Month: September 2016

The Man With Nine Lives (1940)

THE MAN WITH NINE LIVES (1940)
Article #1414 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-27-2005
Posting Date: 6-26-2005
Directed by Nick Grinde
Featuring Boris Karloff, Roger Pryor, Jo Ann Sayers

A doctor intent on discovering the medical secrets of frozen therapy visits the abandoned home of a pioneer in the research who vanished ten years ago. There he discovers the doctor himself and revives him from his frozen state.

The basic type of story here is very familiar. A scientist attempts a radical new cure for a dangerous disease. Outsiders believe he has already committed murder, and in their attempts to bring him to justice, they cause the death of the man he was attempting to cure. The doctor flips out and resorts to murder to continue his research. That’s pretty much the story with this one. Karloff is good as usual, though I think his greatest challenge for these types of movies was to find some ways to play his character a little differently each time. Still, this is probably one of the lesser entries in Columbia’s “Mad Doctor” movies featuring Karloff.

I did find two interesting points about this one. First of all, I was somewhat amused by the opening operation scene, in which a woman is frozen by a) packing her in ice and b) blowing fans on her. She is then revived by a) giving her a heating pad, and b) making her drink hot coffee. All right, there’s a mysterious machine involved as well, but I still found these methods to be amusingly low-tech. The other is the final scene, which appears to forgive the Karloff character for his transgressions. an ending which strikes me as rather controversial.

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The Lodger (1944)

THE LODGER (1944)
Article #1413 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-26-2005
Posting Date: 6-25-2005
Directed by John Brahm
Featuring Laird Cregar, George Sanders, Merle Oberon

An elderly couple take on a lodger who they suspect may be Jack the Ripper.

Despite the fact that the silent version of this movie is from Alfred Hitchcock, this is my favorite take on this tale. Plotwise, it departs from the original movie (especially towards the end), but this is a good thing in this case, because it gives us the full measure of Laird Cregar’s performance of the disturbed lodger, Slade. In fact, the movie is filled with good performances from everyone. Sir Cedric Hardwicke is more animated than usual as the eccentric elderly man, and he plays off very well with Sara Allgood. George Sanders does an fine job as a Scotland Yard detective; he really isn’t given a lot to do, but he makes good use of what he is given, and he nails his best line (the one about the murderer who killed a woman who “wouldn’t answer a direct question”). However, it’s Cregar who is unforgettable here. It would have been a career-making performance had he wanted to play psychos; unfortunately, his desperate attempts to remake himself as a romantic lead caused him to embark on a dieting regimen that would cost him his life. This would be his second to last movie, though his follow-up to this one with the same director John Brahm (HANGOVER SQUARE) is equally good.

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Island of Doomed Men (1940)

ISLAND OF DOOMED MEN (1940)
Article #1412 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-25-2005
Posting Date: 6-24-2005
Directed by Charles Barton
Featuring Peter Lorre, Rochelle Hudson, Robert Wilcox
A secret agent is framed for murder and sent to an island run by a sadistic fiend.

This movie belongs to the prison genre of movies and is only marginally a horror movie. The horrific content consists entirely of the fact that our villain goes more and more insane during the length of the movie. However, since our villain is Peter Lorre, it should give a little satisfaction to horror fans. Other than that, it’s pretty standard fare. Still, I do have a couple of comments to make. First, I’ve noticed that Peter Lorre’s degree of madness is directly proportional to the degree of sleepiness in his vocal delivery. The second is that his phobic fear of monkeys is a clear demonstration that he too has seen FORBIDDEN JUNGLE. Director Charles Barton would go on to direct several movies for Abbott and Costello.

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The Human Vapor (1960)

THE HUMAN VAPOR (1960)
Article #1411 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-24-2005
Posting Date: 6-23-2005
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Featuring Tatsuya Mihashi, Kaoru Yachigusa, Yoshio Tsuchiya

A librarian serves as a guinea pig in a scientist’s experiment, and gains the power to be able to dissolve his body into vapor. He uses this power to get money to help the dancing career of the woman he loves.

