Month: December 2016

The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966)

THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS (1966)
Article #1570 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-2-2005
Posting Date: 11-29-2005
Directed by Michael A. Hoey
Featuring Mamie Van Doren, Anthony Eisley, Billy Gray

A small navy outpost on an island finds themselves contending with strange monsters that were brought over from the Antarctic on an airplane.

As an exercise in nostalgia, I have a certain fondness for this movie; I saw it on my local Creature Feature as a kid, and two things stuck in my head. It was the first movie I ever saw to feature a man’s arm being torn from its socket (the fact that it’s badly done doesn’t make it less memorable), and the title is hard to forget. I saw it again years later with full knowledge of its low reputation, but as a campy laugh-a-minute stinker, it really doesn’t satisfy. The acting and direction is poor throughout, but it’s consistent and it’s almost all on the level of “let’s just get through this to get our paychecks” bad. Also, the script is singularly lacking in real howlingly funny lines. So I think this movie works best as inconsequential timekiller; the movie avoids being actively annoying, the soundtrack does a good job of letting you know when you should be paying attention, and even though there are a number of dull stretches, it does manage to prod itself to a higher level of interest (just barely) to get you through with only occasional trips to the fridge. I find it a lot easier to take than most Jerry Warren movies. Incidentally, it was based on a novel by Murray Leinster.

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Neo Tokyo (1987)

NEO TOKYO (1987)
(a.k.a. MEIKYU MONOGATARI)
Article #1569 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-1-2005
Posting Date: 11-28-2005
Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Rintaro, Katsuhiro Otomo
Featuring the voices of Robert Axelrod, Cheryl Chase, Barbara Goodson

Three different stories are told. In “Labyrinth”, a young girl and her cat pass through a mirror into a strange world. In “The Running Man”, a race car driver goes mad under the strain of his concentration. In “The Order to Stop Construction”, a man is sent to a remote site to bring down an expensive operation whose sole human supervisor has gone missing, only to find he can’t override the robots’ orders to let nothing stop production.

It was inevitable that I would eventually delve into anime for this project; the surprise here is that it came as soon as it did, thanks to the special “Last Minute Additions” section of “Creature Features Strike Back Movie Guide”. This is the very first anime I’ve ever seen, and the fact that it is an anthology of three tales gathered together for a futuristic exposition makes it a fine introduction. All three tales are memorable and quite different from each other. The first is evocative, lyrical, sometimes grotesque, but a real visual treat. The second is harrowing, brutal and engrossing. The third has the most elaborate story, and it’s a comic social satire with a wickedly ironic ending. Actually, only this last story really looks as if it belongs to the style that I’ve come to recognize as anime. All in all, a fascinating experience, and it actually makes me a little sad that it will probably be several years before more anime comes up in this series.

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The Mouse That Roared (1959)

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED (1959)
Article #1568 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-30-2005
Posting Date: 11-27-2005
Directed by Jack Arnold
Featuring Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, William Hartnell

A tiny country decides to invade the U.S. in the hopes of receiving massive government aid when they lose. However, through a strange quirk, they manage to win the war.

I was disappointed by this movie when I was a kid; despite the fact that it featured the guy who played Inspector Clouseau, I didn’t think it was all that funny. I like it much better nowadays, and I think that’s because the movie’s strengths are better appreciated by adults. The movie isn’t funny so much for its gags, but rather for its clever premise, its satirical jabs, and the great performances of Peter Sellers in multiple roles. Though none of his three roles is as amusing as his Clouseau character, they are still examples of his consummate skill as an actor. One thing that impresses me with Sellers is that when he plays multiple roles, he doesn’t come across as showing off; each role seems to be given the same thought, care and subtlety, and he feels very much at ease with playing against himself. I also like the way that the movie doesn’t load itself up with scenes where Sellers’ characters interact with each other in the same frame, as this has a tendency to distract from the performances themselves. There are a number of nice touches; the Columbia logo gets in on the humor at one point, watching the various politicians play a Monopoly-like game called Diplomacy at one point is amusing, and watching the Secretary of Defense squirm as he realizes the situation he’s in are all great fun. The movie is at its weakest when it resorts to slapstick, but these are all momentary lapses, and the movie quickly returns to humor based on satire and character. Half a decade later, Sellers would return to the comic theme of nuclear destruction (once again in multiple roles) in DR. STRANGELOVE. The movie also features the great character actor Leo McKern as well as the first Doctor Who himself, William Hartnell.

