Month: June 2017

The Green Hornet (1940)

THE GREEN HORNET (1940)
Serial
Article 1912 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-9-2006
Posting Date: 11-6-2006
Directed by Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor
Featuring Gordon Jones, Wade Boteler, Anne Nagel

A newspaper publisher takes on the persona of The Green Hornet, a person who seems to be a criminal but is really intent on uncovering a crime syndicate.

You know, this isn’t a bad serial, and I recall rather liking the sequel, THE GREEN HORNET STRIKES AGAIN. However, as a follow-up serial to the superior JUNGLE GIRL , I’m afraid I can only notice how ordinary it is. Outside of the hero, the most memorable characters are his Korean servant and his bodyguard, a feisty Irishman. Pretty much everyone else is pretty forgettable, including the villain, who is one of those types that keeps out of action until the last episode, and mostly barks out orders to anonymous henchmen from behind a desk. The plot is also pretty repetitive; The Green Hornet investigates a specific racket, gets in peril, escapes, threatens a crook to try to get him to reveal the leader, and the crook either gets away, knows nothing, or dies, and The Green Hornet moves on to the next racket. The science fiction elements are the same as the later serial; the Hornet’s special gun and the really fast buzzing car. I’ve also noticed that Columbia is less likely to rely on cheating cliffhangers as much as Republic; unfortunately, Columbia relies on something even less interesting, the incredibly resilient hero who just luckily happens to survive every cliffhanger. I do have one piece of advice for The Green Hornet, though; since a few of the cliffhangers have to do with him almost being killed by his own bodyguard, I think it would behoove him to tell the bodyguard about his secret identity. Just a thought…

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Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy (1966)

WHOM THE GODS WISH TO DESTROY (1966)
aka Die Nibelungen, Teil 1: Siegfried
Article 1911 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-8-2006
Posting Date: 11-5-2006
Directed by Harold Reinl
Featuring Uwe Beyer, Rolf Henniger, Siegfried Wischnewski

Siegfried kills a dragon and bathes in its blood, making himself invincible. He seeks to marry the lovely Kriemhild, but the king will only allow it if he manages to help him marry the queen of Iceland, Brunhilde.

This, like the Fritz Lang silent version , is the first half of the Nibelungen story. The last time I had to deal with it was with SIGFRIDO , which, being undubbed and unsubtitled, gave me little to work with. I almost feared I’d undergo the same problem here, but it is dubbed into English (and subtitled in, I think, Russian). Though I don’t think it holds a candle to the Lang version, it’s not a bad movie, even if it doesn’t quite attain the grandeur towards which it aspires. What I most like about this version is that it includes certain plot turns that I failed to notice in the other versions; in particular, there’s a whole “sleeping beauty” plot element which goes a long ways towards establishing the relationship between Siegfried and Brunhilde, and helps to set up the motivations for the actions in the last part of the story. At first, I was afraid this version of the movie was going to exclude the fight with the dragon (as the event is brought up as something that occurred in the past), but that’s what flashbacks are for. All in all, this is a good version of the story.

I do have a question about the English title, though. “Whom the Gods wish to destroy” is traditionally followed by “they first make mad”, and, quite frankly, no one is “made mad” in this story. Maybe it refers to Kriemhilde, but that would be only in the second half of the story, which is not included here. Still, I suspect that it ended up with this title because it sounded good, and not because it made sense within the context of the story. Ah, well….

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The Tell-Tale Heart (1941)

THE TELL-TALE HEART (1941)
Article 1910 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-7-2007
Posting Date: 11-4-2006
Directed by Jules Dassin
Featuring Joseph Schildkraut, Roman Bohnen, Oscar O’Shea

A young man kills his older guardian and attempts to hide the body, but is haunted by the sound of the old man’s heart.

