Month: June 2017

Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)

COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZON QUEEN (1960)
aka Colossus and the Amazons, La Regina delle Amazzoni
Article 1922 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-19-2006
Posting Date: 11-16-2006
Directed by Vittorio Sala
Featuring Rod Taylor, Ed Fury, Dorian Gray

Glauco and his friend Pirro take up a job of guarding pirate treasure, only to find themselves drugged and left for the Amazons to find.

I tend to be blindsided by movies like this. It’s hard to take the Italian sword-and-sandal movies seriously when they’re done straight, so I never really find myself prepared when they actually play them for laughs, as they do here. This is the best Italian sword-and-sandal comedy I’ve seen, which is damning it with faint praise; it’s only competition is HERCULES VS. MACISTE IN THE VALE OF WOE , and that one is quite awful. This one benefits from the fact that the two leads are not only both speaking English, but have a good grasp of comedy as well; both Rod Taylor and Ed Fury are thoroughly amusing. The movie also gets a little mileage out of the reversal-of-the-sexes theme of the Amazons; the scene where we see all of the Amazons’ male menials cleaning, washing, cooking, and chattering away like housewives is pretty hilarious. The crowning touch came, though, when the ceremonial dance (practically every sword-and-sandal movie has one) opens with three scantily-clad men, and though the women soon take over the dance, I had to admit that was a brilliant touch. There’s some nonsense about a sacred girdle, our hero Ed Fury is constantly getting knocked out by any number of people, and there’s a scene where the Amazons are being attacked by invading pirates that is blocked out like a western scene where Indians attack pioneers in circled wagons. There are feats of super-strength and bear-wrestling. The only question I have is a simple one – Who’s Colossus?

 

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Boccaccio ’70 (1962)

BOCCACCIO ’70 (1962)
Article 1921 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-18-2006
Posting Date: 11-15-2006
Directed by Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli and Luchino Visconti
Featuring Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider, Sophia Loren

Four Italian directors take on stories based on Boccaccio’s “The Decameron”. In the first, a woman employed by a book-keeper must keep her marriage a secret if she doesn’t want to lose her job. In the second, a self-appointed moral watchdog tries to censor a billboard placed outside of his apartment – one in which Anita Ekberg is advertising milk. In the third, a rich celebrity caught in a scandal about his involvement with prostitutes must turn to his wife to save him from the bad publicity. The fourth is about a woman who decides to make her fortune by raffling off her favors in a carnival.

With a running length of 208 minutes, you can understand why I was tempted to watch only the second tale (which is the one with the fantastic content) and skip the other three, but I guess that just didn’t seem right to me. Fortunately, the movie turned out good enough that I didn’t really mind the investment of the entire running time. Still, I must admit that I liked the second tale far and away the best, not so much because of its fantastic content, but because it was directed by Federico Fellini. This hilarious tale features Cupid playing a trick on the moral watchdog by having him tempted by a giant Anita Ekberg (who emerges from the billboard in the second half of the segment to torment him). This movie also features a funny scene where we witness the filming of a sword-and-sandal movie. There’s also a short sequence of the first story that takes place in a movie theatre where our protagonists watch part of a vampire movie. This first sequence was originally cut from the American release to bring the length of the movie down, a decision that actually caused a bit of an uproar at the time. Outside of the Fellinii sequence, my favorite was the last sequence, in which the woman who raffles off her favors must contend both with a jealous boyfriend and the exceedingly meek man who actually wins the raffle. The other two sequences are much more serious in tone, and though I didn’t like them as much as the Fellini and De Sica sections, they’re not bad. What I’d really like to see, though, is the full version of the Fellini sequence, which orginally ran over eighty minutes long and had to be cut by twenty minutes before it was incorporated into the movie.

 

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Blood Mania (1970)

BLOOD MANIA (1970)
Article 1920 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-17-2006
Posting Date: 11-14-2006
Directed by Robert Vincent O’Neill
Featuring Peter Carpenter, Maria De Aragon, Vicki Peters

When a doctor finds himself at the mercy of a blackmailer, the sex-crazed daughter of one of his rich patients concocts a scheme to get the money for him if he’ll sleep with her.

