Month: September 2017

Jaws (1975)

JAWS (1975)
Article 2192 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-17-2007
Posting Date: 8-13-2007
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Featuring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss

An island community dependent on its summer tourism trade for its income is plagued by the appearance of a great white shark right before the beginning of the tourist season.

Steven Spielberg is perhaps the most famous director of all time, and this is the movie that really brought him to the attention of the world. As far as I’m concerned, he deserved it for this one; it is one of the best and most exciting horror thrillers ever made. It is also the only Spielberg movie I’ve seen so far that I love and enjoy without reservations; I think it works superbly on every level. It delivers on the nail-biting suspense, livens it with effective comic moments which can turn serious on a dime without straining. It has an excellent score from John Williams, and it is used to good effect; Spielberg knows when to use music and when to use silence. It also has interesting moral issues, and fascinating and fun characters, especially Robert Shaw’s grizzled and colorful sea captain. Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider are also great in their respective roles, and the supporting cast is also top notch. The script is loaded with memorable lines. Best of all, it avoids the “playing for effect” scenes that occasionally give me a problem with Spielberg, those moments when we can see him so obviously pulling the manipulative strings that it muffles our enjoyment; the only moment that comes close is the scene where Scheider must contend with the mother who lost her child. I’ve seen this movie several times now, and it remains one of my favorites. Highly recommended.

 

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The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT (1971)
Article 2191 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-16-2007
Posting Date: 8-12-2007
Directed by Anthony M. Lanza
Featuring Bruce Dern, Pat Priest, Casey Kasem

A scientist grafts the head of a homicidal maniac onto a very strong but brain-damaged man. The two-headed creature gets loose and…

Some thoughts on THE INCREDIBLE 2-HEADED TRANSPLANT.

1) The movie has an interesting cast, to begin with. Bruce Dern surprisingly plays the mad scientist rather than the homicidal maniac, former Marilyn Munster Pat Priest plays the mad scientist’s wife, DJ and voice actor (he was Shaggy’s voice in the various incarnations of Scooby-Doo) Casey Kasem plays the mad scientist’s best friend, and Horror Host Seymour aka Larry Vincent plays the caretaker.

2) The cast may be interesting, but the performances are uneven. Bruce Dern never really looks comfortable in his role and Albert Cole plays his homicidal maniac like a grinning, cackling, lip-smacking parody, but John Bloom does a decent job of physicalizing his role of the big but simple man whose body is being taken over by the homicidal maniac’s head grafter to it. Priest, Kasem, Vincent and Barry Kroeger are all passable.

3) I remember the ads for this one when it came to my home town when I was a kid. “One Wants to Love, One Wants to Kill”, screamed the ads. I think this ad helped me to differentiate it from the similarly-themed THE THING WITH TWO HEADS.

4) Still, the ad points up the basic split-personality of this movie, as does the line the policeman says when he sees the wrecked lab (“Gerard must have been brewing up some of the Jekyll-and-Hyde joy juice in here.”). The movie never manages to find a balance between the sadistic violence (the vicious murders and the blood) and the pathos it tries to conjure up for Bloom’s character. That godawful theme song just makes things worse.

5) Apparently, the scientist is grafting two heads on the same body in the hope that he can then graduate to head transplants. Now I’m no medical expert, but it seems to me that grafting a second head that can think and control the body it is grafted to would be a lot more difficult a job than a simple transplant, but what do I know about such things?

6) According to IMDB, this movie is a comedy. It also has “chase” as one of its plot keywords. It’s not a comedy and there’s really not much of a chase scene. However, THE THING WITH TWO HEADS is clearly a comedy and definitely features chase scenes. Did I mention that these two movies get confused?

7) On a parting note, I just read an IMDB user comment from someone who considers this movie the equal of THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN. Personally, that comment is the most incredible experience I’ve had with this movie.

