Month: June 2017

The Golden Mistress (1954)

THE GOLDEN MISTRESS (1954)
Article 1942 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-9-2006
Posting Date: 12-6-2006
Directed by Abner Biberman
Featuring John Agar, Rosemarie Stack, Jacques Molant

When a man makes off with an idol used in a voodoo ceremony, he tries to contact a treasure hunter to let him know of the discovery. When the man dies of a voodoo curse, the treasure hunter embarks on a journey with the daughter of the dead man to locate a missing tribe known as “The Untamed”.

This movie starts out as an exercise in voodoo horror, but shifts its focus about a third of the way in to become an adventure story. I was a bit surprised to see it with a lowly 4.0 rating on IMDB; I quite enjoyed it myself. The cast is quite likable, the color location footage (it was shot in the Caribbean) is quite beautiful, and the native dances are some of the best I’ve seen. It is, with its black tribes performing primitive ceremonies, politically incorrect nowadays, which probably accounts to some extent for its poor reputation. The director plays the role of the man who originally steals the idol, and Rosemarie Stack (who was known as Rosemarie Bowe at the time this was made) would later marry actor Robert Stack; given her beauty, I’m a bit surprised she didn’t have a much bigger career as an actress that she did.

 

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Nasty Rabbit (1964)

NASTY RABBIT (1964)
aka SPIES-A-GO-GO
Article 1941 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-8-2006
Posting Date: 12-5-2006
Directed by James Landis
Featuring Michael Terr, Arch Hall Jr., Liz Renay

A Russian spy bearing a rabbit with a vial of deadly bacteria arrives at a dude ranch with the intent of destroying America by releasing the rabbit on the continental divide. He must contend with a cadre of intercontinental counter-espionage agents and a rock-and-roll singer who is really a secret agent as well.

You know, it’s a bit of a shame that Arch Hall Jr.’s best known movie is EEGAH; as far as I can tell from having seen that movie, THE SADIST, and this one, he got better as he went along. Not that his performance was better here than it was in THE SADIST (his previous movie), but then, THE SADIST gave him both a better character and a better script. Here he manages to rise above the material somewhat (something he failed to do in EEGAH), and he comes across as cool and confident, and though he’s mostly a straight man, he manages his few comic bits with a greater degree of skill than the other performers in the movie. Granted, it doesn’t save the movie itself; this compendium of frenetic subpar slapstick and broad ethnic caricatures is desperately unfunny. The cast does have some interesting names, though; this is the sole acting credit for Michael Terr (alias Mischa Terr), who worked behind the scenes in a musical capacity on a number of genre features. Richard Kiel pops up as a ranch foreman who makes sure that dwarf Jack Little does not shirk his calf-roping duties. Award-winning cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs appears as an idiot who intends to make the rabbit his meal. It’s interesting that the cinematography was handled by another award-winning cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond. Out of curiosity, I looked up joint ventures between these two men, and found that they had worked together in some capacity on an interesting assortment of films, including THE TIME TRAVELERS, THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES!!? and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.

 

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Lost City of the Jungle (1946)

LOST CITY OF THE JUNGLE (1946)
Article 1940 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-7-2006
Posting Date: 12-4-2006
Directed by Lewis D. Collins and Ray Taylor
Featuring Russell Hayden, Jane Adams, Lionel Atwill

An agent from the United Peace Foundation is sent to the isolated province of Pendrang to find out if a man named Geoffrey Wood  (believed deceased) is really a warmonger known as Sir Eric Hazarias. This turns out to be true, and Hazarias is in Pendrang to try to locate a rare element that will allow him to create a defense to the atomic bomb, a device that would give any nation the power to take over the world.

There’s a very curious plot device to this serial; despite the fact that the main bad guy is supposed to be the Atwill character (Sir Eric Hazarias), he claims that his secretary Malborn (John Mylong, the fatherly scientist in ROBOT MONSTER) is the actual leader and brains behind the outfit. With this plot set-up, I was preparing myself for a specific twist – namely, that Malborn would turn out to be the real Sir Eric Hazarias, and that the Atwill character would turn out to be a decoy of some sort. However, events in chapter 12 proved me incorrect, and so I was left wondering what the reason was for this odd plot device.

However, IMDB lists one piece of trivia about the serial which provides a clue as to why this happened. Lionel Atwill was ill during the filming and died of bronchial cancer. This would explain the odd structure; if he was unable to shoot certain scenes, the device of having another man who was actually in charge would allow him to substitute for Atwill in a number of scenes. This makes more sense to me than the other explanation I had, as it seemed to me to be a little too clever for the type of plot that serials usually have. Still, this strange plot set-up fueled my curiosity about what the final revelations would be, and it may have made the serial a little more interesting to me than it otherwise would have been. Still, I did like the fact that the leader of Pendrang (a woman called Indra) was one of those characters that could end up siding with either hero or villain. There’s also a significant amount of fantastic content in this one, including a device that can destroy buildings through sound vibrations, and the deadly radioactive element Meteorium which can disintegrate anyone who looks at it unless they’re wearing protective garb. The serial also features Keye Luke and Gene Roth.