“Blood” Mania, huh? Well, maybe during the last ten minutes of the movie. During the first seventy minutes the obsession is clearly with other bodily fluids. All of the female characters here have sex on their minds, and most of them spend the movie in various states of undress to emphasize this obsession. The nurse is the only one who has a sense of humor about it, and not only does she remain clothed throughout, but she also gives the best performance in the movie (maybe because she was cast for her acting ability?). It’s not much of a horror movie, but I guess all the sex and nudity give it the title of “erotic thriller”. All in all, it’s pretty bad, though I do find it amusing that the doctor ends up being blackmailed by one person for money, and the person trying to get the money for him to pay the blackmailer is blackmailing him for sex. The final twist is no fun at all. Robert Vincent O’Neill also directed THE PSYCHO LOVER .

 

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Mr. Drake’s Duck (1951)

MR. DRAKE’S DUCK (1951)
Article 1919 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-16-2006
Posting Date: 11-13-2006
Directed by Val Guest
Featuring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Yolande Donlan, Jon Pertwee

A newlywed bride inadvertently buys a shipment of ducks at a local auction. She then discovers that one of the ducks lays eggs containing uranium, which brings in the military.

I’m mostly familiar with Val Guest as being the director of several excellent science fiction movies (in particular, the first two Quatermass movies), but it appears that he had a long career as a director and writer of comedies. I’m not quite as impressed with his work in this regard, though I do like this one a little better than I do the other one I’ve seen of his, LIFE IS A CIRCUS . The science fiction angle of the story is obvious (a duck has developed a method of laying uranium eggs in lead-lined shells), but the movie never really explores the whys and wherefores of this situation and instead concentrates on how the appearance of the military creates upheaval in their lives. Of course, the orignal British version of the movie might have more information; the U.S. print of the movie is short by ten minutes. It’s only sporadically amusing, but it does have a great cast of character actors; in particular, it’s fun to see a pre-Doctor Who Jon Pertwee as the cranky farmhand. The name of the main character is Donald Drake, and I wasn’t surprised that at least one joke comes up about the name. On a side note, I couldn’t help but be reminded a little bit of “Green Acres”, since that’s the name of the farm, and Yolande Donlan does bear a certain resemblance to Eva Gabor.

 

1 CommentLeave a comment

Black Orpheus (1959)

BLACK ORPHEUS (1959)
aka Orfeu Negro
Article 1918 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-15-2006
Posting Date: 11-12-2006
Directed by Marcel Camus
Featuring Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes de Oliveiria

Set against the backdrop of the Carnaval at Rio de Janeiro, Orpheus (whose music makes the sun rise) meets and falls in love with Eurydice, not knowing that Death is on her trail.

Neither of the two versions of the Orpheus legend (the other being the Cocteau movie ) are straightforward versions of the old Greek myth; they are as different from the original story as they are from each other. This one is vigorously told, brimming with the energy of the people and the place, and, though it can’t be strictly called a musical, it is drenched in music and dance. It makes beautiful use of color, and the energy is infectious and almost exhausting at times. The story is alternately comic, exciting and moving, and there are some stunning scenes set in the hills over Rio de Janeiro. It’s one of those movies that might work just as well without the subtitles; it’s power and energy would translate without the help of literal translation. It could be argued that, despite the fantastic content of the original myth, there isn’t much in the way of fantastic content in this one, though there is a native religious ceremony that serves as the metaphoric backdrop for the descent of Orpheus into Hades to retrieve Eurydice (the dog at the gate is named Cerberus) that might qualify. At any rate, this is a memorable and unique viewing experience that really places you in another world during its running time.

