Month: June 2017

The Human Duplicators (1965)

THE HUMAN DUPLICATORS (1965)
Article 1902 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-30-2006
Posting Date: 10-27-2006
Directed by Hugo Grimaldi and Arthur C. Pierce
Featuring George Nader, Dolores Faith, Richard Kiel

Noted scientists are going crazy and robbing vital parts from government institutions, and then they turn up dead. Meanwhile, a brilliant scientist has been visited by an alien and is now acting strangely. A government agent investigates.

You know, this is the kind of bad movie I dread covering. Bad movies usually give me ample material for writing these MOTDs; even directors such as Jerry Warren can fascinate me enough that I feel a little inspired when I write about them, and even a movie that is mind-crushingly boring gives me a good starting point.

This movie, however, is one of those that I watch without ever having any real recognizable emotion come to the fore. It’s never so awful as to inspire me to have some fun with it, but it never really engages my attention in any way. It’s one of those movies where event blandly follows event, affecting the lives of characters that never really interest me, and by the time it’s all over, I don’t feel like I’ve really watched anything. Probably the weakest thing about the movie is Richard Kiel’s performance; at this point in his career, he was most effective as a menacing physical manifestation, but this movie gives him a character that was too complex for his abilities and lots of dialogue, and the only good thing I can say about his delivery of the latter is that he’s better at it than Tor Johnson. This is a shame; Kiel has a strong screen presence, and I hate to see him miscast. Even the usually reliable George Macready doesn’t help, though he’s certainly competent in his role. All in all, this is one utterly forgettable movie. On a side note, this would be the last movie role for TV dad Hugh Beaumont.

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Whistling in the Dark (1941)

WHISTLING IN THE DARK (1941)
Article 1901 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-29-2006
Posting Date: 10-26-2006
Directed by S. Sylvan Simon
Featuring Red Skelton, Conrad Veidt, Ann Rutherford

Whan a moon worship cult discovers that it may lose an inheritance to an unexpected nephew of one of its members, it decides to murder the nephew. In order to avoid drawing the police to its activities, it decides that the murder must be fullproof. They kidnap a radio personality who specializes in clever crime stories to write a scenario for the perfect murder.

Fantastic content: The horror content in this mystery/comedy consists of some horror touches, particularly during a sequence when the prisoners of the cult try to make their escape via a secret passage in their room to a place filled with mummies and Egyptian artifacts.

I’ve always found Red Skelton to be likable and charming, though I rarely find myself laughing as much as I would with other comedians. This is one of his early comedies, and the first of a series of three where he plays a radio entertainer known as “The Fox”. I didn’t find it extremely funny, but it was quite spirited, and the story is very clever at times. I was surprised to see Conrad Veidt in the cast, as I usually don’t see him as someone playing the heavy in comedies, but his presence adds a sense of danger to the proceedings. Probably having the most fun with Red is former boxer Rags Ragland as the strong-arm man and chauffeur of the cult, and he has a lot of fun during the best scene in the movie, in which Red and the other prisoners try to juryrig a radio to use it in lieu of a telephone to call for help, and they convince Sylvester (Ragland’s character) that they’re just rehearsing for a new show and get him to reveal important information over the airwaves.

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War-Gods of the Deep (1965)

WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP (1965)
aka The City Under the Sea
Article 1900 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-28-2006
Posting Date: 10-25-2006
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Featuring Vincent Price, Tab Hunter, Herbert the Rooster

When a woman vanishes from her room, a man and his chicken-toting friend discover a secret passage that takes them to a hidden city under the sea.

Sometimes it’s hard to say exactly why it is that a movie falls flat, but I’m afraid that’s what this one does. It’s certainly not the performances; with the exception of the dull Tab Hunter, everyone does a fine job. The special effects also aren’t bad for what was no doubt a low-budget affair. I think the real problem is a story that doesn’t know where to go once we reach the underwater city, and so we’re stuck with people talking to each other repeatedly, and it feels like we’re caught in endless exposition. The movie certainly spends more time establishing the peril of the deadly volcano than was really necessary; after a while, you’re just left twiddling your thumbs waiting for the big destruction scene that you know won’t come until the end of the movie. It also doesn’t help that most of the big chase scene takes place underwater, where it’s impossible to tell who is in what diving outfit, and where the constant cut shots of close-ups of faces in the diving helmets does absolutely nothing to help. In the end, the most memorable thing about this movie is Herbert the chicken, and outside of escaping from his owner a few times and peaking his head out of a basket, he doesn’t do anything. The end result is a disappointment; it’s not awful by any means, but it’s tired and uninspired. This is probably the least interesting of the AIP Poe movies.