 

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The Magic Face (1951)

THE MAGIC FACE (1951)
Article 1939 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-6-2006
Posting Date: 12-3-2006
Directed by Frank Tuttle
Featuring Luther Adler, Patricia Knight, William L. Shirer

A professional impersonator in Nazi Germany is arrested and thrown into prison when Hitler takes a fancy to his wife. He manages to escape, and hatches a plot to destroy Hitler by murdering him and taking his place.

Given the hysterical and lurid promises of the ad campaign (“See HITLER KILLED IN SHAME MURDER – after wild wine party!” and “See HITLER SLAIN IN LOVE NEST – after shameless champagne party!”) and the far-fetched premise of the plot, the movie actually comports itself with a decent amount of dignity and tries to make itself convincing. I do like the little attentions to detail; they spend some time showing that the actor has to learn the duties of a valet before he takes on the job itself, and we see a number of scenes of the actor closely watching Hitler so that he’ll know how to imitate him. I also think Luther Adler does an excellent job in the role, and at one time or another he gives imitations of Mussolini, Chamberlain and Selassie as well as Hitler.

For this series, though, the question is whether this movie qualifies as genre or not. I’m inclined to say it doesn’t. The closest explanation I could come up with that someone would classify it as such is that the premise bears a certain similarity to ‘alternate histories” in the science fiction genre, but these histories give us a world different from the one we live in, whereas this movie is trying to offer an explanation as to why certain things happened, in particular, as to why Hitler began making major tactical mistakes in his war planning. And, for the record, the only “wild wine party” here is held by the warden of the prison (with Hitler not on hand) long before Der Fuhrer is assassinated.

 

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The Great Gambini (1937)

THE GREAT GAMBINI (1937)
Article 1938 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-5-2006
Posting Date: 12-2-2006
Directed by Charles Vidor
Featuring Akim Tamiroff, Marian Marsh, John Trent

When a wealthy man is found murdered in his apartment, the police gather together suspects in the case, including his fiance, his fiance’s father and stepmother, a jealous rival, the butler, and a mind reader known as Gambini.

This was, for my money, one of the more entertaining mysteries from the thirties. The story itself is fairly ordinary, but the story is told with an unusual degree of clarity; it’s one of those mysteries where I can actually tell the suspects apart from each other. It’s also helped by the presence of a great collection of character actors to flesh out the proceedings, including Genevieve Tobin (doing her best impression of Billie Burke), William Demarest and Edward Brophy (as the police). The movie is really stolen by Akim Tamiroff in the title role; his antics as the smarter-than-the-police psychic adds an enormous amount of fun to the proceedings. The fantastic content is, of course, the mind-reading act, which, as is usually the case in mysteries of this sort, has its fantastic qualities short-circuited by later revelations, but the revelations are good ones here. Furthermore, the movie even has a bit of William Castle-style gimmickry, as the movie halts at the fifty-minute mark to allow the viewer to guess the identity of the murderer during the minute the clock ticks away. This one was lots of fun.

 

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Danger Woman (1946)

DANGER WOMAN (1946)
Article 1937 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-4-2006
Posting Date: 12-1-2006
Directed by Lewis D. Collins
Featuring Don Porter, Brenda Joyce, Patricia Morison

A scientist develops a method of atomic energy (that doesn’t require radioactive substances) that can be used for industrial purposes, but he refuses to reveal it for fear that it will be used for evil ends. However, unscrupulous powers are afoot, and he suddenly finds two people moving into his house; a car accident victim who needs a quiet place to recover and a prodigal wife who returns to him after an absence of three years.

Once again we find ourselves in the grips of one of those marginal science fiction movies in which the science fiction aspect (the new form of atomic energy) serves as little more than the prize in a struggle between good and evil. Action fans will, however, be disappointed as well; there is very little action in the movie, which spends a lot more time on the relationship between the scientist, his wife, and his secretary (who is in love with the scientist and didn’t even know the wife existed before she showed up). The plot to acquire the scientist’s secrets is focused on forcing his hand economically; a smear campaign is used to cut off his means of support in the hopes that this will force him to sell his secrets. The biggest surprise I found in this one was that a certain character wasn’t involved in the plot to get the secrets (a discovery that makes the character much more interesting than they would otherwise have been), but beyond that, this one is tired, predictable, and not much fun. Not essential viewing.

 

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Jungle Princess (1936)

JUNGLE PRINCESS (1936)
Article 1936 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-3-2006
Posting Date: 11-30-2006
Directed by Wilhelm Thiele
Featuring Dorothy Lamour, Akim Tamiroff, Ray Milland

An adventurer injures himself in the jungle, and is rescued by a jungle woman who keeps a tiger as a pet.

