Month: July 2017

Panther Girl of the Congo (1955)

PANTHER GIRL OF THE CONGO (1955)
aka PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO
Serial
Article 2026 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-1-2006
Posting Date: 2-28-2007
Directed by Franklin Adreon
Featuring Phyllis Coates, Myron Healey, Arthur Space

A female photographer contacts an adventurer to help her find the evidence she needs to prove to the authorities the existence of giant crawfish monsters terrorizing a jungle village. However, two hunters in the hire of an evil chemist try to prevent them from doing so, in the hopes of scaring away the natives so they can work a diamond mine.

When I covered the feature version of this serial (THE CLAW MONSTERS), I think I mentioned that any fondness I had for this one was that it actually supplied monsters, a rarity in serials. Having seen the whole thing, I feel no different; I like the monsters simply because I like monsters, even when they’re pretty lame (as these are). As for the rest of it, it mostly consists of tepid cliffhangers, footage from the Nyoka serials, and dull storylines. This was one of the last of the Republic serials, and the form was on its last legs. I only regret that Republic never saw its way towards incorporating monsters into its serials while they were still in their prime.

 

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Dark Ride (1978)

DARK RIDE (1978)
aka KILLER’S DELIGHT
Article 2025 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-30-2006
Posting Date: 2-27-2007
Directed by Jeremy Hoenack
Featuring John Karlen, James Luisi, Martin Speer

A serial killer is targeting hitchhikers and patrons of a swimming pool. A cop tries to track down the killer.

This movie was based on the Ted Bundy murders of the late seventies. Given the events in the picture, I’m assuming that it’s a highly fictionalized telling of the story. The emphasis here is not on the killer, but on the investigation of the crime. Parts of the movie are interesting enough; in particular, I like the attempt to trap the killer in the last part of the movie. However, it’s full of cliches and the direction is singularly uninspired; despite the nudity and the violence, it looks and feels like a TV movie most of the time. The cop who has trouble with his superiors, has a wise-cracking buddy, and who plays by his own rules is certainly a cliche. The middle section of the movie gets rather repetitive as well. The movie isn’t awful, but it never really comes to life, either.

 

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Utopia (1951)

UTOPIA (1951)
aka ATOLL K
Article 2024 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-29-2006
Posting Date: 2-26-2007
Directed by Leo Joannon, John Berry, Alfred J. Goulding and Tim Whelan
Featuring Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Suzy Delair

Laurel and Hardy inherit an island and a boat. On the way to the island, they get stranded with their cook and a stowaway on an atoll that rises out of the sea during a storm. They manage to survive, and grow to enjoy their privacy. Then, when it is discovered that Uranium exists on the island and several countries try to claim it as their own, they are forced to form their own government to keep hold of it.

The fantastic element in this, Laurel and Hardy’s final movie, is probably the fantasy element of a fictional country, which is what the island becomes once Ollie pens a constitution for it. It’s a strange entry in the Laurel and Hardy oeuvre, and I would love to read about the making of this movie. I suspect that the original story didn’t feature Stan and Ollie at all, and that it was rewritten afterwards to take advantage of their involvement; certainly, the political satire isn’t an element of standard Laurel and Hardy cinema, though it is common to the cinema of France, which is where the movie was made. It’s not as bad as its reputation would have you believe; Stan and Ollie still retain their sense of comic timing, and there are some laughs, but there are some real problems. The English dubbing is particularly noticeable, partially due to the fact that Stan and Ollie aren’t dubbed, but all the other characters are, and when the conversation goes back and forth, the sudden change (in mouth movements and ambient noise) is jarring. Furthermore, Ollie appears to have gained a lot of weight, and Stan looks deathly ill at times; he was ill, in fact, and the movie had to be delayed while he had an operation. It’s rather difficult to enjoy them in this condition. Also, I found myself a little disappointed to hear the boys take a few physical potshots at each other, with Stan making a comment about Ollie’s weight and Ollie making one about Stan’s ears; I don’t recall them having engaged in that type of humor before, and I really didn’t like it.

 

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Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964)

TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! (1964)
Article 2023 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-28-2006
Posting Date: 2-25-2007
Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis
Featuring William Kerwin, Connie Mason, Jeffrey Allen

A group of northerners travelling in the South find themselves guests of honor during a centennial in a small southern town called Pleasant Valley. What they don’t know is that the guests of honor are slated to die in horrible ways as vengeance for an atrocity that occurred during the Civil War.