 

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Alien Terror (1971)

ALIEN TERROR (1971)
aka THE INCREDIBLE INVASION
Article 2190 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-15-2007
Posting Date: 8-11-2007
Directed by Jose Luis Gonzalez de Leon, Juan Ibanez and Jack Hill
Featuring Boris Karloff, Enrique Guzman, Christa Linder

In order to prevent mankind from benefiting from a scientist’s new invention, aliens possess the bodies of human beings to discredit him.

All four of the Mexican movies that marked the end of Boris Karloff’s career are quite awful, but there is some variety in the range of awfulness. For my money, I consider this the best of a bad lot; it’s not as repugnant as THE FEAR CHAMBER, it’s not as deadly dull as DANCE OF DEATH, and it is more coherent than SNAKE PEOPLE. Karloff actually has a major role in the proceedings as well, which means he gets a little more in the way of screen time, and given that he’s easily the best actor on the lot, that’s a good thing. Still, the story doesn’t really make much sense; in particular, I can’t quite figure out why the aliens would wish to possess a known serial killer when he’s really more trouble than he’s worth. The movie is technically ghastly; keep your eyes open for some of the most blatant actor substitutions in the fight scenes, and marvel at the fact that the actor who dubbed in a line for Karloff at one point not only doesn’t sound remotely like him, but doesn’t even appear to be trying to do so. The movie does muster up a bit of life near the end, but most of the various elements (the aliens, the deformed assistant, and the serial killer) never mesh into a satisfying whole, and the incompetent editing and sometimes queasy special effects (especially during the murder sequences) don’t help matters any. Mexican movie fans might want to keep their eyes open for Yerye Beirute, who has appeared in a few other Mexican horror movies such as THE VAMPIRE’S COFFIN; he has one of those faces you can’t forget.

 

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From Beyond the Grave (1973)

FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1973)
Article 2189 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-14-2007
Posting Date: 8-10-2007
Directed by Kevin Connor
Featuring Peter Cushing, Ian Bannen, Ian Carmichael

Several customers visit an antique shop, and those that try to cheat the proprietor find themselves suffering strange and horrible fates.

I quite like this anthology from Amicus. I like all the stories at least a little, with my favorite being the second (“An Act of Kindness”), in which a man in a bad marriage strikes up a friendship with a poor veteran and his rather strange daughter (played to wonderful perfection by real life father and daughter Donald and Angela Pleasance). The last story (about a room behind an ominous door) is fairly straightforward, but colorful and entertaining. The first story (about a haunted mirror) is the most obvious tale of the bunch, but it is hauntingly moody and makes wonderful use of smoke. The third story (about a man haunted by an elemental) is amusing enough at first, but I found the ending a little weak. It’s all tied together by the framing story of the visits to the antique shop, and Peter Cushing is wonderful as the soft-spoken proprietor who you really don’t want to cheat, no matter what sort of temptation comes your way. All in all, this was a fairly solid horror anthology.

 

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The Dunwich Horror (1970)

THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970)
Article 2188 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-13-2007
Posting Date: 8-9-2007
Directed by Daniel Haller
Featuring Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley

A curious man (who keeps a strange being locked up in his house) from the town of Dunwich is trying to get hold of the Necronomicon for ominous reasons. Toward that end he chooses a woman to take part in an unholy ritual.

Previous to this movie, Daniel Haller had served as an art director in THE HAUNTED PALACE and had directed DIE, MONSTER, DIE!, both adaptations of other H. P. Lovecraft stories. I assume from this that he had a working knowledge of Lovecraft’s works. I had seen this movie when I was a kid, and only one scene in the movie had really scared me. Then, a few years later, I read the Lovecraft story for the first time, and it remains for me my favorite of his works and one of the scariest things I ever read, which just made the movie all the more disappointing for me.

Watching it now, there’s only one thing I really like about this movie; the way the monster is handled is really quite effective, and I love the fact that you never really get a good long look at it; I’ve always felt that the indescribable horror of the story is best left to the imagination. I still find the scene that scared me back then to be very effective (for the record, it’s the scene where the farmer and his wife find their house being destroyed around them by the monster). But the rest of the movie still disappoints. I dislike the changes that were made to the plot, and many of the performances are disappointing; Sandra Dee never really develops much of a character, and neither Dean Stockwell nor Sam Jaffe look comfortable in their respective roles. For me, the best performance comes from Ed Begley. The crowd scenes are pretty bad; I like neither the cemetery sequence nor the meeting at the wrecked farmhouse. In the end, I hope someday to see a decent version of this story. Keep your eyes peeled for Talia Shire, Beach Dickerson and Barboura Morris.

