THE SCREAMING SKULL (1958)
Article #1281 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-16-2004
Posting Date: 2-13-2005
Directed by Alex Nicol
Featuring John Hudson, Peggy Webber, Alex Nicol

A husband brings his overly-sensitive second wife back to the home where his first wife met her death. She grows to believe that she is being haunted by the ghost of the first wife.

When I first saw this one years ago, I thought it was one of the dullest movies I’d ever seen, and was often surprised afterwards to hear an occasional comment from people talking about how much it scared them. I’m glad I gave it a second viewing; their reaction makes much more sense to me. What makes this movie scary is its exemplary use of sound; whenever possible, the movie uses the sound of banging windows, scratching tree branches, etc. to create a malevolent and tense atmosphere. Given the movie’s fine use of this technique, I now find it very easy to appreciate how powerful it might have been, especially in a big dark theater.

Nevertheless, the movie doesn’t quite work for me. There are some odd touches here that I think are supposed to be unsettling (the peacocks, the absence of furniture in the house), but for me, they never quite become scary and remain largely distractions. Nor am I taken in with the performance of any of the three leads; they all come across as muted and somewhat distant, and I never warm up to them enough as characters to care what happens to them. And finally, the movie works best when the horrors are suggested, and the more explicit the horror becomes, the more the tension dissipates into silliness; the fight in the pond near the end of the movie is supposed to be the crowning horror, but it ends up reducing me to giggles. Ultimately, I have to call this one a misfire, though it does have some truly worthy strong points.

SCARS OF DRACULA (1970)
Article #1279 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-14-2004
Posting Date: 2-11-2005
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Featuring Christopher Lee, Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanley

A man unfairly accused of rape takes refuge in Dracula’s castle.

If the sole claim to fame of the Hammer horror pictures was that it upped the sex and violence quotient in horror movies, they would still be remembered, though not with quite the same degree of fondness as they are. Furthermore, most of their horror movies would have ended up like this one; the most noticeable aspects of this entry in the Dracula series is that it’s bloodier than the others and that the gowns are cut even lower. There’s also a great performance from Patrick Troughton and a good one from Michael Ripper. It’s hampered by several problems; it’s overdependent on fake looking bats, the plot plays more like a comedy than a serious vampire picture (especially during the first half), and Christopher Lee’s performance feels bored and pouty rather than menacing. It’s nice that they tried to have a scene of Dracula crawling up the wall, but it looks too unconvincing to be really effective. I don’t know if it’s the weakest Hammer Dracula of the bunch, but I would have to place it at the bottom of the ones I’ve seen so far.

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)
Article #1275 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-10-2004
Posting Date: 2-7-2005
Featuring the voices of Roy Atwell, Stuart Buchanan, Adriana Caselotti

Snow White flees from the castle of the evil queen who wishes to have her murdered, and takes refuge in a cottage inhabited by seven dwarfs.

It’s now been almost seventy years since this movie first hit the screens, and since then we’ve seen so many full-length animated features that it may be a little difficult to appreciate just how daring and audacious this movie was. I recently read a history of animation called “Hollywood Cartoons”, and one thing that impressed me was the sheer amount of work that went into the making of this movie. The challenges were daunting; two of the challenges were that they had to find a way to extend the style and pacing of animation to make it succeed for the length of a movie and they had to perfect the animation of realistic human characters. One can only wonder how the history of animation would have changed had they failed; instead, it succeeds beautifully. Watching it now, I can still marvel. I love the many effects using water in the movie (the various scenes in which we see characters reflected in the water, the scene where we see Snow White from the vantage point of the bottom of a well, the washing scene and the rain during the chase of the witch), and I can only imagine the amount of work this must have taken.