Herschell Gordon Lewis’s best film? Based on what I’ve seen of his work so far, I’m inclined to agree. Sure, it’s got plenty of problems; some of the acting is quite awful, (though both William Kerwin and Connie Mason are better here than they were in Lewis’s earlier BLOOD FEAST) and the final revelations are cliched and run on too long, to name a couple. But the movie lacks that static hangdog air that plagues so many of Lewis’s other movies; it’s the only movie I’ve seen of his that doesn’t seem to flaunt how low its budget is. Instead, there’s a surprising amount of energy here most of the time, and I attribute this to a variety of reasons. For one thing, it wasn’t produced by Lewis himself, and the budget was somewhat higher than is usually the case for his movies. But the biggest reasons may be the use of crowd scenes and the bluegrass music of the Pleasant Valley Boys; both of these elements add a marked energy to the proceedings.

There are also some striking and unusual moments here; the scene after the bloody “horse race” where one of the party organizers has to browbeat the shocked residents and the Pleasant Valley Boys into enjoying the proceedings really leaves one wondering whether this vengeance is the agenda of the whole town or only of a selected dictatorial few. I also liked a moment where a couple of the residents marvel at the invention of the car and speculate as to what sort of inventions they’ll have to play with at the next centennial. It’s moments like these which add a bit of dimension to what would otherwise be a one-note affair.

 

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Triumph of the Son of Hercules (1963)

TRIUMPH OF THE SON OF HERCULES (1963)
aka TRIONFO DI MACISTE
Article 2022 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-27-2006
Posting Date: 2-24-2007
Directed by Tanio Boccia
Featuring Kirk Morris, Cathia Caro, Liuba Bodina

An evil queen is sacrificing peasant maidens to a fire god. Maciste is enlisted to defeat her and free the people.

I like to joke a little about how the same elements appear again and again in sword-and-sandal movies, and there is at least one storyline that repeatedly pops up in the form. The best known version of it is HERCULES UNCHAINED. The basic plot is this; an evil queen is doing something horrible to the peasants, a muscleman decides to stand up to her, the muscleman is captured by the queen, the queen gets the hots for the muscleman and uses magic to wipe out his memory and make her love him, he recovers his memory and escapes, he saves an imperiled women while peasants stage a revolt and defeat the evil regime.

That’s pretty much the plot in this one once again, and it makes this peplum utterly predictable; the only thing missing is a scene where Maciste bends the bars of a prison wall. The fantastic elements are the usual ones; Maciste has super strength, the queen has a magic sceptre, and the fire god is served by a race of horrific Uri men with long fingernails. Despite the fact that I have a soft spot for sword-and-sandal movies, I do find their repetitiveness rather tedious at times, and I’m afraid that’s the case here.

 

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Terrified (1963)

TERRIFIED (1963)
Article 2021 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-26-2006
Posting Date: 2-23-2007
Directed by Lew Landers
Featuring Rod Lauren, Steve Drexel, Tracy Olsen

A variety of people are being terrorized by a masked killer in a ghost town. All the people have something in common; they have close ties with a young woman.

This low-budget fright flick, the last movie by veteran director Lew Landers, has a mixed reputation; some people have fond memories of being scared by the movie, while others find it cheap and unconvincing. Me, I find both sides evenly matched on this one, as I feel both ways about it. There are times where the characters show a surprising degree of intelligence (I love the moment where one potential victim figures out that the murderer is purposefully trying to lure him away from the cemetery, and resolves to go there at once to find out why), but I think the movie is least successful when it’s trying to be frightening. The killer’s cat-and-mouse game with his victim (where he places him in peril, then allows him to escape only to capture him again) is pretty clever in theory, but it’s so badly marred by his harping on how scared his victim should be that it undercuts the effectiveness of the ruse; personally, I think it would have been a lot better if the killer didn’t say a word during his acts of terror. The identity of the killer is painfully obvious; I knew who it was ten minutes into the movie, but the movie actually works itself up to an effective ending once the unmasking occurs and we get some insight into why he’s doing what he’s doing. In short, this is one very mixed bag, but it has its moments, I think is worth catching for these alone.

 

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Student Bodies (1981)

STUDENT BODIES (1981)
Article 2020 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-25-2006
Posting Date: 2-22-2007
Directed by Mickey Rose and Michael Ritchie
Featuring Kristen Riter, Matthew Goldsby, Richard Brando

A killer known as The Breather is on the loose knocking off homecoming queen candidates and their boyfriends.

