Month: June 2018

Il demonio (1963)

IL DEMONIO (1963)
aka The Demon
Article 2671 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-20-2008
Posting Date: 12-5-2008
Directed by Brunello Rondi
Featuing Daliah Lavi, Frank Wolff, Anna Maria Aveta
Country: France/Italy

A woman is believed to be a witch by local villagers. Is she a witch? Is she possessed by the devil? Or is it possible that she might simply be mad?

Given the fact that this movie has a 5.2 rating on IMDB, I’m under the impression that the movie has only a lukewarm reputation. And given the fact that I watched an unsubtitled version of the movie (it’s been dubbed into another language, but not into English), there’s no doubt that any evaluation I give may well be quite flawed. I found myself rather fascinated by this one, though anyone expecting a straightforward horror movie may walk away disappointed. To me, the movie seemed ambiguous; though the woman may indeed be a witch, I felt that she was more sinned against than sinning, seeing how she’s beaten, raped, humiliated, and has other indignities heaped upon her on a regular basis. Daliah Lavi gives a great, if very strange, performance here, and shows an almost contortionistic flexibility on occasion, especially during an exorcism sequence. There are memorable scenes here, such as the aforesaid exorcism sequence, and a scene where the woman braves a barrier of barbed wire so that she can embrace a tree. I wasn’t surprised by the ending; given all that went before, it seemed inevitable. All in all, I found it a very sad movie, and I hope that I can find a subtitled version at some time so I can appreciate it better.

 

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Felix the Cat Switches Witches (1927)

FELIX THE CAT SWITCHES WITCHES (1927)
Article 2670 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-17-2008
Posting Date: 12-4-2008
Directed by Otto Messmer
No cast – Silent animated film
Country: USA

Felix takes some time off of his Halloween pranks to consult an owl fortune teller, who predicts romance and marriage in his future. Felix is understandably less than thrilled when his predicted love turns out to be a witch.

The “Felix the Cat” cartoons are some of the most entertaining from the silent era, largely because of Felix’s talent for bending reality to his own purposes. He only partakes of this ability a little here, when he plays pranks by switching the heads of a chicken and a dog, and when he replaces a horse’s back end with a bicycle wheel (a prank that backfires when the horse’s back end seeks revenge). The rest of the time he is the victim of pranks, but fortunately for Felix, it all ends happily. There’s a little dated humor here when Felix uses a pumpkin head to scare a black man. Actually, this one is pretty conventional for a Felix cartoon, but it’s entertaining nonetheless.

 

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Teen-Age Strangler (1964)

TEEN-AGE STRANGLER (1964)
Article 2669 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-13-2008
Posting Date: 12-3-2008
Directed by Ben Parker
Featuring Bill Bloom, John Ensign, Rick Harris
Country: USA

A strangler is on the loose, and the police believe he may be a member of a hot rod gang known as the Fastbacks.

The last time I saw a movie in which a strangler kills his victims and then leaves a letter marked on their foreheads was… yesterday, I believe, in THE STRANGLER OF BLACKMOOR CASTLE. I love coincidences like this, and since the movies were released within the same year or so, they could have made a double feature. Of course, this one would have been the second feature; though the movie has a certain likable sincerity to it, it’s amateurish awkwardness screams out from every frame. The acting isn’t as bad as in some other movies I’ve seen, but one senses that even the better ones here still had a lot more to learn about their craft. And in some cases, you’re not sure you’re seeing a performance or not; I found myself wondering just how much the actor who played the guilt-ridden, twitchy and awkward bespectacled younger brother of the prime suspect was playing a role instead of being himself, and I actually found myself feeling actively uncomfortable whenever he was on the screen. Overall, the movie does give us an interesting example of regional film-making; this one was shot in West Virginia.

 

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The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle (1963)

THE STRANGLER OF BLACKMOOR CASTLE (1963)
aka Der Wurger von Schloss Blackmoor
Article 2668 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-12-2008
Posting Date: 12-2-2008
Directed by Harold Reinl
Featuring Karin Dor, Harry Riebauer, Rudolf Fernau
Country: West Germany

The tenant of Blackmoor castle finds himself terrorized by a hooded killer who strangles and decapitates his victims. The killer knows that the tenant was responsible for the death of another man and the theft of diamonds.