I have no real problem with this adaptation of the famous Edgar Allan Poe story; in fact, it’s the best adaptation I’ve seen of it to date. Joseph Schildkraut is intense and memorable in the role of the killer, the cinematography and direction are excellent, and, being a short, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I do find myself reflecting a little, though, on the reasons for a certain change I’ve noticed in this and at least one other version of the story. In both this version and the one in LEGEND OF HORROR , the character of the old man is changed from kindly to bad-tempered and mean. I suspect this has to do with the language of film being different from the language of prose. The original story is all told from the point of view of the killer, and the thought processes that he undergoes and the obsessions that dominate him wouldn’t be easy to translate without endless voice-over narration. Other changes are more obvious; the story itself is a lot grislier than could be reflected by the cinema of the time. It’s always interesting to see how various filmmakers try to deal with the challenge of this story.

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The Arousers (1973)

THE AROUSERS (1973)
aka Sweet Kill
Article 1909 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date:6-6-2006
Posting Date: 11-3-2006
Directed by Curtis Hanson
Featuring Tab Hunter, Cherie Latimer, Nadyne Turney

A gym teacher is actually a psychotic killer with a mother fetish.

I first heard about this film in connection with Tab Hunter, usually in jokes referring to the fact that he starred in a movie with the title THE AROUSERS. Given the fact that Tab Hunter was not a very good actor, it’s tempting to dismiss the movie for these reasons alone. However, he gives one of his better performances here, if for no other reason that when you’re playing a psycho killer, you can’t fall back on blandness. That doesn’t make his performance a success, but the script is partially at fault as well. To some extent, I admire what it’s trying to do; on top of telling the story visually as much as possible, it also makes the psycho the main character, and makes an attempt to get us to sympathize a little with him. It fails because the character is never deeply developed in the first place; other than the fact that the psycho is tortured by his murderous tendencies (which, if you think about it, really should serve as nothing more than a starting point for character development), he remains a rather shallow character. It also doesn’t help that the movie takes every opportunity it can to jack up the exploitation values; we have two separate scenes of women with their clothes off before we even reach the title screen. This is, however, not the director’s fault; when the movie failed to find an audience under its original title (SWEET KILL), Roger Corman made the director shoot some sex scenes to jazz up the movie. Still, the movie gets points for trying, and Curtis Hanson would go on to a fairly distinguished career, even winning an Oscar for his screenplay to L.A. CONFIDENTIAL.

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Snow Devils (1967)

SNOW DEVILS (1967)
aka LA MORTE VIENE DAL PIANETA AYTIN, SPACE DEVILS
Article 1908 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-5-2006
Posting Date: 11-2-2006
Directed by Antonio Margheriti
Featuring Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Ombretta Colli, Renato Baldini

When sudden changes in the Earth’s weather coincide with an attack on a weather base in the Himalayas, an expedition is set out to discover if these events have anything to do with legends of the Abominable Snowman.

Wouldn’t you know it? Yesterday, I dropped Antonio Margheriti’s name in a review, and here he is today, with another of his science fiction outings. Of the ones I’ve seen so far, this one is far and away the easiest to follow, but I was helped by having the longer ninety minute version of the movie and the fact that the dubbing showed a lot more care than is usually given to these movies. Still, that doesn’t hide the fact that the story is pretty cliched; first we have thirty minutes of typical yeti-hunting movie, followed by thirty minutes of typical alien invasion movie (and given the fact that one of the alternate titles of this movie is SPACE DEVILS, I don’t think I’m giving much away here), and finally followed by thirty minutes of typical outer space movie. As for the latter third, you’d think with only thirty minutes to go they wouldn’t feel the need to pad it out with a meteor shower scene, but no such luck. Still, the general predictability of the movie is alleviated by the occasionally interesting touch here and there; unfortunately, it’s also further marred by some really turgid pacing; many trucks are driven through many gaps between many cues. Despite the relative coherence of this one, I think some of his other science fiction movies have a lot more energy to them, and I’ll probably give them the edge over this one.

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Planets Against Us (1962)

PLANETS AGAINST US (1962)
aka I Pianeti conto di noi
Article 1907 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-4-2006
Posting Date: 11-1-2006
Directed by Romano Ferrara
Featuring Michel Lemoine, Maria Pia Luzi, Jany Clair

A series of missile launches are sabotaged and the same man is spotted at all the locations. However, the locations are scattered across the world, and the time between the launches were just minutes apart. Authorities identify the man as the son of a noted scientist whose body was never found after he supposedly died in a plane crash. They begin to suspect that he is part of an alien invasion.

