Month: August 2017

Matango (1963)

MATANGO (1963)
aka ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE
Article 2122 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-6-2007
Posting Date: 6-4-2007
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Featuring Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Hiroshi Koizumi

A group of shipwrecked people are stranded on an island with little hope of rescue and with little food. The most common foodstuff on the island are mushrooms, which turn out to have a dangerous and grotesque effect on those that eat them.

This much-maligned Japanese horror movie is looked down upon by those that mistake a silly title for a silly movie. However, even if in its dubbed state, it’s an original and unsettling movie, eerie and frightening, and with some dark messages about human nature. For years I was only familiar with it through the dubbed version, but for this review, i got a chance to see the Japanese language version with subtitles and a beautifully restored and letterboxed print, and it simply makes it that much stronger. Probably the two most surprising things about watching this version were a) discovering that the rather silly “La La La La La” song actually had those lyrics in the original version, and b) that, if the subtitling is truer to the actually dialogue than the dubbing was, the final revelation is significantly different, and possibly more unsettling. It’s very effective and quite satisfying, but I always have problems with one sequence; the sequence where the castaways first encounter one of the inhabitants of the island ends both abruptly and ambiguously, and I wish it had ended a little more clearly.

 

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The Snow Queen (1957)

THE SNOW QUEEN (1957)
aka SNEZHNAYA KOROLEVA
Article 2121 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-5-2007
Posting Date: 6-3-2007
Directed by Lee Atamanov and Phil Patton
Featuring Art Linkletter, and the voices of Sandra Dee and Tommy Kirk

When a young boy insults the Snow Queen, she lays a curse on him and spirits him away to her castle. The young girl who loves the boy sets out on a perilous journey to find and rescue him.

At the time of this writing, the movie HAPPILY N’EVER AFTER has just been released to theaters, and it seems to be part of a recent trend to take classic fairy tales, turn them on their ear, and use the opportunity to make hip in-jokes. The classic straightforward fairy tale seems to be a thing of the past, and this is a loss; there’s something special about a movie that can tell one straightforwardly and simply, and let the tale work its own magic. This Russian animated movie version of a Hans Christian Andersen tale does that very well, and though I’ve heard that it’s better in its original language, the dubbed American version is very effective. The tacked-on prologue with Art Linkletter is unnecessary, but it even manages to have its own charm and once it’s over, it leaves the movie to tell itself. The songs are kept to a minimum (you might not even notice that they’re there), and it has a wonderful sense of fairy tale adventure. Many of the scenes are quite touching; my favorite involves a young thief who captures the young girl with the intent on keeping her a prisoner (along with his other pets) who finds himself unexpectedly moved by the story of her plight. A good fairy tale can indeed be magical, and when filmmakers decide to abandon hipness and embrace their power again, we will all be that much richer.

 

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The Love Bug (1968)

THE LOVE BUG (1968)
Article 2120 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-4-2007
Posting Date: 6-2-2007
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Featuring Dean Jones, Michele Lee, David Tomlinson

A down-and-out racing car driver finds himself the owner of a Volkswagen which has a mind of its own as well as the ability to move at lightning speed.

As you may have noticed, I’m not particularly a fan of shopping cart movies; sure, I loved the Disney comedies as a kid, but I usually find they work better as nostalgic memories than they do viewing them in my adulthood. Furthermore, the ones I didn’t see as a kid have no nostalgia value either. Still, some of them surprise me. This is my first viewing of this particular movie, and I didn’t really expect much but the usual shtick, but somehow I found myself caught up in this one. Partially it’s because the movie establishes its main characters so well in the opening scenes that I care about them as people before the silliness begins. Dean Jones has quickly become my second favorite of shopping cart leading men (only trailing Fred MacMurray), and I was surprised by the compassionate undertones in Buddy Hackett’s performance; I usually expect him to play for laughs, but he obviously really cares about Herbie and Jones’ character. In fact, I think the acting is very good and extremely consistent throughout the movie, and some of the comedy is clever and understated; my favorite moment involves two Chinese store owners trying to identify which car damaged their store, and the cars look subtly as if they are in a police lineup. Most surprisingly, Herbie even comes to life as a character; when he runs away at one point in the proceedings, I actually found myself caught up in the pathos. The special effects are excellent, especially during the final race. This has to rank as one of my favorite of the Disney comedies.