 

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Beware! The Blob (1972)

BEWARE! THE BLOB (1972)
aka Son of Blob
Article 1917 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-14-2006
Posting Date: 11-11-2006
Directed by Larry Hagman
Featuring Robert Walker Jr., Gwynne Gilford, Richard Stahl

When one of the workers on an Alaskan highway returns home, he brings a sample of a substance he found with him. It turns out to be part of the Blob, which gets loose and begins another rampage.

I really feel a bit sorry for the reputation of the original THE BLOB ; though it wasn’t a bad little film by any means, it somehow gained a reputation as a one of the campier of the science fiction monster movies of the fifties. I think this is probably due to the nature of the monster itself combined with the silly Burt Bacharach theme song. In some ways, this movie suffered the same reputation as I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF , which was also a decent movie but suffered from a silly title.

Maybe it was because of the unfortunate reputation of the original movie that Jack H. Harris, when it came time to film a sequel fourteen years later, decided to play it up for campy laughs. This movie is largely populated by comic characters, from the dumb sheriff to the pretentious barber and his hippie customer to the chatty boy scout leader to the hippie-hating drunks to the large, bald, naked Turk – these are a far cry from the serious characters from the original movie. And the fact of the matter is that these overtly comic scenes work better than the serious ones; the scene with the barber is particularly memorable. Its worst problem is that the young couple is nowhere near as appealing as the one from the original movie; the boyfriend is bland and forgettable, and the girl spends most of the movie in that whiny histrionic mode that I find intensely annoying. There’s also scads of familiar faces and names here; Larry Hagman (who also directs), Dick Van Patten, Burgess Meredith, Godfrey Cambridge, Carol Lynley, Cindy Williams, Gerrit Graham, Danny Goldman and Bud Cort all pop up at one point or another. Those who remember the early seventies will surely remember the toy that all the boy scouts are playing with here (though, sadly, the name of it escapes me). Fans of the original movie will certainly recognize both of the movies that Godfrey Cambridge watches at one point (though one is the audio track only). And I do find it highly amusing that Tiger Joe Marsh is first shown taking a bath in this one; he was the model for the original Mr. Clean.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Bedford Incident (1965)

THE BEDFORD INCIDENT (1965)
Article 1916 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-13-2006
Posting Date: 11-10-2006
Directed by James B. Harris
Featuring Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, James MacArthur

The fanatical captain of an American Destroyer discovers a Russian submarine in U.S. territorial waters, and he drives his crew to the brink in his hope of catching it.

What’s the fantastic content of this tense, cold-war thriller? Well, if you consider the time when the movie was made, and if you consider that I’ve already covered movies like FAIL-SAFE and DR. STRANGELOVE for this series, you should have a strong idea of what that content will be. Still, since I’ve covered a few movies for this series that didn’t qualify (to my mind) as belonging even marginally to the genres under discussion, I think I can leave you with enough to doubt as to what happens if you haven’t seen the movie. Suffice it to say that any fantastic content here will not manifest itself until the very end of the movie.

Still, this movie is worth catching whether you know the ending or not. It’s tense and gripping, full of fascinating characters, and exquisitely acted by everyone. The excellent cast includes Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, James MacArthur (who I mostly remember for his supporting role in “Hawaii Five-O), Martin Balsam, Wally Cox, Eric Portman, and a young Donald Sutherland. Watching the interplay of the characters is particularly interesting here, and I’m quite impressed that they were even able to squeeze a little humor into the situation as well. This one is definitely recommended.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Amityville Horror (1979)

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979)
Article 1915 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-12-2006
Posting Date: 11-9-2006
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg
Featuring James Brolin, Margot Kidder, Rod Steiger

A family moves into a house that was the site of a mass slaying a year earlier. They begin to find that there is something evil at work in the house.