Given the year of the movie and the fact that the main title in IMDB is in Italian, you can forgive me for suspecting that I was about to see another of Antonio Margheriti’s forays into science fiction. Such is not the case; this Italian/French/West German coproduction was directed by Romano Ferrara. It is in black and white, and remains earthbound throughout its running time. I found it much easier to follow than one of Margheriti’s SF movies, though I do find it somewhat unfocused in its story, and as a result, a little confusing at times. It’s also a little predictable at times; once the movie establishes that what is happening is part of an invasion from outer space, it will come as no surprise to find out that the other aliens also look like the scientist’s son. Still, the movie has nice touches to it, is rather atmospheric, and features a good performance by Michel Lamoine as the primary alien visitor (in fact, as all the alien visitors) who goes by the somewhat incongruous name of “Bronco”; his facial expressions are very effective. Odd scenes here and there help to hold up the interest level; a scene where the alien walks through a group of children with his hands held high in the air (he can kill with a touch) is rather striking, and so is a scene towards the end where he briefly emerges from his outer shell. I enjoyed this one somewhat more than I expected I would.

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Neutron the Atomic Super-Man and the Black Mask (1962)

NEUTRON THE ATOMIC SUPER-MAN AND THE BLACK MASK (1962)
aka Neutron and the Black Mask, Neutron el enmascarado negro
Article 1906 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-3-2006
Posting Date: 10-31-2006
Directed by Federico Curiel
Featuring Wolf Ruvinskis, Armando Silvestre, Rosa Arenas

When a new weapon called the Neutron Bomb is created, an ambitious assistant tries to steal the formula, an act that results in his mutilation and the deaths of two men. In order to get the formula, he hooks up with an evil supergenius named Dr. Caronte. However, both villains are opposed by that non-wrestling masked hero, Neutron.

Title-parsing time again. As far as I can tell, the correct translation of the Spanish title is NEUTRON, THE BLACK MASK. This is correct, as Neutron does wear a black mask. However, most of the English titles (such as the one on my copy) imply that the black mask is a different character; I’ve even seen the movie titled NEUTRON VS. THE BLACK MASK. These titles are confusing, as the mask-wearing villain Dr. Caronte wears a white mask. And as far as that “Atomic Super-Man” moniker goes, we’ve been there before and don’t get me started.

Now is a good time to recap the whole Neutron series. There were six Neutron movies made, and I’ve covered five of them. This may well end my exploration of this series, as NEUTRON VS. THE INVISIBLE KILLERS seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. Three of the movies seem to make a trilogy about Dr. Caronte; this is the first one, as it seems to predate NEUTRON AND THE KILLER ROBOTS or NEUTRON VS. THE AMAZING DR. CARONTE . For those who need to be reminded what Neutron is all about, he’s that masked hero who doesn’t wrestle on the side, so instead of padding out the movie with wrestling scenes, they pad it out with musical numbers. This one is fairly lean in that regard; there’s only one musical number. Yes, it’s really silly, but if you like this kind of thing (and I must confess that I do), it’s rather fun.

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The Man Who Wouldn’t Die (1942)

THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE (1942)
Article 1905 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-2-2006
Posting Date: 10-30-2006
Directed by Herbert I. Leeds
Featuring Lloyd Nolan, Marjorie Weaver, Helene Reynolds

When a recently married woman returns to her father’s home to announce the news, she discovers the family is out of sorts. She thinks it’s because of an investigation being conducted on her father, but, unbeknownst to her, the family had just engaged in the mysterious midnight burial of a stranger. Then, when a mysterious figure takes a shot at her in her bedroom, and the family convinces her not to call the police, she hires a private investigator to pretend to be her husband and investigate the incident.

