Month: June 2018

The Woman in White (1948)

THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1948)
Article 2631 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-18-2008
Posting Date: 10-26-2008
Directed by Peter Godfrey
Featuring Alexis Smith, Eleanor Parker, Sydney Greenstreet
Country: USA

An artist meets the strange characters at an English estate. He begins to suspect that a visiting count has sinister designs on the family fortune. He also encounters a strange woman in white who bears an uncanny resemblance to the daughter at the manor.

“The Motion Picture Guide” classifies this movie as a horror/mystery, but most of my other guides omit this one. I can see why. The horror elements are very slight; there’s certainly a mysterious element to the appearance of the woman in white, but outside of that, the only fantastic genre touches are the presence of the common horror elements of madness and hypnotism, and these are used only slightly if effectively. The movie is also quite entertaining, but, for me, the best thing about watching this one was being able to encounter the great Sydney Greenstreet; the only other movie I’ve seen him in for this series is BETWEEN TWO WORLDS. He’s great here as the menacing and scheming Count Fosco, and, for those who love character actors, he’s married to the character played by Agnes Moorehead, who gives one of her most restrained performances, and is also excellent. John Abbott’s character is similar to Vincent Price’s in HOUSE OF USHER, except he’s played more for comic effect. The story is complex enough that I have a hankering to read the original Wilkie Collins novel on which this is based.

 

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Psycho a Go-Go (1965)

PSYCHO A GO-GO (1965)
Article 2630 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-17-2008
Posting Date: 10-25-2008
Directed by Al Adamson
Featuring Roy Morton, Tacey Robbins, Nadine Arlyn
Country: USA

When a jewelry robbery misfires, the stolen property ends up in the back of a pick-up truck. When the gang discovers the owner of the truck, they track down the family that owns it and try to find out the location of the jewels from them. One of the gang members, a homicidal maniac, takes it upon himself to find the wife and daughter who have left town for Lake Tahoe.

I’m mostly familiar with this movie from its second revision; several years after this one was made, director Al Adamson edited in new footage and called the result THE MAN WITH THE SYNTHETIC BRAIN, and a few years after that, he added in even more footage and called it BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. The last time I saw the third version of this movie, I entertained myself with trying to figure out which revision footage I was watching at any one moment, and this turned out to be surprisingly easy; not only did each revision feature different actors, but there is a marked difference in the film quality for each version. The oddest thing is that the earlier the footage was, the better it looked; I suspect Adamson used cheaper and cheaper film stock as time went by. By any ordinary standards, this is the best Al Adamson movie I’ve seen so far; it’s got a straightforward, fairly coherent plot, decent acting, and it simply looks more professional. It’s also less sleazy, and, despite the presence of a sadistic homicidal maniac in the story, it doesn’t seem quite as mean-spirited as some of his other movies. Still, I wonder if it’s those very qualities that appeal to his fans, and one could make an argument that DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN is certainly more “fun” than this one, at least partially because it has more of a name cast. Incidentally, much of the fantastic content of BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR is from the insert footage; here, the movie is only borderline horror due to the madness of the maniac, and that’s not played especially for horror. It’s recommended for the curious who have seen the later revisions.

 

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The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971)

THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971)
aka Lo Strano vizio della Signora Wardh, Next!, Blade of the Ripper
Article 2629 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-16-2008
Posting Date: 10-24-2008
Directed by Sergio Martino
Featuring George Hilton, Edwige Fenech, Conchito Airoldi
Country: Italy/Spain

A woman finds herself threatened by a razor-wielding murderer. Is it her husband? Her lover? Her ex-lover? Or someone else…

Part of me really admires the DIABOLIQUE-level complexity of the story, and I do admire the editing here; it manages to keep the scenes moving in a fast and efficient manner, at least for the first two-thirds of the movie. It’s only towards the end where the movie starts slowing the pace down, a sure sign that it’s getting ready to launch a plot twist on you. But it is possible to O.D. on plot twists, and, in my estimation, this movie tries to sneak in one too many before it’s all over, so that the final effect is a bit more comic than intended. Of course, this being giallo, there’s style, gore, and sex to spare, though I do think they could cut back on the bathing scenes and some of the stylistic touches seem a bit forced. Still, this is perhaps the best movie I’ve seen from Sergio Martino so far.