You know, a movie doesn’t spawn as many sequels as this one has without having touched a nerve somewhere in the viewing public. I’m sure part of it stems from it having been based on a supposedly true story, which has long since been debunked. It’s no doubt more effective if you believe the story is true; otherwise, this ragtag collection of random and derivative horrors comes across as – well, a ragtag collection of random and derivative horrors. It might have been more effective if it had been shorter; we certainly don’t need as many scenes as we get of James Brolin chopping wood. Still, the movie does have one clever aspect to it which I might not have noticed had I not recalled reading it in some other review, and that is that it pays an unusually amount of attention to the economic horrors of dealing with this house; the scene in which the demonic horrors of the house appear to make off with a wad of money is something new. Yes, it seems a bit silly on the surface, but in its own way it touches upon real-life fears more effectively than the plagues of flies, bleeding walls, vomiting clergymen and gates-to-hell-in-the-basement that pass for the rest of the horrors of this house. Someday, someone is going to take this idea and run with it, and that should be an interesting movie.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Alison’s Birthday (1979)

ALISON’S BIRTHDAY (1979)
Article 1914 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-11-2006
Posting Date: 11-8-2006
Directed by Ian Coughlan
Featuring Joanne Samuel, Lou Brown, Bunny Brooke

A young woman is called home for a special party for her nineteenth birthday, an event which she’d been thinking of avoiding due to a message from a seance she’d received years earlier. She heads home with her boyfriend, but finds that something sinister is going on…

In many ways, I quite like this Australian horror movie. The acting is quite good throughout, the characters are thoroughly likable, they act with a certain degree of intelligence (most of the time), and it goes for subtle scares rather than big shocks; the movie is, in fact, bloodless.

However, it has a real problem in the fact that the story is utterly predictable. There’s not a single surprise among the various revelations, and it ends pretty much as I expected a horror movie from this era to end. It is this utter lack of surprises that drags the movie down; even if you enjoy some of the touches, there’s really nothing to the story that you haven’t seen before. As a result of all this, it’s both a little better than expected and a disappointment as well.

1 CommentLeave a comment

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1951)
Article 1913 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-10-2006
Posting Date: 11-7-2006
Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske
Featuring the voices of Kathryn Beaumont, Ed Wynn, Richard Haydn

Alice pursues a talking rabbit down a hole and ends up in Wonderland.

Up to this point, all of the Disney animated features that I’ve covered I’d already seen some years before I watched them for this series. This is one of the few I’ve never seen, and, to be quite honest, I’ve been somewhat avoiding it. The main reason is simple; I’m a big fan of the original Lewis Carroll stories, which have a unique and very distinct brand of whimsy to them. And though Disney is no slouch when it comes to whimsy, there’s nothing in their oeuvre that leads me to believe that they would have any real grasp on that brand of twisted illogic that drives the Alice stories. It also doesn’t lend itself to Disney’s strengths; since it largely consists of an episodic group of encounters, there’s no real story to begin with, and it is peculiarly lacking in any sort of workable emotional tenor. It’s not that I thought Disney would make a horrible movie based on the books; it’s just that in the process of adaptation, I was sure that the final result would owe much more to Disney than to Carroll. Furthermore, the Tenniel illustrations have set in my mind how the characters should look, but I was pretty sure that Disney would redesign the characters quite a bit.

And now, having seen it, I feel that I was right. Some of Carroll’s verbal humor is still there, but it’s fairly swamped by wild visual slapstick. It tries to add some emotive quality during a scene where Alice gets lost in Tulgey woods and encounters a bunch of bizarre creatures, but that scene does not appear in the Alice books; in fact, it owes more to the Warner Brothers short, PORKY IN WACKYLAND. The characters were indeed redesigned, but, as expected, they didn’t replace the Tenniel illustrations in my mind. The final result isn’t a bad movie, but it is definitely more of a Disney movie than an adapataion of Carroll. In short, no surprises. It’s best elements are the surreal visuals; at moments, it feels like “Pink Elephants on Parade” stretched out to feature-length.

For all their flaws, both the 1933 and 1949 versions are closer to the spirit of the book. Still, when I really want to enjoy that Carrollian sense of whimsy, I’ll go to the obvious place; the book itself. For me, there really is no substitute.

0 CommentsLeave a comment