Sometimes just one crucial moment can make all the difference in how well a movie works. When the shooting in the bedroom occurs, the would-be murderer appears with his eyes glowing; I think it’s the same effect they tried to use with Bela Lugosi in DRACULA (where they didn’t center the lights correctly), but here it works beautifully, adding a touch of eerie horror to the proceedings. This, combined with a plot that implies that a character keeps rising from the dead, and a scene involving a room full of lab equipment that looks like it was out of FRANKENSTEIN , gives the movie quite a bit in the way of fantastic elements.

So far, this remains the only movie I’ve seen in the Michael Shayne series with Lloyd Nolan in the role. I hope more of them pop up on my list; this one was quite enjoyable. The fantastic elements, though incidental, are sharp and memorable, the mystery is very good, and the humor is quite engaging as well. Lloyd Nolan is great in this role, and I like the way his character is something of a cross between a Wallace Ford-style wisecracking reporter and some of the later Humphrey Bogart-style hard-boiled detectives, which is a pretty nice balancing act. Olin Howland is also memorable as a bumbling police inspector, and that’s Jeff Corey as the Coroner. I truly enjoyed this one, and I think there’s just enough here to keep horror fans entertained as well.

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Phantom FX-18 (1965)

PHANTOM FX-18 (1965)
aka The Exterminators, Coplan FX 18, Coplan FX 18 casse tout
Article 1904 by Dave Sndelar
Viewing Date: 6-1-2006
Posting Date: 10-29-2006
Directed by Riccardo Freda
Featuring Richard Wyler, Robert Manuel, Jany Clair

Some good guy spies do battle with evildoers.

If you’re saying “What gives?” with that lame plot description, I can only say that’s the best I can do with a French/Italian Eurospy movie dubbed into German without subtitles. The fact that it seems to have been fairly well dubbed into German (for the most part) does little to console me, I’m afraid. Still, I can’t exactly say I haven’t been in this situation before.

Of course, the fact that the movie is a James Bond style spy flick does make for interesting viewing. Since action sequences are the heart of this type of movie, and since action sequences rarely demand dialogue to be understood, the action scenes work best in this format. Some of them are quite memorable; a scene where two spies find themselves threatened by a steam shovel is quite memorable, and there are some decent chase scenes. On the down side, I find some of these spy flicks hard to follow even when they’re in English, so it should be no wonder that from a plot perspective, I spent most of the movie in a fog. The fantastic content probably involves a little gadgetry here and there, and the finale does involve a nuclear missile to some extent (at least I see a missile and hear someone mention Hiroshima). Actually, it looks like one of the better Eurospy movies out there, but that’s just a shot in the dark.

Oh, and the four titles? Usually, the main title I choose for the movie is the one that actually appears on the print. The other titles usually indicate the title under which I first added the movie to my hunt list, the title under which I purchased the movie, and the primary title given the movie by IMDB. In this case, I added THE EXTERMINATORS to my hunt list, IMDB listed it as COPLAN FX 18 CASSE TOUT, I purchased it under COPLAN FX 18, and the title on my print was PHANTOM FX-18. It just goes to show you have to keep on your toes when hunting for these types of movies.

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Dr. Crippen (1962)

DR. CRIPPEN (1962)
Article 1903 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-31-2006
Posting Date: 10-28-2006
Directed by Robert Lynn
Featuring Donald Pleasence, Coral Browne, Samantha Eggar

A doctor and his young lover find themselves on trial for the murder of the doctor’s wife. Their story is then told in flashback.

Dr. Crippen is another one of those historical characters whose story lends itself to the horror genre, largely due to the grisly method of the disposal of the body. It is this, along with the presence of Donald Pleasence (a familiar face in the fantastic genres), that lend what horror elements there are to this story, and these factors are slight indeed. In fact, this telling of the story is singularly unsensational; in fact, I would go so far to say that the movie itself is pretty dry and a little on the dull side. The performances are quite good, especially from Pleasence and Eggar, but they can’t quite overcome the lack of energy here, though Pleasence has some rather touching scenes towards the end. It’s one of those movies that feels like a photographed stage play at times, though it isn’t based on a play.

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