I’ve barely touched upon the slasher genre in my series so far, and here I am already covering a parody of the genre. Since this movie was written and partially directed by a collaborator with Woody Allen on some of his earlier films, it’s no surprise that the movie has some good moments and ideas; I like the on-screen body-count, the highlighted emphasis on plot points, the scene where the killer chooses his weapon from a roll-top desk, and the bizarre emphasis on horse-head bookends, to name a few. But for every good gag, there’s a plethora of bad ones, pointless ones, and crude ones that miss the mark. For a parody of an extremely bloody and skin-filled genre, there’s a surpising scarcity of blood and nudity, so much so that the movie has to go out of its way to get its R rating (one of the funnier scenes of the movie). It even manages to sneak in some parodies of CARNIVAL OF SOULS and THE WIZARD OF OZ in the mix, and if you’ve seen CARRIE, you’ll see the final gag coming. All in all, it’s pretty dumb, but at least its opening “This is based on a true story” explanation is honest.

 

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Stereo (1969)

STEREO (1969)
Article 2019 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-24-2006
Posting Date: 2-21-2007
Directed by David Cronenberg
Featuring Ronald Miodzik, Jack Messinger, Iain Ewing

A Canadian institute engages in experiments on telepathy and eroticism.

This, like CRIMES OF THE FUTURE , is one of David Cronenberg’s very early art films; apparently, he got funding for the film from the Canadian government by pretending that he was writing a novel. I find this little piece of trivia rather interesting; the style of the movie (black and white photography, no dialogue, incidental sound or music, action explained (or not) by various narrators) leaves me feeling like I’m reading a book rather than watching a movie. Unfortunately, the book is rather dry; the narration sounds like passages from a scientific report, and even the most sympathetic viewer will find the movie a trial to get through in one sitting; it has, if possible, even less discernible plot than CRIMES OF THE FUTURE. Which is not to say that the movie isn’t interesting; Cronenberg’s works can be intellectually stimulating, and there is plenty food for thought here. It’s just rather exhausting, and the visceral touches never quite make up for that. Still, like CRIMES OF THE FUTURE, there is much here that fits in neatly with Cronenberg’s obsessions and interests, and I suspect that his early movies might well benefit from sympathetic reviewings, dry as they are.

 

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Serpent Island (1954)

SERPENT ISLAND (1954)
Article 2018 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date:9-23-2006
Posting Date: 2-20-2007
Directed by Tom Gries
Featuring Sonny Tufts, Mary Munday, Tom Monroe

A woman hires a hard-drinking harbor bum to accompany her on a quest for a fortune of gold. However, the captain she hires to take them to Haiti also has his eyes on the prize….

Don’t let the fact that Bert I. Gordon produced this movie fool you; there are no giant monsters to be found in this rather lame tropical island/jungle tale. The fantastic aspects consist of stock footage of a voodoo ceremony, an element which really doesn’t play into the story at all, but merely serves as a mood enhancer once the action moves to the island during the second part of the movie. The first half of the movie mostly takes place on the boat, with a budding romance between the two main characters and someone trying to steal the letter with the info about the treasure. You should be able to figure out who the latter character is; you know it isn’t one of the two main characters, and of the only other three characters who exist in the cast outside of the stock footage, only one is on the boat. The acting is weak, the dialogue is clumsy, and there is little to recommend here; the best thing about it is that it manages to be just watchable enough to see you through the length of the movie, much of which is due to the fact that the hokey dialogue is good for a few laughs. Both Gordon and director Tom Gries would go on to better movies.

 

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Savage Weekend (1979)

SAVAGE WEEKEND (1979)
Article 2017 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-22-2006
Posting Date: 2-19-2007
Directed by David Paulsen and John Mason Kirby
Featuring Chrisopher Allport, Jim Doerr, David Gale

Several people from New York City go upstate to supervise the building of a boat, and find themselves targets of a masked killer.

Apparently this slasher movie was filmed in 1976 before HALLOWEEN kicked off the genre, but was not released until afterwards. I can see why. I found it extremely dull, despite the copious amount of nudity, sex and fetishism. Part of the reason is that the acting is quite poor at times, but the fact is that most of the characters are so unpleasant that you don’t really care what happens to them. It’s also littered with some uninteresting subplots. The movie can’t even work up much suspense when the murders start happening. It does work up a bit of excitement towards the end when two central characters engage in a fight, one armed with a machete and the other with a chainsaw, but it’s too little, too late. Not recommended.

 

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