Month: March 2018

Journey Into Darkness (1968)

JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS (1968)
Article 2511 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-18-2008
Posting Date: 6-27-2008
Directed by James Hill and Peter Sasdy
Featuring Robert Reed, Jennifer Hilary, Michael Tolan

Two tales of terror are told. The first (“Paper Dolls”) deals with a set of quadruplets, one of whom has evil powers that he can wield over the others. The other (“The New People”) is about a couple of who buy a house in the country, unaware that a suicide was committed there and that one of their neighbors may have sinister designs on them.

This is another case where two episodes of a TV series (in this case, British anthology series “Journey to the Unknown”) were edited together into a feature film. I think this sort of thing works better with an anthology series, since no one expects a single coherent story from one to begin with, and I have to admit that I liked the linking segments concocted for this movie; Patrick McGoohan projects a subtle witty irony in introducing and ending the stories. I like the first story (which hovers somewhere between VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED and “It’s a GOOD Life’ in subject matter) better, though the ending is a little bit flat. The second story was written by Charles Beaumont, and it has a nice twist ending, though I do think it’s a little too slow to get going. Based on what I’ve seen here, the series itself was good but not great. It lasted for only seventeen episodes, and utilized much of the same talent that was used by Hammer. Three other movies were culled from the series, JOURNEY TO MIDNIGHT, JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN, and JOURNEY TO MURDER.

 

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Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1972)

INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS (1972)
Article 2510 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-17-2008
Posting Date: 6-26-2008
Directed by Ed Adlum
Featuring Norman Kelly, Tanna Hunter, Bruce Detrick
Country: USA

Druids are attempting to revive their goddess with the blood of a person immune to a disease. Scientists try to figure things out, but soon the druids set their sights on them.

You know, the first four words of this title, INVASION OF THE BLOOD —-, is pretty good; it’s the final word, FARMERS, that starts to bring the giggles. And if the title doesn’t start you giggling, wait till you check out the acting and dialogue in this no-budget horror movie filmed in upstate New York. One interesting idea pops up; the idea of a blood disease that causes blood cells to multiply at a maddening pace is something that could make for the basis of an interesting movie (I’m sure Cronenberg could have done something with it). The idea seems out of place in the silliness of the rest of the movie, which has characters named Creton, Egon, Sontag, Ogmar, and Queen Onhorrid, and features some of the stupidest cops I’ve seen in years. This was the sole directorial effort of Ed Adlum, but not his only contribution to the genre; as an actor, writer, and producer he would contribute to bringing the world SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED, which I’ve not seen yet, but which I’m confident will probably be as silly as this one.

Here are some other unpromising words to use to end the title of this movie.

INVASION OF THE BLOOD PLUMBERS
INVASION OF THE BLOOD WAITERS
INVASION OF THE BLOOD TRUCKERS
INVASION OF THE BLOOD SNORKLERS
INVASION OF THE BLOOD ACTUARIES
INVASION OF THE BLOOD CLAIMS ADJUSTERS

Feel free to add your own.

 

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Infernal Trio (1974)

INFERNAL TRIO (1974)
aka Le Trio infernal
Article 2509 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-16-2008
Posting Date: 6-25-2008
Directed by Francis Girod
Featuring Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider, Mascha Gonska
Country: France/West Germany/Italy

A French man and two German sisters engage in a series of insurance-bilking scams.

What’s the fantastic content in this French black comedy? A goodly portion of the middle of this movie involves a rather horrific sequence where the insurance-bilkers (the trio of the title) engage in a bloody double murder and use a particularly disgusting method of body disposal; these sequences push the movie into horror territory, though the movie never really turns into outright horror. This one was very difficult to follow; I was a good fifteen minutes into this before I was able to pick up any sort of plot thread that could help me figure out what was going on, and even after having seen the entire movie, I’m still not sure about the significance of sizable chunks of the movie. It might make more sense on a second viewing, now that I have more of a sense of what’s going on, certain early scenes might sort themselves out. I had to read some of the user comments on IMDB to help me with this one; it was apparently based on true events that happened in the twenties. As usual, since this is a French movie, I saw comments talking about its political subtexts in which the word “bourgeoisie” gets used a lot. I found this one interesting enough, but overall I’m just not sure how I feel about it. Perhaps when I give it that second viewing sometime down the road…

 

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Games (1967)

GAMES (1967)
Article 2508 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-15-2008
Posting Date: 6-24-2008
Directed by Curtis Harrington
Featuring Simone Signoret, James Caan, Katharine Ross
Country: USA

A young couple given to games and practical jokes takes in an older ailing foreign woman who has been reduced to selling household goods from door to door. The older woman, who has a penchant for mysticism, encourages them to take part in more daring, dangerous games. One of these backfires when the husband accidentally kills a delivery boy with a gun he thought was loaded with blanks. The couple covers up the murder, but then the wife begins to see the ghost of the delivery boy.

