December 2015

Mr. Hex (1946)

MR. HEX (1946)
Article #1041 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-20-2004
Posting Date: 6-18-2004
Directed by Wiliam Beaudine
Featuring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan

Slip decides to make Sach a terrific boxer by employing the art of hypnotism.

This is one of the earlier comedies featuring the Bowery Boys as such; though they had been around for years in other combinations, it wasn’t until 1946 that they began making the string of low-budget comedies under their most famous title. Having watched PRIVATE EYES recently, I thought it was interesting to compare this one in terms of evolution. Leo Gorcey was using malaprops at this point, but they weren’t taken to the extremes of the later movies, and Huntz Hall is still playing someone who resembles a human being. Hypnotism is one of those gimmicks that comedians and comedy groups loved to play with, and the Boys were in the business so long and made so many movies that they used this gimmick not only once, but twice; they would revisit it in HOLD THAT HYPNOTIST. This one is fairly decent, and features a good performance by one-time Dracula hopeful Ian Keith as well as a strange one by Sammy Cohen as a man whose bizarre eyes can break hypnotic trances. The other Boys get a little more to do than they would in later movies in the series as well.

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The Adventures of Tarzan (1921)

THE ADVENTURES OF TARZAN (1921)
(Serial)
Article #1040 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-19-2004
Posting Date: 6-17-2004
Directed by Robert F. Hill and Scott Sidney
Featuring Elmo Lincoln, Louise Lorraine, Scott Pembroke

Tarzan tries to keep a villain named Rokoff from stealing the treasure of the land of Opar.

Why am I covering another serial so soon? There’s a reason for this. Usually, I like to watch my serials one episode at a time (right before the movie I watch for the day), and I was planning to do the same for this one. I was fifty minutes into this serial before it started to dawn on me that the chapter breaks had been edited out, and I was so far along that I decided to just ride the thing out to the end, even though that is hardly the best way to watch a serial. According to one source, this serial consists of 15 episodes; the tape I have says 10. Since it’s all edited together, I can’t say for sure. It starts in the middle of the action (maybe there’s some missing episodes), and the first third is confusing and repetitve; you can only see so many lion attacks before you get bored. However, things start to sort themselves out when the villains leave the jungle with Jane as their captive and decide to head to a nearby village to gather up some henchmen.

Tarzan is played by Elmo Lincoln, and I must admit that I never thought that sounded like a name of someone who would play Tarzan, but then I never thought Arnold or Sylvester sounded like good action hero names either. He was certainly one of the most muscular Tarzans I’ve ever seen; in fact, I think he might have made a good Hercules. He may even be a bit on the chunky side, but that me be just his costume, which tends to accentuate his paunch more than his other assets. Since this is a silent, he can’t give a nice Tarzan yell, but he does a victory pounding-of-the-chest which not only serves as a satisfying substitute, but it looks aerobically healthy as well. In fact, there really is something about this serial that is unique; it doesn’t really feel like any other Tarzan serial or movie I’ve seen, though I can’t quite put my finger on it. Not bad, but I wish I could have taken it one episode at a time.

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Private Eyes (1953)

PRIVATE EYES (1953)
Article #1039 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-18-2004
Posting Date: 6-16-2004
Directed by Edward Bernds
Featuring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bernard Gorcey

When Sach develops the ability to read minds after being punched in the nose, Slip takes advantage of this ability to buy a detective agency in the hopes they’ll be able to spot crooks.

By Bowery Boys standards, this one is pretty good and fairly energetic. It’s business as usual here, with Leo Gorcey in charge of malaprops (“retailed prescription” for “detailed description”, etc.), Huntz Hall in charge of mugging, slapstick and cross-dressing, Bernard Gorcey in charge of being the unwilling participant in Leo’s schemes, and David Gorcey and Benny Bartlett in charge of being the Boys that aren’t Leo and Huntz (I have to feel a bit sorry for them because they really aren’t given much of anything to do). Lee Van Cleef is somewhere in here (though I’m not sure where), but Three Stooges mainstay Emil Sitka has a great little uncredited role as a wheelchair-bound patient who develops a liking for Huntz Hall in drag.