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Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete (1961)

MINOTAUR, THE WILD BEAST OF CRETE (1961)
(a.k.a. TESEO CONTRO IL MINOTAURO)
Article #1567 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-29-2005
Posting Date: 11-26-2005
Directed by Silvio Amadio
Featuring Bob Mathias, Rosanna Schiaffino, Alberto Lupo

Theseus goes to Crete to take on the Minotaur.

It seems like ages since I’ve had the opportunity to cover another sword-and-sandal movie, and that’s a good thing; you can overdose on these things. This one starts out promising; the attack of a woman by a big hairy monster in a pre-credits sequence seems to promise a fair degree of monster mayhem. Well, don’t hold your breath; there’s only one monster in the movie, and since they’re saving it for the big climax, you have to wade through eighty minutes of typical sword-and-sandal shenanigans before Theseus even announces he’s going into the labyrinth to take on the Minotaur. So we get an evil queen lusting after our hero, a village of peasants massacred by armed warriors, lots of bare-chested male camaraderie, and four (count ’em, four) moments when the story grinds to a complete halt so we can have a dancing girl sequence. That’s at least three too many and way above average for this type of movie. The plot is so elaborate they even have to bring in a goddess at the halfway point to clue Theseus in on a gaggle of plot development. Unfortunately, our hero is one of those normal-strength variety; the biggest rock he throws is no larger than your head, and his attempt to bend the bars in his jail cell is merely pathetic. Still, on the plus side, the dubbing is much better than usual for this sort of thing, you can actually use the word “spectacle” to describe the fight scenes without giggling, and the monster is pretty good for a peplum, even if it doesn’t resemble the traditional description of the Minotaur in any way, shape or form.

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Teenage Monster (1958)

TEENAGE MONSTER (1958)
(a.k.a. METEOR MONSTER)
Article #1566 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-28-2005
Posting Date: 11-25-2005
Directed by Jacques R. Marquette
Featuring Anne Gwynne, Gloria Castillo, Stuart Wade

When a meteor kills a prospector and turns his son into a hairy monster, the grieving mother hides him away from the world. When she discovers a vein of gold in her husband’s mine, she moves to town, only to have her son go on a killing spree.

At the core of this movie is a potentially strong idea; a movie about a mother trying to hide and protect her monstrous son lends itself to some strong possibilities. You have the possibility of exploring any number of intriguing relationships and situations (the mother’s love for her son, the son’s attachment to his mother and fear of desertion, the scheming younger woman’s desire to escape from her condition and willingness to use anyone to serve her ends) that could have made for an emotionally compelling feature. Unfortunately, the movie fumbles the idea on practically every level; the direction by cinematrogapher Jacques R. Marquette shows a total lack of good judgment, the actors and actresses have no chemistry with each other, and the performances range from the merely adequate to the stunningly awful, and the script is full of howlingly bad lines. The worst performance comes from a miscast stuntman Gil Perkins who, at the age of fifty, plays the Teenage Monster. He reacts to every situation in the same way – with whiny, twitchy mewling. It’s just plain ridiculous to have characters engage in long conversations with the monster when only one in twenty of the monster’s lines are even remotely coherent. The end result is a movie that is painfully awkward. THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS was its cinematic companion at the drive-ins, and though that movie is no classic, it must have seemed so in comparison to this one.

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