Sometimes casting itself can give away quite a lot of a movie. Simone Signoret is a respected actress with a long career, but she is most famous for one very specific and very popular movie, and if that should occur to you while watching this one, you’ll be well prepared for the directions this one will go. Furthermore, the title itself should give you a clue that you shouldn’t take too much at face value here. These types of movies can be fun; it’s an enjoyable diversion trying to figure out who is in charge, who is being manipulated, and who thinks they are in on the game but turn out to be only pawns. This one is quite satisfying, but you won’t be the least bit surprised at who comes out on top at the end of the movie. This is probably Harrington’s best and most effective movie as a director.

 

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Final Exam (1981)

FINAL EXAM (1981)
Article 2507 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-14-2008
Posting Date: 6-23-2008
Directed by Jimmy Huston
Featuring Cecile Bagdadi, Joel S. Rice, Ralph Brown
Country: USA

Students study, take final exams, make out, flirt, play fraternity pranks, talk. Psycho kills them all.

Movie kicks off with a murder. Then movie breaks neatly into two parts. First part engages in combination of rudimentary character development (easy to do with one-dimensional characters), fraternity pranks (like ANIMAL HOUSE only without iota of humor), and fake scares. Second part has characters killed by psycho with long knife. No explanations tendered, no suspense maintained. Soulless, joyless, and as much fun as taking a final exam. Will test your patience. By-the-numbers slasher movie.

 

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Fantasy Island (1977)

FANTASY ISLAND (1977)
TV-Movie
Article 2506 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-13-2008
Posting Date: 6-22-2008
Directed by Richard Lang
Featuring Ricardo Montalban, Bill Bixby, Sandra Dee
Country: USA

Three visitors pay $50,000 apiece to have their individual fantasies played out on a resort called Fantasy Island. A former World War II reporter wishes to relive a romance he had during the war, a big game hunter wants to be the hunted, and a female executive wants to know who she can trust among her family and associates and wishes to fake her own funeral.

I avoided the TV show (for which this was the pilot) like the plague when it was popular during the late seventies and early eighties; there was something about the concept that struck me as silly. Now, having watched the original TV-Movie on which it was based, I can at least understand the appeal. The show actually does a fairly decent job of playing on and confounding expectations; for example, the story which initially seems the most insipid (the old love affair) turns out to be the darkest of the bunch. It is also, sadly, the least convincing; I can’t for the life of me figure out why Bill Bixby’s character would pay this much money to relive this part of his life. The story about the woman attending her own funeral is marred by a scenery-chewing performance by Carol Lynley, and you’ll probably be able to spot the twist a mile away as the story winds down. I like the story of the big game hunter the best, and this story, similar in some ways to THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, does add a little bit of horror to the proceedings. The show’s strength is simple; Ricardo Montalban is excellent as Mr. Roarke. He adds just the right touches to his line deliveries to make the events seem compelling and even a little profound. He also embodies the fantastic content of the movie; we never learn precisely what he is, but one of his opening lines in which he talks about his guests being “mortal” should give you a clue, as well as explaining how one character does not die. Still, I suspect that the real appeal of the show to TV viewers was the constant parade of familiar guest stars on the show, which I also suspect was the same appeal of “The Love Boat”, another show I avoided like the plague.

 

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King of the Congo (1952)

KING OF THE CONGO (1952)
Serial
Article 2505 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-12-2008
Posting Date: 6-21-2008
Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and Wallace Grissell
Featuring Buster Crabbe, Gloria Dea, Leonard Penn
Country: USA

An Air Force captain goes undercover in Africa to discover why communist agents are at work there. He gains the name “Thunda” from a tribe of cave people when he rings a gong. He discovers the communists are after a radioactive element more powerful than uranium.

Quite frankly, I felt sorry for whichever serial I’d watch next after having viewed the excellent DRUMS OF FU MANCHU; I knew it would look limp and uninteresting next to that one. For the first several episodes of this serial, it did live down to my expectations; the plot and conflicts seemed confusing and ill-defined, and, despite the fact that our main character is supposedly the hero of the cave people, they actively put him in peril. However, it improves once Thunda stops pretending to be on the side of the communists, and though it’s hardly a great serial, this one from Columbia is stronger than the ones from Republic in the early fifties. The radioactive element is a Gizmo Maguffin, and the rest of the fantastic content are of the typical jungle sort; scary animals, a gorilla on the loose, the marginal fantasy view of Africa. You do have to admire the good shape 45-year old Buster Crabbe was in, since he spends most of the movie in a loincloth.