I could go on and on about the magic of this movie, but instead I’ll just mention that I saw this movie as a child, and three scenes stuck in my memory. I remember the terrifying moment when the huntsman is about to kill Snow White, but can’t bring himself to do it, and instead urges her to make her escape in the forest. I also remember the frantic chase of the witch by the dwarfs in the rain. However, the one single moment that etched itself most deeply in my memory was a simple one; it was that vision of the skeleton in the dungeon reaching out for a pitcher of water that remains just out of reach. It was wonderful to see that these scenes still had the same impact after all these years.

P.S. This musing is dedicated to Frank Thomas. In a sad coincidence, the day of my viewing of this movie was the day that his death was announced. He was one of the inner circle of Disney animators known as the “nine old men”, and he was responsible for the animation of the dwarfs. His career spanned many years, and it was wonderful to discover that he even did some voice work in another of my very favorite animated features, THE IRON GIANT. Goodbye, Frank; this one is for you.

SATAN’S SADISTS (1969)
Article #1274 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-9-2004
Posting Date: 2-6-2005
Directed by Al Adamson
Featuring Russ Tamblyn, Scott Brady, John “Bud” Cardos

A marine and a waitress escape from a gang of bikers who have murdered everyone else in a diner, but end up stranded in the desert with the bikers in hot pursuit.

I’m going to say from the outset that I really don’t have much of a liking for Al Adamson’s exercises in incoherent sleaze and sadism, and I was fully prepared to dislike this one intensely. I also don’t feel it really qualifies for the genres under discussion in this series, though I will admit that Anchor’s madness does nudge the movie in the direction of horror marginalia. However, the DVD opens with an introduction by Sam Sherman, and he claims (among other things) that this is Adamson’s best film, and quite frankly, I find myself agreeing with him. Just in basic terms of storytelling, it’s the only movie of his I’ve seen so far that hasn’t given me headaches trying to follow the plot. It has a sense of unity and completeness; it doesn’t feel cobbled together from several different movies. Also, given the subject matter and Adamson’s cinematic predilections, it shows a certain restraint; it’s not as sleazy or as sadistic as I expected it to be. It also features a strong performance from Russ Tamblyn, as the character of Anchor provides for him a radical departure from his usual roles up to this point; he even penned his big speech himself. The script is also somewhat more clever at times than I anticipated. Still, there are problems; the trip sequence is really nothing more than a bunch of annoying camera tricks, and the ending is decidedly anticlimactic, probably due to the fact that neither the marine nor the waitress ever come to life as characters. It would have been better if they had found a way to end the movie with the fight between Anchor and Firewater (John “Bud”Cardos), both of whom were a lot more interesting. It’s no classic, but it’s far better than the painful embarrassment I expected.

SEVEN DAYS TO NOON (1950)
Article #1272 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-7-2004
Posting Date: 2-4-2005
Directed by John Boulting and Roy Boulting
Featuring Barry Jones, Andre Morell, Hugh Cross

A scientist working on top-secret nuclear projects becomes convinced that his work is evil, and threatens to blow up London with a stolen bomb unless the Prime Minister promises to stop producting such weapons.

This is one of those thrillers that may or may not fall into the realm of science fiction depending on where you draw the lines of the genre. Like SEVEN DAYS IN MAY or THE BEDFORD INCIDENT, it toys with the possibility of certain events transpiring which would be of such immense political and social significance that it threatens to shift into the realm of science fiction, and as such, it hovers very near the margins of the genre. To say whether it qualifies or not may well give away the ending of the movie, which I won’t do here. On its own terms, it’s a memorable thriller. The viewer spends part of the time following the moves of the government and the police in tracking down the scientist, and the other part of the time following the moves of the scientist as he tries to keep undercover and evade them. It’s done with that quiet British reserve that you might expect from one of their thrillers (the evacuation is very orderly, for example), and even feels confident enough with itself to include some humor (the evacuee who is constantly turned back because he doesn’t want to give up his doom-declaring placard, and the soldier engaged in searching for the scientist who takes some time to go through a woman’s underwear drawer), but it does keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s definitely worth catching, and also useful as a starting point for the discussions of the boundaries of science fiction.