In some ways, this movie is a cross between Honda’s THE H-MAN from a few years earlier and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, in that the villain/criminal is primarily motivated by love rather than money, and that the love includes breaking the law to help the musical career of the loved one. I found this one very effective. It’s both touching and scary. The scenes of the man dissolving within his clothes are truly unsettling, especially as he seems to be able to move and manipulate the clothes to eerie effect. The love story is equally effective, and leads to an ending that is both logical and very sad. This is a really satisfying movie, and it’s recommended to anyone who will take the effort to look past the poor job that was done at editing and dubbing the movie for American audiences.

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House of the Damned (1963)

HOUSE OF THE DAMNED (1963)
Article #1410 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-23-2005
Posting Date: 6-22-2005
Directed by Maury Dexter
Featuring Ron Foster, Merry Anders, Richard Crane

An architect is sent out to survey a deserted castle. When he arrives there with his wife, strange things begin to happen.

This movie is a low-budget cross between HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL and … another movie whose title I won’t mention here, because it gives away the ending. Let’s just say that the other movie is very well known and has an enormous amount of novelty value, and that the novelty value of this movie is of the same order. It’s directed by Maury Dexter, who was also responsible for THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH, and like that movie, I’m much more impressed with his ability to find great locations for movies (the castle is quite interesting) than his ability to make them lively or interesting. So what we get here are a few tepid scare scenes, lots of conversation, attempts at character development and conflicts that would have been welcome had they really led us anywhere, and an ending which manages to be both the most interesting and the most disappointing part of the movie. It had the potential to be a much better movie, but, as it is, it’s on the dull side and seems long at its 62 minute length.

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Evil of Dracula (1974)

EVIL OF DRACULA (1974)
(a.k.a. BLOODTHIRSTY ROSE/CHI O SUU BARA)
Article #1409 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-22-2005
Posting Date: 6-21-2005
Directed by Michio Yamamoto
Featuring Toshio Kurosawa, Kunie Tanaka, Katsuhiko Sasaki

A new professor at a girls’ college has reason to suspect that the principal is a vampire.

This was the last of three vampire movies directed by Michio Yamamoto, and if IMDB is correct, these three movies account for fully half of his output in a directorial capacity. This would also be the last movie he would direct. I haven’t seen the first of the three movies, but I have seen the second, known here as LAKE OF DRACULA, and at the very least, this movie has a better (albeit rather generic) title than that one. There are some interesting touches here; the backstory involving the torture of a Christian (at a time in Japanese history when that faith was not allowed) is unusual, the use of a white rose with sharp thorns (and which turns red at one point) is a good touch, the vampires bite their victims on the breast rather than on the neck, and, this being Japan, there is no use of the usual Christian symbols to ward off vampires. Still, outside of the novelty value of seeing the Japanese trying to do a Hammer-style horror film, there’s not a whole lot here that’s really different in terms of story; in other words, you’ve seen most of this before.

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Around the World Under the Sea (1966)

AROUND THE WORLD UNDER THE SEA (1966)
Article #1408 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-21-2005
Posting Date: 6-20-2005
Directed by Andrew Marton
Featuring Lloyd Bridges, Brian Kelly, Shirley Eaton

A gang of adventurers embarks on a submarine voyage to plant sensors at the bottom of the ocean that can be used to track underwater earthquakes.

You know, there’s a certain type of adventure movie that has distinct qualities about it. Some of these qualities are –

– that you know you will be treated to lots and lots of ‘environmental’ footage. In this case, you’ll have more underwater footage than you can shake a stick at.

– that you’ll have a somewhat varied assortment of characters who will be your companions on the adventure.

– that each of this somewhat varied assortment of characters will be developed only enough so they can have their requisite number of character moments during the adventure. For example, the gruff cynic will develop a heart and save the beleagered guinea pigs.

– that the presence of one woman on the adventure combined with the presence of one man who doesn’t think a woman should be along on the adventure only adds up to one thing – romance.

– that the above romance will provide the entire character developments of both characters involved.

– that there will be plenty of incident (though I hesitate to call it action) during the voyage. Yet, despite all the incident, everything occurs at exactly the same level of excitement (or tedium), because there is no attempt made to build any real drama or suspense.