 

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Work is a Four Letter Word (1968)

WORK IS A FOUR LETTER WORD (1968)
Article 2628 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-15-2008
Posting Date: 10-23-2008
Directed by Peter Hall
Featuring David Warner, Cilla Black, Zia Mohyeddin
Country: UK

In the near future, technology has advanced to the point that businesses have to create artificial jobs for people just to keep them employed. This benefits an otherwise unemployable young man whose passion is raising mushrooms, and who hopes to get a job at a utility plant so the boilers can create a hot, moist environment to grow his crop.

I’m going to start right off by saying that this late-sixties counter-culture comedy is a self-indulgent piece of twaddle. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it; its eccentric sense of humor fits in well with my own, and I like that it never takes itself too seriously nor gets pretentious. I respond well to its kooky charms, and I always enjoy watching David Warner (who I remember most strongly as having played The Evil One in Terry Gilliam’s TIME BANDITS) in anything. Still, there is a part of me that wished the movie had dwelt on its science fiction aspects more, but, I suppose if it did, it wouldn’t be the movie it is. For me, the movie only really stumbles towards the end, when all of the major characters start eating the mushrooms and freaking out; it’s here that the movie becomes more dumb than fun. It’s based on a play by Henry Livings with the unpromising title of “Eh?”.

 

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The Slayer (1982)

THE SLAYER (1982)
Article 2627 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-14-2008
Posting Date: 10-22-2008
Directed by J.S. Cardone
Featuring Sarah Kendall, Frederick Flynn, Carol Kottenbrook
Country: USA

Two couples take a vacation on an island. A murderer begins killing them off. One of the women believes it’s something from her dreams.

The threat is not your average slasher villain and one of the death scenes is conceived (though not shot) with a certain degree of humorous irony. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is horror-by-the-numbers, with a plot stretched too thin for the movie’s length and augmented with padding; this is one of those movies where people spend lots of time searching for other people and calling out their names. Indifferent acting, a weak script, and an overabundance of overfamiliar horror cliches make this one a bore. Throw in a dumb ending and you have another reason to skip this one.

 

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The Last Child (1971)

THE LAST CHILD (1971)
TV-Movie
Article 2626 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-13-2008
Posting Date: 10-21-2008
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey
Featuring Michael Cole, Van Heflin, Harry Guardino
Country: USA

In the future, it is illegal for women to have more than one baby due to overpopulation. A couple defies the law and tries to have a second baby when their first one dies after only fifteen days.

You know, the very concept of this dystopian science-fiction TV-Movie just seems to scream “message movie”; at least, that’s the obvious way to go with it. As might be expected, that’s the route the movie takes; the first two-thirds of the movie largely consists of the obvious; lots of preaching, characters trying to talk sense to other characters, characters guilt-tripping other characters, and emotional lines of dialogue that you saw coming miles away “I’m having the baby!”, for example. The last third of the movie is mostly car chase. This is one of those movies where most of the characters speak their dialogue quite slowly, and I’ve always suspected that this was because somebody thought if they spoke the dialogue too quickly, viewers might miss the message. Unfortunately, the message is so obvious from square one, that I’d understand them even if they were speaking in some obscure hindi dialect. In this situation, Ed Asner comes off best as the policeman chasing the couple, but this may be primarily because his character doesn’t engage in preaching or guilt-tripping; as a result, he comes across as the most natural. Still, it’s obvious from the 6.9 rating on IMDB that some people quite like this movie; me, I’d trade most of the message for a few surprises along the line.

 

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The Love Pill (1971)

THE LOVE PILL (1971)
Article 2625 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-12-2008
Posting Date: 10-20-2008
Directed by Ken Turner
Featuring Henry Woolf, Toni Sinclair, David Pugh
Country: UK

A small town candy store owner is manufacturing sweets that have a secret ingredient that functions as both a contraceptive and an aphrodisiac. When he dies, his son hooks up with a down-and-out businessman to market the product. The only problem is – the son has only a limited amount of the secret ingredient, and no one knows where more can be found.