 

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The Secret Garden (1949)

THE SECRET GARDEN (1949)
Article 2119 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-3-2007
Posting Date: 6-1-2007
Directed by Fred M. Wilcox
Featuring Margaret O’Brien, Herbert Marshall, Dean Stockwell

An orphan whose parents have died in India from cholera is taken in by an uncle, who is in grief at the passing of his wife. The girl hears screams in the castle at all hours and discovers a locked-up garden on the grounds.

I’ve not read the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel on which this is based, but I have seen one other movie version of the story, though I don’t remember it well enough to make any meaningful comparison. It’s not really genre, though it might be considered a fantasy depending on how you interpret the final scene. Nonetheless, the scenes in the mansion during the first half of the movie have a definite horrific quality to them, what with the shadowy corridors and the mysterious screams, as well as the rumor that the Uncle is a hunchback (as far as I can tell, he isn’t). It’s basically a story about grief and healing, and one of the most interesting things about the story is how most of the major characters come off as unlikable when we first meet them. Yet, we grow to care about them, because they are all unhappy and grieving, and it takes outsiders in one capacity or another (Dickon the village boy, Dr. Fortescue and finally Mary the orphan herself) to bring light and healing in one form or another to the house. Horror fans will recognize Elsa Lanchester as a maid, and George Zucco has a great role as Dr. Fortescue, whose refusal to kowtow to the Master’s wishes marks a turning point in the story for a certain character.

 

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Retik, the Moon Menace (1966)

RETIK, THE MOON MENACE (1966)
Feature Version of Serial RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON
Article 2118 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-2-2007
Posting Date: 5-31-2007
Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Featuring George Wallace, Aline Towne, Roy Barcroft

Commando Cody takes on moon men intent on invading the earth.

Yes, it’s another feature version of a serial, this time RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON. As far as these things go, they do an average job of it – it flows well enough in some scenes and jumps abruptly in others. Beyond that, I’ve pretty much exhausted what I have to say about these feature versions of serials, so I have nothing more to add.

 

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The Nightcomers (1972)

THE NIGHTCOMERS (1972)
Article 2117 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-1-2007
Posting Date: 5-30-2007
Directed by Michael Winner

Featuring Marlon Brando, Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird

A gardener has a bad influence on two children who have been left in the care of a governess and a housekeeper after their parents have died.

I’m not particularly keen on the idea of a prequel to “The Turn of the Screw”; I always feel that if Henry James wasn’t explicit about the full story of Quint and the previous governess, there was a reason. Still, someone decided to go ahead with the project, and here I am covering it. I had to think about this one a bit after it was over; despite the fact that Brando gives an excellent performance as Quint, I didn’t quite feel satisfied. Part of my problem is that the movie doesn’t go back far enough; the story begins after the death of the parents and with Quint already having a hold on one of the two children. I would have liked to have seen the children with the parents before Quint arrives on the scene to better appreciate the change they undergo; things are pretty far enough along when the story starts. This should have been possible; as it is, the script wastes a lot of time retreading the same themes and covering the same ground (for example, the theme of hate and love being two sides of the same coin is constantly and annoyingly resurrected). I suspect that the story was devised to give Brando as much screen time as possible. Then there’s the question as to whether this is strictly a horror movie at all, or just a dark drama; without the ghost theme to play with, one can only rely on the sense of madness to add the necessary genre touches. Perhaps the biggest impression I got from this movie is that the real villain of the piece is the Master of the House, whose refusal to take any real hand in the rearing of the children is probably the primary reason they were left in irresponsible hands.

 

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Old Mother Riley’s Jungle Treasure (1951)

OLD MOTHER RILEY’S JUNGLE TREASURE (1951)
Article 2116 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-31-2006
Posting Date: 5-29-2007
Directed by Maclean Rogers
Featuring Arthur Lucan, Kitty McShane, Robert Adams

Old Mother Riley is visited by the ghost of Captain Morgan, who directs her to the map showing where his hidden treasure is buried on a wild tropical island.

