HOUSE OF DARKNESS (1948)
Article #1358 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-2-2004
Posting Date: 5-1-2004
Directed by Oswald Mitchell
Featuring Laurence Harvey, Lesley Osmond, Grace Arnold

A composer recounts the story of the haunted house that inspired his latest composition.

What we have here is your basic ghost story, and it’s one that has a number of overly familiar situations at that. Certainly, I’ve seen the storyline about an old man (with a heart condition) threatening to disinherit the younger man (who knows he has a heart condition) several times before, and the story as a whole doesn’t have a whole lot in the way of surprises. Yet somehow it works, and it may well be due to Laurence Harvey’s performance. This surprised me, because in some ways I don’t really like his performance here; he seemed too sneeringly slimy to be taken seriously. Yet, somehow, as the movie continues towards its final climactic scene, his performance ends up so in sync with the movie’s mood that the final sequence in the main storyline is extremely effective. Of course, the scene is also helped by the effective use of music, and the musical motif serves as the framing story. I recommend this one to ghost story enthusiasts who aren’t put off by Harvey’s performance in the first half of the movie.

HOLD THAT LINE (1952)
Article #1357 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-1-2004
Posting Date: 4-30-2004
Directed by William Beaudine
Featuring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, John Bromfield

When Sach develops a formula that makes him incredibly strong, he becomes a football star at an ivy league college.

Most Bowery Boys movies are fairly plotless affairs, and it took this movie to help me realize that I liked it that way. Not that plotlessness is the best thing for them necessarily. It’s just that I figured that any plots that they might concoct wouldn’t be worth following. Now this movie is pretty much your typical Bowery Boys movie for the first two-thirds of the way, but once I heard the conversation between two thugs where they discuss how much gambling money they could rake in if the college loses the big game, I knew exactly where the movie would be going for the rest of the running time, and sure enough, I was right. Still, it does have its moments; including a scene where Leo Gorcey spouts mile-a-minute gibberish in an English class, and another where we meet the Bowery “girls”. And I must admit that the final big play of the football game was far more clever than I expected. All in all, another festival of malaprops and mugging.

HER JUNGLE LOVE (1938)
Article #1356 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-30-2004
Posting Date: 4-29-2004
Directed by George Archainbaud
Featuring Dorothy Lamour, Ray Milland, Lynne Overman

Two pilots get stranded on a desert island in the south seas. There they meet a beautiful woman and a monkey, and have to tangle with natives on a nearby island who like sacrificing white men.

For the second day in a row I find myself watching a color movie with musical numbers interspersed by human sacrifices. Now, I’ll admit it’s no novelty that HELP! was in color, but this one was made before color was de rigeur, so I’ll hazard some guesses as to why they chose to shoot this one in color.

– Those beautiful blue skies.

– Dorothy Lamour’s sarong and red lipstick.

– The lush south sea island scenery.

– J. Carrol Naish’s cool headdress when he sacrifices white men to the crocodile of the grotto.

– J. Carrol Naish’s red coat when he greets newcomers.

– The colorful pageantry of the skirts of the natives.

I certainly don’t think that the lame script or the tired comic relief of Lynne Overman were big selling points, even if the makers of the movie did include a chimpanzee to help with the latter. Nonetheless, it does build to a big climax involving a volcanic explosion and a whole mess of crocodiles that gives the movie its horror element and makes the rest of the silliness worth wading through.

HELP! (1965)
Article #1355 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-29-2004
Posting Date: 4-28-2004
Directed by Richard Lester
Featuring The Beatles, Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron

The head of a sacrificial cult tries to recover a sacred ring that has found its way onto Ringo’s finger.

Fantastic content: A bit of horror with the sacrificial cult plot, and some science fiction with a variety of strange inventions and a scene where Paul McCartney shrinks to a tiny size.

I won’t argue that Richard Lester has earned a place in cinema history; he was one of the pioneers of the swinging sixties cinema style, and his handling of the musical numbers here makes him one of the forerunners of the music video. Nor do I have any problem with the music; I’ve always loved the work of the Beatles, and this movie has a number of favorites (particularly the title song, “Ticket to Ride” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”). Nonetheless, I come out of this one with a certain sense of disappointment because it doesn’t quite succeed as a comedy. Not that it’s disastrously unfunny; it’s mildly amusing throughout. I just think that it was trying to be a lot more than “mildly amusing”; I think it was trying to be an anarchically wild knee-slapper, like what you would expect with Monty Python or the Marx Brothers. And despite the fact that they have a great deal of charm, the Beatles aren’t the Marx Brothers; they were primarily musicians, not comedians. As a result, I feel the movie strains for big laughs at times, and they don’t come. Still, some of the ideas are funny enough; in particular, I like the fact that the cult can’t kill Ringo until they paint him red, so all their plots to do him in must also involve a way of covering him with red paint.

On a side point, I recall having read somewhere that John Lennon hated this movie, though my memory may be playing tricks on me. If he did, I think it shows in his performance; there are moments here where I sense a nasty edge to some of his comments. At any rate, the Beatles’ next movie (MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR) would be their own production.

THE HALFWAY HOUSE (1944)
Article #1354 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-28-2004
Posting Date: 4-27-2004
Directed by Basil Dearden
Featuring Mervyn Johns, Glynis Johns, Sally Ann Howes

Assorted travelers find themselves meeting at a halfway house that was believed to have burned down a year ago but seems to have been mysteriously rebuilt.

From the basic setup of the story, my first impulse was to suspect that I was watching a British variant on the “Outward Bound” story; in other words, that everyone at the inn was already dead and awaiting judgment. Though this does not prove to be the case, its similarities are fairly strong. I can’t give away the true nature of the situation without engaging in spoilers, but I will point out that the primary difference between the two stories is that in “Outward Bound”, the people have come to the end of their lives, whereas in this one, the guests at the inn are all at a crossroads in their life where the decisions they make can turn the tides of their ultimate fates. Much of it is relevant to the war; we have one couple who is being torn apart by the death of their son in the war, a man who is becoming rich by dealing with black market war materials and an Irishman who is planning to become a consul to Germany (Ireland was neutral during the war) against the wishes of his lover. There are also other characters; a couple is planning to divorce against the wishes of their daughter, a man recently released from prison (for a crime of which he was innocent) is toying with actually turning to crime, and an orchestral conductor is trying to come to terms with a terminal illness. The movie is a little slow out of the gate; it’s a good twenty-five minutes into the movie before we reach the inn, and that’s too long. It’s also a bit dry at times, and manages to be both more complex than ‘Outward Bound’ (the characters being in transitional states of their lives) and more simplistic (let’s just say that certain problems work themselves out too conveniently). Still, the ending is strong, the acting is solid, and it makes the best use of the 23rd psalm that I’ve ever seen in a movie.