– that there will be a lot of talk.

– that you can safely ignore almost 95 percent of the talk.

– that, despite the fact that there will be a certain degree of character conflict among the adventurers, none of it will develop into anything really big because that would destroy the atmosphere of complacent cameraderie that defines the movie’s emotional center.

– that you can safely raid the refrigerator at any time during the length of the movie without the fear of missing something really important because nothing that happens ever feels more important than anything else.

– that you have no idea how long a time the voyage took because the movie fails to give you any indication of the passage of time.

– and finally, that you somehow knew that the movie was going to be like this after watching the first five minutes.

No, the movie is not awful. It is merely predictable and without any surprises. Even the presence of Keenan Wynn doesn’t really spice things up. It goes through the system easily and leaves nothing behind to remind you of its presence.

I’m ready to move on to the next movie now.

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The Sign of Four (1932)

THE SIGN OF FOUR (1932)
Article #1407 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-20-2005
Posting Date: 2-19-2005
Directed by Graham Cutts and Rowland V. Lee
Featuring Arthur Wontner, Isla Bevan, Ian Hunter

Sherlock Holmes must protect a woman from a murderous one-legged man.

As enjoyable as the Rathbone Holmes movies are, they weren’t the be-all and end-all of Holmesian cinema. There’s plenty of room for movies like this one, a fairly faithful take on the classic Doyle novel. It takes quite a while before Holmes actually appears on the scene, but the backstory that makes up the first third of this movie is interesting enough to hold the attention. Wontner does an excellent job as Holmes, capturing both his intelligence and his wit. His conversations with Watson reveal the former, while the latter is wonderfully shown in his scenes with a smug but dim-witted Scotland Yard detective. It’s a bit on the creaky side, the primitive sound and the accents render some of the dialogue unintelligible, and the fight scenes are unfortunately shot in fast motion, but this is a very satisfying Holmes adaptation.

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A Shriek in the Night (1933)

A SHRIEK IN THE NIGHT (1933)
Article #1406 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-19-2005
Posting Date: 6-18-2005
Directed by Albert Ray
Featuring Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot, Harvey Clark

When a man falls to his death from his penthouse, police and reporters try to figure out whether it was murder or suicide.

The presence of future Fred Astaire partner Ginger Rogers in the cast makes this forgotten horror one in which there is a certain novelty value, and though I sense that she didn’t feel entirely comfortable in the spunky reporter role, she gives a spirited performance. And even though the horror elements are slight (the murder victims all receive an ominous card heralding their deaths), there are other interesting points to this one. For one thing, it doesn’t take place in an old dark house. The villain is somewhat unexpected. The movie is also filled with some slightly oddball comic relief, though the fact that it features a scared black woman instead of a scared black man doesn’t alleviate the stereotype much. Still, the plot is over-complicated (it takes almost two minutes of dialogue at the end of the movie to explain the plot, and that’s way too long), and the direction is painfully static. The best moment comes near the end, when the meek, cowardly assistant to the inspector faces off against the murderer. It has its moments, but it is a bit of a chore to watch at times.

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Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR (1942)
Article #1405 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-18-2005
Posting Date: 6-17-2005
Directed by John Rawlins
Featuring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers

Sherlock Holmes is called in by the inner council to track down a saboteur who is using the airwaves to report his acts of sabotage.

At one point in this series I made the comment that I liked the way the Holmes series was handling its wartime propaganda; most of the movies I’d seen from the series at that time had featured nothing more than a terse but stirring handful of comments near the end of the movie. However, these examples came from the later movies of the series. This was the first of the modern-day Sherlock Holmes series at Universal, and it’s fairly steeped in the wartime propaganda. In fact, it takes over the movie to such an extent that the usual charms of a Sherlock Holmes movie are fairly overwhelmed. Furthermore, the closest thing I can find here to qualify as fantastic content is some moody photography, so fans of fantastic cinema have no real reason to check out this one. Overall, I’d have to choose this one as the weakest of the series. And on a side note, I’m certainly glad Basil Rathbone found a better barber for the later movies in the series.

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