When I saw OLD MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE, I thought it was better than it had any right to be. When I saw OLD MOTHER RILEY’S GHOSTS, I became convinced that it was Lugosi who made OMTRMTV entertaining; it certainly wasn’t Old Mother Riley, who came off in that movie as shrill and annoying. This one is a little better than GHOSTS, but I’m still convinced that the biggest problem with Old Mother Riley movies is Old Mother Riley himself; Arthur Lucan’s distaff alter ego never succeeds in getting a laugh from me. This is not to say that the movie is totally useless; some of the side jokes by other characters hit the mark, and there are a number of laughs in the sequence where several passengers enjoy a flight on what may be the single chintziest airline in existence. It’s also kind of fun seeing Sebastian Cabot as a pirate, and Hammer fans will enjoy the presence of Michael Ripper while Carry On fans will enjoy the presence of Peter Butterworth. Still, I do think if they had managed to make an Old Mother Riley movie without Old Mother Riley, they would have been on to something.

 

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The Next Victim (1976)

THE NEXT VICTIM (1976)
Article 2115 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-30-2006
Posting Date: 5-28-2007
Directed by James Ormond
Featuring Carroll Baker, T.P. McKenna, Ronald Lacey

A woman confined to a wheelchair fears that she has become the target of serial killer.

Though it is classified as a movie in some quarters, this is actually another episode of a British television series called “Thriller”. This is the third one of these I’ve seen, and I liked it better than the other two, but that may be because my expectations are a lot lower; the other two episodes I saw thoroughly underwhelmed me. If I liked this one better, it is only because it did a little better job of working the suspense; it isn’t for the overly familiar story, because at the five minute mark I had a good idea where ninety percent of the movie would be going, and at the twenty minute mark, I figured out what the final twist was going to be. I think the main problem I’ve had with the series overall is that the episodes are just too long; at 65 minutes each, they feel slow and padded, whereas if they were only about thirty minutes, they could have been quicker and more streamlined. I’m probably going to see only a handful of these (from what I’ve seen so far, it’ll be those episodes with psycho killers) as I suspect that most of them have little in the way of fantastic elements to them.

 

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Missile Base at Taniak (1966)

MISSILE BASE AT TANIAK (1966)
Feature Version of the serial CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS. ATOMIC INVADERS
Article 2114 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-29-2006
Posting Date: 5-27-2007
Directed by Franklin Adreon
Featuring William Henry, Susan Morrow, Arthur Space

A mountie is on the trail of foreign agents intent on building a missile base which would destroy American cities in preparation for an upcoming invasion.

On a purely technical level, the later serials were easier to adapt into features, largely because the episodes were so short to begin with that once you removed the beginning and closing credits and duplicate cliffhanger footage, you were probably fairly close to feature length already. As a result, this one doesn’t jerk as quickly from one sequence to another, and has a better flow. The downside is that the later serials were usually pretty tired and dull to begin with, and the feature version can’t really hide that. As I did with the serial itself, I found the first half more interesting, as it dealt with the mountie joining an expedition of farmers in the Yukon Territory; simply by having most of the action in snow-covered settings, and by having a group of other people in the mix (other than just the good guys and bad guys), it upped the novelty value of the proceedings. The second half is a bore, and consists almost entirely of one chase after another. The fantastic content is non-existent; there are no gizmos, the missile base never gets built (which, considering they only had three men on the job, is no surprise), and, quite frankly, the spies’ plot never gets off the ground. Forgettable.

 

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The Last of the Secret Agents? (1966)

THE LAST OF THE SECRET AGENTS? (1966)
Article 2113 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-28-2006
Posting Date: 5-26-2007
Directed by Norman Abbott
Featuring Marty Allen, Steve Rossi, John Williams

Two Americans who were being used as unwilling dupes in the theft of stolen works of art are recruited by a spy agency to fight THEM, the agency who is stealing the works of art.

Allen and Rossi were a popular comedy team in the sixties and seventies, and made a number of appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. They made only two movies together, and one of them (ALLEN AND ROSSI MEET DRACULA AND FRANKENSTEIN) is so devoid of credits on IMDB that I wonder if it really exists. This was their first, and you can see why they didn’t go on to a successful movie career. It’s supposed to be a parody of James Bond movies, but it’s so unfocused that it never really becomes much of anything. The laughs are few and far between, with a running gag about a doctor being paged particularly weak. The science fiction content is the usual array of spy gadgets, and much of the attempted humor is derived from their use. The movie is stolen by Harvey Korman, who, in one scene, displays the focus and timing that the rest of the movie lacks. Outside of his scene, the best moments involve the a film being shown to the two new agents showing their probable fate if they don’t join the agency (good use of stock footage here), and a scene in a topless dance club where, through the magic of careful camera placement, you manage to avoid seeing anything.

 

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