This wasn’t Dorothy Lamour’s debut movie, but it was the first one where she wore a sarong, and she would become famous for it. The fantastic content is mostly centered around the fact that when the tiger would appear, natives would hear the laughter of the native girl and think it was the tiger, thus spawning a legend about a laughing tiger; other than that, the fantastic content is mostly of the type that is common to jungle movies; namely, that their view of life in the jungle had very little in common with reality. The plot doesn’t have much in the way of surprises, but it’s solidly directed and acted (with a particularly strong turn from Akim Tamiroff), and has some memorable scenes; it is, in fact, one of the better jungle movies you’re likely to see. The climax of the movie is especially exciting; there are have been several movies in which villages have been destroyed by a stampeding elephants (in fact, this movie opens with such a scene), but the final destruction here comes from a totally unexpected group of animals. Lamour and Milland would rendezvous again in the jungle two years later with HER JUNGLE LOVE.

 

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UFO: Target Earth (1974)

UFO: TARGET EARTH (1974)
Article 1935 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-2-2006
Posting Date: 11-29-2006
Directed by Michael A. DeGaetano
Featuring Nick Plakias, Cynthia Cline, Tom Arcuragi

When he accidentally intercepts a military call about UFO sightings and meets a psychic woman with a mental connection to alien presences, an electronics expert decides to investigate UFO sightings near a lake.

One of my sources claims this movie was made for $70,000 dollars, and to me, it looks it. Still, for a movie that’s made this cheaply, it certainly doesn’t lack ambition. It’s one that tries to tap in to the mystical qualities of certain aspects of UFOlogy. I can’t really say the movie is successful; there’s something about the eccentric use of music, the oddball pacing and characters, and the confused plotting that is more likely to get you scratching your head than anything else. Still, there’s a quality to this movie that I find quite unique, and as a result, I can’t quite bring myself to just dismiss the movie. Maybe it’s just because the movie took me somewhere that I’ve never been before, and given how many movies I’ve seen that seem like rehashes of other movies, I’ve learned to value that. And even though I found the computer-generated abstract special effects to be somewhat cheesy, they were rather hypnotic all the same. Action and thriller fans will definitely be disappointed, but those looking for something a little different with a mystical edge, there’s something to be appreciated here.

 

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The Torpedo of Doom (1966)

THE TORPEDO OF DOOM (1966)
Feature version of the serial FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS
Article 1934 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-1-2006
Posting Date: 11-28-2006
Directed by John English and William Witney
Featuring Lee Powell, Bruce Bennett, Eleanor Stewart

Two marines pit themselves against a villain known as the Lightning, who has developed guided air torpedoes to destroy his enemies.

Among the batch of feature versions of serials that I’ve done recently, this one turns out the best. At least part of that reason is that it was from a serial from the thirties rather than a later one; the earlier serials were less frenetic and less episodic. There is a definite plot thread that runs through the serial, and this feature version does a very good job of keeping focused on that plot and pruning away only what is unnecessary. As a result, this feels a lot more like a feature film than some of the others of its ilk.

I do sometimes wonder if these feature versions of serials will vanish from the face of the earth at some time. Given that DVDs are an excellent format for certain forms that worked a little clumsily on VHS, I suspect that the serials themselves will be given a lot of attention, while these feature versions will be considered redundant and unnecessary. Though I do think that to some extent this is true, I still wish that they were more available than they are. But then, I wish everything was available.

 

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Supersonic Saucer (1956)

SUPERSONIC SAUCER (1956)
Article 1933 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-30-2006
Posting Date: 11-27-2006
Directed by S. G. Ferguson
Featuring Fella Edmonds, Donald Gray, Gillian Harrison

Some children, forced to spend the holidays at their boarding school when they can’t afford to go home, encounter an alien from Venus who travels by turning himself into a flying saucer.

The only user comment for this movie on IMDB at the time of this writing made notice of the same thing I did while watching it, and that is that the movie bears a certain resemblance to a Spielberg movie made a quarter of a century later called E.T.. I suspect it’s just coincidence myself, but some of the resemblances are striking, and there’s no doubt that the alien (a creature swathed in a white robe with no mouth, and big woeful eyes that can cry, move and spin around) is as unique-looking as E.T. was. On its own terms, the movie has a message, and that message is – Be Careful What You Wish For – because if you’re not, you’ll end up encouraging helpful but naive extraterrestrials to ever increasing levels of inadvertent criminal behavior (from petty larceny to arson to grand larceny), which will attract the attention of desperate but bumbling criminals who will kidnap the alien to try to encourage him in his criminal pursuits (for their own profit, of course), and you’ll just have to follow his telepathic signals (and get him to use his ability to make people go backwards in fast motion) to rescue him. All in all, this is a pretty silly children’s movie, but I have to admit that one of the gags is pretty good: it involves one of the alien’s powers and a long staircase. Believe it or not, I found myself oddly entertained by this one.

 

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