 

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The Possessed (1975)

THE POSSESSED (1975)
aka LA ENDEMONIADA, DEMON WITCH CHILD
Article 2187 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-12-2007
Posting Date: 8-8-2007
Directed by Amanda de Ossorio
Featuring Julian Mateos, Marian Salgado, Fernando Sancho

The spirit of an old hag who was the head of a witch’s coven possesses a young girl and gets her to do horrible things.

Though I haven’t covered any of them yet, I quite like what I’ve seen of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead movies. I like them well enough that I’m somewhat surprised that I’ve been singularly unimpressed by his movies that aren’t part of that series. In the case of this one, I’m sure that the horrendous dubbing is partly responsible. The fact that the movie is mostly just a lazy rip-off of THE EXORCIST doesn’t help matters any, and it’s further hurt by a musical score that I can only describe as rinky-dink; it’s one of those scores that distracts you from the movie by making you wonder when they’re going to feature that goofy tuning-the-timpani Boooiiinnnngggg! sound again. The fact that there’s something simply not scary about a little girl in old woman makeup attacking people and that the pace is deathly slow at times also work against it. It’s at its worst when it’s borrowing too much from THE EXORCIST (especially when it bends over backward to fit in a subplot about the priest’s ex-girlfriend), but it’s probably at its best when it engages in some horror that is fairly edgy.; at least two children are killed during the course of the movie, and what the girl does to her mother’s boyfriend is certainly shocking enough. Again, the movie would probably be better subtitled and appropriately letterboxed, but I suspect that it would still be on the weak side.

 

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The Brain (1962)

THE BRAIN (1962)
Article 2186 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-11-2007
Posting Date: 8-7-2007
Directed by Freddie Francis
Featuring Anne Heywood, Peter van Eyck, Cecil Parker

A scientist experimenting with keeping brains alive removes one from the head of an industrialist who died in his laboratory after a plane crash. He then finds himself possessed by the industrialist, and embarks on an attempt to find out who planted the bomb on the plane.

This is the third version of Curt Siodmak’s novel “Donovan’s Brain”. I don’t know which of the three movie versions follows the novel the most closely, but I’m most familiar with the second one (DONOVAN’S BRAIN) and generally consider that the definitive version of the story. When I saw this version years ago, I disliked the fact that it strayed so far from the intent of that earlier version from the fifties, but on viewing it now, I admire the way it manages to take the story in a different direction and still keep it interesting. It is less concerned with the possession of the doctor by the brain (though that still plays into the story), and more concerned about the mystery aspect, and in following this story line, it takes some very interesting turns, and deepens the theme of the “ends justifying the means” that runs through it. In a sense, it’s a bit more reminiscent of D.O.A or THE WALKING DEAD than other versions of the story. It’s also helped by a good performance by Peter Van Eyck, the presence of Bernard Lee from the James Bond movies, and some interesting characters; my favorite is that of the rebellious son who takes revenge on his father by portraying him as a monster in several paintings. Since it’s focused on the mystery aspect, it ends on an ambiguous note since the possession-by-brain plot is never really resolved, but I think it gave the movie a somewhat intriguing touch. It’s not a great movie, but I definitely liked it more on the second viewing.

 

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The Swimmer (1968)

THE SWIMMER (1968)
Article 2185 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-10-2007
Posting Date: 8-6-2007
Directed by Frank Perry
Featuring Burt Lancaster, Janet Landgard, Janice Rule

A man decides that there are enough swimming pools between him and his home so that he can swim across the county to his home, so he decides to do so. He is forced to face the demons of his past along the way.