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King of the Kongo (1929)

KING OF THE KONGO (1929)
(Serial)
Article #1038 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-17-2004
Posting Date: 6-15-2004
Directed by Richard Thorpe
Featuring Jacqueline Logan, Walter Miller, Richard Tucker

A woman searching for her lost father in the jungle hooks up with a secret service agent investigating ivory poachers and the disappearance of fellow agents.

You know, I have to feel a little sorry for moviemakers during the late twenties who were caught between deciding whether to make their movie silent or sound. One of the solutions was to make the movie and release as both; just toss title cards into the silent print. KING OF THE KONGO was released that way, but only the silent print survives. The trouble is it only looks like a silent film about half the time; the other half the time it looks like a sound film. There are long stretches here where people stand around talking and no title cards come up to tell you what they’re talking about. At least one plot point that I should have gotten in the first reel (why the Secret Service agent was investigating in the first place) I didn’t find out until it appeared in a title card in the fourth episode. All in all, it made watching this adventure serial more than a little difficult.

For fans of the fantastic, however, it has several points of interest. Boris Karloff is one of the main bad guys, and he’s called Scarface Macklin (this was before he appeared with Paul Muni in SCARFACE), and he does a fine job. It also has a gorilla wandering around the premises. And finally, there’s about ten seconds of slurpasaur footage in the movie, which doesn’t seem like a lot of slurpasaur until you notice that same ten seconds pops up in practically every other episode. Its function is to scare people when the going gets slow.

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Americathon (1979)

AMERICATHON (1979)
Article #1037 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-16-2004
Posting Date: 6-14-2004
Directed by Neal Israel
Featuring John Ritter, Harvey Korman, Fred Willard

In the future (1998, to be precise), America has run out of oil and is in debt to a Native American businessman who is preparing to foreclose. The country decides to hold a telethon to raise the money to pay the debt.

The script for this movie was based on a play written by Peter Bergman and Philip Proctor, two members of the innovative comedy troupe known as The Firesign Theatre. Fans of the troupe will notice several touches that do recall some of their satirical counterculture wit, and there are sporadic moments that actually elicit laughs (including seeing a short sequence of game show announcer Peter Marshall in his new profession as a newscaster), but a deadly malaise hangs over the proceedings. For every moment that works there are several others where the movie falls flat, and other moments that are downright embarassing. It’s mainly interesting for oddball cameos: Jay Leno plays a boxer having a bout with his mother, Meat Loaf plays a man battling the last running car in existence, Elvis Costello pops up to sing “Crawling to the U.S.A.”, and George Carlin narrates. There’s also some subpar dinosaur animation in the opening minute of the movie. It’s definitely a misfire, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out that the movie has a small cult following for all that.

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Idle Roomers (1944)

IDLE ROOMERS (1944)
Article #1036 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-15-2004
Posting Date: 6-13-2004
Directed by Del Lord
Featuring Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard

Three incompetent bellboys encounter a wolf man loose in the hotel.

This Three Stooges short probably has some of the stronger fantastic content of the ones I’ve seen, though the Wolf Man himself is one of the chunkier ones I’ve seen. It’s not one of their better shorts; the gags tend to be somewhat abbreviated so that we can have lots of scenes of the boys getting scared. Nevertheless, it has its moments, and they usually involve Curly. In one he tries to deliver a trunk while the carpet is being pulled out from under him, and in another one he participates in the old mirror reflection gag with his reflection being played by the Wolf Man (“I need a shave, but I don’t feel any hair!”).

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The Power (1968)

THE POWER (1968)
Article #1035 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-14-2004
Posting Date: 6-12-2004
Directed by Byron Haskin
Featuring George Hamilton, Suzanne Pleshette, Richard Carlson

When a scientist discovers that one of the members of a think tank has super-psychic powers, he is killed. When another man is framed for the murder, he vows to discover the identity of the real killer.