It’s krimi time again, and this is a good one. Like most krimis, it gets confusing during the middle section and it has too many characters, but the musical score is unique and effective, the comic relief (a Scottish landlord) is fairly decent, and it’s full of effective touches and scenes. Of the latter, I quite like the Toby-Damnit-style murder of the motorcyclist, the scene where we discover where the diamonds are hidden (it’s a wonderful hiding place), the scene where the tenant’s manic assistant threatens someone with his diamond drill, and a great climax in the swamp. Once again, it helps to know in advance that krimis are not really horror movies, but crime movies with horror elements, and I think this is one where the horror elements are quite strong. And I must admit to having been quite surprised by the identity of the murderer. For my money, this is one of the better krimis out there.

 

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The Electric Hotel (1908)

THE ELECTRIC HOTEL (1908)
aka El Hotel electrico
Article 2667 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-8-2008
Posting Date: 12-1-2008
Directed by Segundo de Chomon
Featuring Segundo de Chomon, Julienne Mathieu
Country: Spain/France

A pair of travelers visit a hotel with modern electrical conveniences.

I caught this movie on YouTube, and, quite frankly, it looks in wretched shape. Nevertheless, I saw enough so that I was quite impressed with the vast amount of stop-motion animation that must have gone into this one, as we see extensive footage of suitcases unpacking themselves, letters writing themselves, and boots being polished automatically by brushes. Granted, it all looks more like magic than science, but I’m reminded of a comment I once heard that if you encounter a culture whose science is well beyond your own, you might mistake what you see from them as magic. Still, despite the fact that I’m impressed, I’m also a little bored; some of the sequences go on too long, and you start to lose interest. Still, this is one early fantastically-themed short that doesn’t look like a lift from the work of Melies.

 

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Visions of Death (1972)

VISIONS OF DEATH (1972)
aka Visions… TV-Movie
Article 2666 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-7-2008
Posting Date: 11-30-2008
Directed by Lee H. Katzin
Featuring Monte Markham, Barbara Anderson, Telly Savalas
Country: USA

A psychic has visions of a bomber terrorizing the city. When he reports his visions to the police, he not only finds himself the prime suspect, but a target of the real bomber as well.

The basic story here is pretty standard; I know I’ve seen the storyline about a person trying to prevent a crime becoming the prime suspect many times. However, this TV-Movie does a surprisingly good job with the story; it has a stronger sense of style than most TV-Movies, and it does an excellent job of maintaining the suspense. My favorite character moment occurs when the psychic’s information does manage to avert tragedy, and he’s relieved that finally, after all these years, he’s been able to use his ability to save someone. His visions are nicely handled by the movie; I especially love the jarring vision he has of someone when he can tell they’re going to die soon. It’s also nice that this TV-Movie doesn’t feel like a pilot for a series, though it could have been turned into one. As it turned out, Telly Savalas (who plays a cop here) would shortly get a chance to do a series in a similar role with “Kojak”.

 

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Uncle Josh’s Nightmare (1900)

UNCLE JOSH’S NIGHTMARE (1900)
Article 2665 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-6-2008
Posting Date: 11-29-2008
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
Featuring Charles Manley
Country: USA

Uncle Josh’s sleep is interrupted by a teleporting devil and vanishing furniture.

Poor Uncle Josh! If it’s not ghost practical jokers (in UNCLE JOSH IN A SPOOKY HOTEL), it’s teleporting devils! Uncle Josh was one of the first franchise characters in cinema; he appeared in three shorts, and was played by seventy-year old Charles Manley in all three. I covered the first one several years ago, but won’t be covering the last, as it has no fantastic content. This is a fairly standard early cinema trick film. On a historical note, Charles Manley was a member of the Ford Theatre at the time of Lincoln’s assassination.