The trailer for this film asks the question “When you talk about THE SWIMMER, will you talk about yourself?” Obviously, someone felt that this movie was such a powerful and universal experience that it would touch the nerves of all who saw it. And, given its rating of 7.6 on IMDB, it must have touched quite a few people in this way. Still, my answer to the trailer’s question is going to be no; I’m first going to talk about “The Motion Picture Guide”, that multi-volume movie reference set that came out in the mid-eighties that classifies this experimental drama as a fantasy. Yes, it’s got a bizarre premise, but it’s hardly a fantastic one, and the movie doesn’t try to paint it as such. In short, I consider this movie misclassified, and fantasy fans will find nothing here to satisfy them.

On its own terms, I’m afraid I’m not as taken with this movie as some others. Burt Lancaster does a fine job, and for a man in his late fifties, he was still in good enough shape to handle the physical demands of the role as well as spending the entire running length of the movie in a swimsuit. There is also some depth to the movie, and there are a few amusing moments, including his encounter with some nudists. But aside from him, I found the acting fairly uneven, and the extended metaphor that drives the movie just didn’t fascinate me enough to raise the movie above the level of pretentious for me. I put this in the category of non-genre oddities.

 

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Spy in Your Eye (1965)

SPY IN YOUR EYE (1965)
aka BANG, YOU’RE DEAD, BERLINO – APPUNTAMENTO PER LE SPIE
Article 2184 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-9-2007
Posting Date: 8-5-2007
Directed by Vittorio Sala
Featuring Brett Halsey, Pier Angeli, Gastone Moschin

A spy organization tries to rescue a woman who knows a secret formula, but they are unaware of the fact that their boss has had a surveillance device implanted in his artificial eye by enemy spies and can figure out what they are going to do.

I thought this was going to be just another ordinary Eurospy adventure when I sat down to watch it, and in some ways, it is. It’s rather cheesy at times, the plot is quite confusing, and there are occasional glaring film flubs (my favorite has a car driving off before the engine has finished turning over). But some of the gimmicks are very clever (the rigged artificial eye and the hunchback’s hump which turns into a knife stand out), some of the set pieces are great (including a sequence in a train, a memorable escape through a mine field, a chase scene among displays on an elaborate float, a killer Napoleon Bonaparte statue, and an enormous shifting room). These are some of the most entertaining scenes I’ve ever witnessed in one of these Eurospy movies, and Dana Andrews and Brett Halsey are both fun in their respective roles. It even has a fairly clever hiding place for the formula everyone is searching for. For those who’ve never tried one of the Eurospy movies, this is a good one to start with.

 

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The Wacky World of Dr. Morgus (1962)

THE WACKY WORLD OF DR. MORGUS (1962)
Article 2183 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-8-2007
Posting Date: 8-4-2007
Directed by Roul Haig
Featuring Sid Noel, Dan Barton, Jeanne Teslof

A creepy inventor creates a machine that can turn people into sand and back again. He is contacted by spies who want to use his machine for nefarious purposes. Hilarity ensues.

Having grown up with the whole horror host craze, I ask myself what it would have been like to have found out that my favorite horror host was going to make a movie. I would have been thrilled, and I would have made every effort to catch it when it came out. And I would have loved it, even if it was as bad as this one.

Well, it’s been several decades since then, and Dr. Morgus wasn’t my horror host. And even though I feel a little sympathy for this effort, it’s still a stinker that is painfully short on laughs. Part of the problem is Dr. Morgus himself; though I think this character (who looks a little like Fredric March’s Mr. Hyde with long hair and bad posture) would have passed muster as a horror host, he simply doesn’t have a sharp enough comic persona to sustain the length of a whole movie. Actually, I’d probably feel this way about most horror hosts, with a few notable exceptions (Zacherle, for example). It also doesn’t help that the plot is a muddled mess with no real point. Still, it does have a couple of memorable moments; the weight-lifting monkey steals the movie, and the scene where Dr. Morgus has to use a plunger to force a fat man into his machine, if not really a barrel of laughs, is at least hard to forget. The best acting here comes from David Kleinberger as a spy; at least he knew how to inject energy into his scenes.

 

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