Is the killer Richard Carlson? Michael Rennie? Nehemiah Persoff? Earl Holliman? Or is it someone else entirely; i.e. Suzanne Pleshette? I know what my guess was, and I’m not going to say whether I was right or wrong; I’m just going to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this science fiction mystery thriller, one of George Pal’s latter-day productions. The only real problems I had with this movie was that the pace was a little on the slow side at times, and Arthur O’Connell overacts badly in his small role. There are a number of familiar faces in smaller roles, such as Aldo Ray, Yvonne de Carlo, and Celia Lovsky (Mrs. Peter Lorre), who has a great cameo as a dotty old woman with a fly-swatter. It should keep you guessing till the end, and it finishes off with a truly satisfying (and highly logical) plot twist. This one is definitely recommended.

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Picture Mommy Dead (1966)

PICTURE MOMMY DEAD (1966)
Article #1034 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-13-2004
Posting Date: 6-11-2004
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Featuring Don Ameche, Martha Hyer, Zsa Zsa Gabor

A young girl is taken out of a convent and returned to her ancestral home where her mother died a horrible death years ago. She begins to have strange nightmares.

You know, the basic story of this movie is pretty good, and I will admit to having been caught off guard by the somewhat shocking ending; this is a fairly sick movie in its way. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I think this one of Gordon’s better stabs at the horror genre (though I prefer his science fiction). Unfortunately, it does have some major problems. The dialogue is very bad at times, with its tendency to be trite, cliched, melodramatic and hokey. Furthermore, a great deal of the movie consists of an endless parade of two-person scenes that get quite tiresome one after the other, especially as very little creativity is used in the way these scenes are staged. Some of the scares are more silly than scary, and it does include one of the clumsiest murder weapons I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. It does have Don Ameche, Zsa Zsa Gabor, a young Susan Gordon, and an old Wendell Corey, who would probably have given the best performance if I’d been able to understand a word he said.

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Space Master X-7 (1958)

SPACE MASTER X-7 (1958)
Article #1033 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-12-2004
Posting Date: 6-10-2004
Directed by Edward Bernds
Featuring Bill Williams, Lyn Thomas, Robert Ellis

When a space fungus gets loose in Los Angeles, authorities attempt to trace a carrier of the fungus to prevent it from spreading.

The opening of this movie is fairly weak, with one of those “public service warnings” followed by a subplot that plays out like a really bad soap opera. However, once the fungus gets loose, the movie shifts to a more effective Dragnet-style hunt film with everyone concerned doing their best to track down the identity and location of an unknown woman carrying the fungus. The realistic style contributes quite a bit to making this cheap little movie a lot more effective than it might otherwise have been, though it doesn’t quite compensate for some glaring logic errors (why, for example, do they not keep the plane to Honolulu from taking off near the end of the movie if they know the carrier is on board?). One of the best performances comes from Moe Howard of all people, in a straight dramatic role as the cab driver who is the only one who can identify the woman; I wouldn’t be surprised if the sequence in which he describes the woman was ad-libbed, as it has that air about it. Thomas Browne Henry is also on hand as a familiar face, and Paul Frees in a rare acting role; if you don’t recognize him, listen for that voice.

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Portrait of Jennie (1948)

PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (1948)
Article #1032 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-11-2004
Posting Date: 6-9-2004
Directed by William Dieterle
Featuring Joseph Cotten, Jennifer Jones, Ethel Barrymore

A down-on-his-luck painter encounters a strange girl in a park with whom he falls in love. It turns out that she is actually a woman who died several years ago.

Generally, romantic fantasies of this ilk don’t really do much for me, but this one is so beautifully shot (I love the moody use of light and dark and the occasional visual look of a painting or woodcutting) and so well acted (both Jones and Barrymore are excellent, and Cotten does a fine job as well) that it wins me over. Furthermore, there are some familiar faces in the supporting cast with Cecil Kellaway, Henry Hull (though the lighting is so dark on him that I found it hard to recognize him) and an uncredited Lillian Gish as a nun. It also make good use of tinting (the hurricane sequence is all in green) and uses color photography in the final shot of the painting. Time-crossed lovers pop up occasionally in movies (BERKELEY SQUARE and SOMEWHERE IN TIME, for example), but this one is my favorite of that subgenre.

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