 

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Escape (1971)

ESCAPE (1971)
TV-Movie
Article 2664 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-5-2008
Posting Date: 11-28-2008
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey
Featuring Christopher George, William Windom, Marlyn Mason
Country: USA

A former escape artist turned private eye agrees to help a scientist who is on the run from the law for a murder he didn’t commit. However, when the scientist is kidnapped along with the scientist’s daughter, he must undertake to discover their whereabouts and rescue them.

It may be just my imagination, but it seems that most of the TV-Movies I’ve seen from the seventies have the look and feel of potential series pilots; the credit sequence here clearly demonstrates that this was intended to be that way. It might well have made a decent series; all it really would have needed to do is pick up the somewhat sluggish pace of this TV-Movie, and find some way to transcend what could have ended up as a tiresome gimmick. The gimmick is that the private eye is constantly placed in traps whereby he must use his abilities to, as the title puts it, escape; in some ways, it hearkens back to the Harry Houdini silent serial, THE MASTER MYSTERY. The fantastic elements here are a Gizmo-Maguffinish plot involving a new virus that can enslave the world, a hideously scarred man, and a scene in a house of horrors. The movie also features William Schallert and Gloria Grahame, though both of them appear so slightly that you might forget they’re there. It also features two straight performances by two actors who are better known for their comic turns; namely, Huntz Hall and Avery Schreiber; the latter would have most likely been a regular on the series had it sold. It’s entertaining enough, especially during the final chase that makes good and interesting use of its amusement park setting. It’s not great, but I’ve seen a lot worse.

 

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The Worm Turns (1937)

THE WORM TURNS (1937)
Animated Short
Article 2663 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-4-2008
Posting Date: 11-27-2008
Directed by Ben Sharpsteen
Featuring the voice of Walt Disney
Country: USA

Mickey Mouse develops a potion that can make weak and timid creatures brave and strong.

So far, I’ve barely scratched the cartoon surface; after all, most cartoons are fantasies of one sort or another. However, very few of my sources have bothered to classify them as such, and if it weren’t for the science fiction aspects of this one, I probably wouldn’t be covering it for some time. Disney was putting out some of their best shorts during the thirties, with Fleischer being their biggest competitor at the time. The animation is excellent, as I would expect, though I never find the Disney shorts quite as funny as the Warner Brothers ones when they were at their best. One odd piece of note; at one point, Mickey Mouse gives the potion to a mouse being threatened by a cat. The curious thing here is that Mickey is already a mouse, and it points out the phenomenon I occasional notice in the cartoon universe whereby some animals are anthropomorphized and others remain animals. My favorite occurrence of this is in a Warner Brothers cartoon (whose title I can’t remember at the moment) in which it is revealed that farmer Porky Pig raises pigs on his farm.

 

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The Three Ages (1923)

THE THREE AGES (1923)
Article 2662 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-3-2008
Posting Date: 11-26-2008
Directed by Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Featuring Buster Keaton, Margaret Leahy, Wallace Beery
Country: USA

Three tales of love are told; one in caveman times, one during Roman times, and one in the present.

So far, all the Buster Keaton movies I’ve covered for this series were from long after his prime; it’s a joy to actually see him in the peak of his powers. The theme is, or course, “The course of true love never runs smooth”, and to emphasize the “never”, he borrows the structure of D.W. Griffith’s INTOLERANCE and tells the same story three times (only the details change), jumping back and forth across the three time periods. Of course, the humor is in the details. The caveman sequence is what makes this one qualify, and though it’s tempting to compare it with Chaplin’s HIS PREHISTORIC PAST, it’s not really fair to that movie, as it caught Chaplin before he really honed his talents. There’s even a little comic stop-motion footage here as well, with Buster riding on the back of dinosaur. It’s consistently amusing, but my favorite sequence comes in the Roman sequence, where Buster, trapped in a lion’s den, hits upon the idea of befriending the lion in much the same way Androcles did. Unfortunately, the lion doesn’t have a thorn in his paw, so Buster settles for the next best thing, which is… well, I’m not going to give away the funniest moment in the movie. Outside of that, check out the primitive Ouija board.

 

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