 

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Demon and the Mummy (1976)

DEMON AND THE MUMMY (1976)
TV-Movie
Article 2504 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-11-2008
Posting Date: 6-20-2008
Directed by Don McDougall and Don Weis
Featuring Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, Jack Grinnage
Country: USA

Carl Kolchak finds himself following the trails of two sets of murders; a group of young college men find themselves dying of heart attacks next to women who had died some hours earlier, and various other people are discovered with their hearts pulled out. He begins to suspect ancient horrors are at work in both of the cases.

One of my favorite series, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” also suffered the same fate as “Planet of the Apes”, “The Starlost” and other series; several episodes were edited together into features for TV distribution. In this one, the episodes “Demon in Lace” and “Legacy of Terror”, about a succubus and a mummy (neither of which caught the series at its peak in my opinion), were mashed together to make a feature. This one gets a little ambitious in its editing; rather then telling one story and then the other, this one tries to intermix them; we get the first half of “Demon in Lace”, followed by “Legacy of Terror” in its entirety, followed by the second half of “Demon in Lace”. It takes advantage of the fact that much of the exposition in the series was handled by Darren McGavin’s voice-overs, and either McGavin himself or someone doing an imitation of him supplies new voice-overs in an attempt to tie the two stories together. This mostly consists of him referring to the events of the other episode, often with the comment of how he doesn’t feel the two sets of murders are related. No, it doesn’t work; it just makes the structure seem that much goofier. Still, since I enjoyed the series, I even enjoy it in this butchered format; I’ve always loved McGavin as Kolchak and Simon Oakland as Tony Vincenzo, enjoyed Jack Grinnage and Ruth McDevitt, and we get some familiar faces in the surrounding cast as well, such as Erik Estrada, Andrew Prine and Keenan Wynn. And is that Milton Parsons popping up at one point?

If I remember correctly, the four episodes that were edited into TV-Movies were then omitted from the lineup when the show did go into syndication. Fortunately, in the era of DVDs, we can enjoy the whole series without this problem.

 

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The Queen of Spades (1960)

THE QUEEN OF SPADES (1960)
aka Pikovaya dama
Article 2503 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-10-2008
Posting Date: 6-19-2008
Directed by Roman Tikhomirov
Featuring Oleg Strizhenov, Zurab Andjaparidze, Laris Avdeyeva
Country: Soviet Union

An officer wishes to run off with the woman he loves, but in order to do that, he needs money. He hears that the elderly countess who takes care of his love knows the secret of three cards that will guarantee a win at gambling. He decides to force the secret out of her.

This isn’t a direct adaptation of the Pushkin short story, but rather an adaptation of the Tchaikovsky opera based on the story. So once again this non-opera-fan finds himself watching an opera for this series. You know, there are times here where I get a sense of the power of opera; hearing these singers belt out their music can be somewhat stirring. However, these are only momentary feelings, and pretty soon I find myself wishing they’d hurry the plot on a little instead of stretching everything out for the sake of the music, and I don’t really feel I have a legitimate complaint about it because it is, after all, an opera, and what did I expect? It all comes down to this; when I want to see this story, I’ll always opt for the 1949 non-opera cinematic version of the story, a fine movie in its own right. Still, I like the way this adaptation doesn’t feel stagebound, and I find it interesting that each character is played by two people – one whose physical presence appears in the movie, while another does the singing. The story itself is also quite good, but I knew that from the other version I saw. Certain eerie happenings give the movie some horror touches.

 

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Deadly Dream (1971)

DEADLY DREAM (1971)
TV-Movie
Article 2502 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-9-2008
Posting Date: 6-18-2008
Directed by Alf Kjellin
Featuring Lloyd Bridges, Janet Leigh, Carl Betz
Country: USA

A scientist working on a formula to spread the intelligence DNA finds himself plagued by nightmares in which he is pursued by a Tribunal intent on putting him on trial for his crimes. He begins to suspect that his dreams are real.

The science fiction element here is a Gizmo Maguffin, to begin with. This movie is essentially a fantasy about the nature of dreams and reality. This movie has a fairly high rating on IMDB, and I can see that; if the central concept that explains the movie is new to you, the movie has the potential to have a strong impact. If you’re already familiar with the concept, you might be less impressed. Me, I hit upon the concept early on in my own attempts to figure out where the plot would go, and so I really wasn’t surprised, and this rather marred my enjoyment of the movie. Make no mistake; I think the movie is good enough; I just think the whole thing could have been handled more efficiently in an episode of “The Twilight Zone”, and, who knows, maybe there was an episode that used the same concept.

 

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