This racy British comedy stops short of turning into porn, though anyone watching the movie primarily to see naked women will not be too disappointed by the results. The movie occasionally digs up an interesting idea, such as the fact that the pill contributes to a switching of attitudes about sexuality between the genders; in other words, we have women doing the chasing and the men running away. However, the clever ideas remains sporadic, and, as a comedy, it’s singularly short of laughs, and, as satire, it becomes tiresome and obvious. And, when the movie tries to turn romantic in the final reel (what with the movie’s romantic song playing repeatedly while a couple visits an amusement park and encounters all the romantic cliches of the time), it becomes more than a little hypocritical. Director Joe Turner’s credits are mostly for TV, including some work with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s puppet shows.

 

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My Friends Need Killing (1976)

MY FRIENDS NEED KILLING (1976)
Article 2624 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-12-2008
Posting Date: 10-19-2008
Directed by Paul Leder
Featuring Greg Mullavy, Meredith MacRae, Clay Wilcox
Country: USA

A disturbed Vietnam vet flips out and decides to kill off all of his former company members who participated in the massacre of the residents of a small village.

I’m primarily familiar with Paul Leder from his having directed A*P*E, a movie which… well, I think I’ll hold off on saying anything about THAT one until I cover it as a separate entity. Suffice it to say that I went into this one expecting the very worst. To my surprise, it isn’t half bad; it’s well acted, and the script has some interesting moments. It also has a fair share of cliches, it doesn’t have the emotional impact for it to be really effective, and when it gets unpleasant, it’s just repellent. If the ratings are of any indication on IMDB, it’s Leder’s best movie, and I’m not surprised to discover that his worst has already been mentioned in this review. If this movie is any indication, he’s better on serious movies than on those that require a lighter touch.

 

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Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlantida (1970)

SANTO CONTRA BLUE DEMON EN LA ATLANTIDA (1970)
aka Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis
Article 2623 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-10-2008
Posting Date: 10-18-2008
Directed by Julian Soler
Featuring Santo, Jorge Rado, Alejandro Munoz Morena
Country: Mexico

An evil genius from Atlantis plans to take over the world, and he has the stock footage to prove that he can. It’s up to Santo to stop him, even if he has to use his own stock footage from HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN to do it.

It’s in unsubtitled Spanish, but, thanks to Robert Cutter’s “The Mexican Masked Wrestler and Monster Filmography” (which include a detailed plot synopsis), I was able to follow along. The main wrestling sequence in this one is a bout between Santo and Blue Demon, but, since they’re both heroes (despite the fact that Blue Demon is hypnotized by the villains to do their bidding at one point), the question is – who is going to be allowed to win the match? They get around this moral quandary by not finishing the match; after having won one round each, someone drugs Blue Demon’s water and he’s spirited away by Atlantean henchmen (you can tell they’re from Atlantis by the rings they wear). It’s another Mexican wrestler movie aping the James Bond movies; Santo even gets to make out with some females in this one. Nothing really special here; it’s just a moderately entertaining Mexican wrestler flick, though it does get some novelty points for being the first one I’ve seen that pairs Santo and Blue Demon.

 

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Death is a Number (1951)

DEATH IS A NUMBER (1951)
Article 2622 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-9-2008
Posting Date: 10-17-2008
Directed by Robert Henryson
Featuring Terence Alexander, Lesley Osmond, Denis Webb
Country: UK

An advocate of numerology tells us the story of a friend of his who was cursed by the presence of the number 9 in his life, a consequence thsy will bring about his death.

You know, sometimes I feel like objecting to a movie purely in terms of its failing to make effective use of the medium of cinema. Though all of the blather about numerology is as scary as Count Floyd, there’s a certain amount of creativity to some of the low-budget special effects, and some of the events in the middle section of the movie (in which ghosts and a strange window play a part) have a certain eerie charm. Unfortunately, most of the movie is told via tiresome narration, so much so that it often feels like you’re not watching a movie, but having somebody tell you the story (though with an ulterior motive of explaining numerology to you). This one might have been a much better movie had it tried to tell its story visually, dump the narration, stick to the ghost section of the story in the middle, and remove the numerology undercurrent. As it is, it feels more like the first draft of a movie that still needed a lot of work. Still, at only fifty minutes, it doesn’t really wear out its welcome.

 

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