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Murder in the Blue Room (1944)

MURDER IN THE BLUE ROOM (1944)
Article 1899 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-27-2006
Posting Date: 10-24-2006
Directed by Leslie Goodwins
Featuring Anne Gwynne, Donald Cook, John Litel

A man decides to spend the night in the Blue Room in a supposedly haunted mansion. When the room is found empty the next day and locked from the inside, police are called in to investigate.

If you’ve ever watched THE SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM or THE MISSING GUEST and said, “Hey, I’d really like to see a version of this movie starring a novelty song-and-dance act consisting of three wise-cracking women”, then you’re in paradise here. If not, well, here it is anyway. The fantastic elements are more prominent here; they throw in a ghost in a white derby to enhance the comedy relief, and since no explanation is tendered for the ghost, I’m assuming he’s a real supernatural manifestation. The musical group is called the Three Jazzybelles, and I think they were put together for this movie; the music is peppy and amusing, the dancing athletic, and the jokes are obvious and lame. Still, they come off better than the Ritz Brothers (who were originally intended to appear in this) in THE GORILLA . As for the mystery, it’s a throwaway, especially if you’ve seen SECRET OF THE BLUE ROOM or THE MISSING GUEST. Still, this one is pretty watchable.

Oh, and that creepy chauffeur? Though he isn’t credited, he’s played by none other than perennial undertaker Milton Parsons.

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Jungle Girl (1941)

JUNGLE GIRL (1941)
Serial
Article 1898 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-26-2006
Posting Date: 10-23-2006
Directed by John English and William Witney
Featuring Frances Gifford, Tom Neal, Trevor Bardette

The father of a woman who was born and raised in the jungle returns to civilization to tend to his ailing twin brother. However, his twin brother is not ailing, and the doctor is killed. The twin brother then impersonates the doctor and goes to Africa. It’s all part of a scheme to get hold of a fortune of diamonds. However, the doctor’s daughter, Nyoka, begins to suspect something is up…

One of the main reasons I was disappointed with VOODOO TIGER yesterday had little to do with the movie itself. When watching serials, I watch an episode as a predecessor to the actual movie of a given day, and on the day I watch the last episode of the serial, that becomes my Movie of the Day, and part of this series. It was an episode of this serial that I watched immediately prior to my viewing of VOODOO TIGER.

Now, a blurb on back of the DVD case for this serial has someone claiming that this is the best jungle serial of them all. I’m inclined to agree with him. I’m not surprised that Frances Gifford was chosen as a substitute Jane figure in TARZAN TRIUMPHS ; with her role as Nyoka here, she had already proved that she was quite adept at jungle movies and Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations. She is fun and engaging here; she’s one of those serial heroines that does a lot more than wait to be rescued.

I like a lot of things about this serial. Unlike most serials, the villainy isn’t the work of a single mastermind and a series of interchangeable henchman. There are at least three main villains, and even though the fake doctor (Trevor Bardette) is something of an underling to Latimer (Gerald Mohr), he doesn’t really have much loyalty to him and is apt to play his own game. Furthermore, the witch doctor Shamba (well played by Frank Lackteen) has his own agenda which sometimes puts him in cahoots with Latimer, and at other times at odds with him. Tom Neal does a fine job as the heroic pilot, and even the comic relief sidekick (Eddie Acuff) and the little kid (Kimbu) are handled well and prove heroic on occasion. The natives are an unpredictable lot, and there are three sets of them; Shamba’s men, Chief Lutembi’s tribe and lion men in the cave of Nacross, and with the exception of Shamba’s men, you never know whose side they’ll be on at any given moment. It’s this type of unpredictability that can go a long ways towards making a serial enjoyable to me. Furthermore, chapter nine is one of those great episodes which actually manages to deliver non-stop excitement.

And that’s why I was so disappointed with VOODOO TIGER; this serial quite frankly puts it to shame.

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