Month: September 2018

Tarzan and the She-Devil (1953)

TARZAN AND THE SHE-DEVIL (1953)
Article 2874 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-21-2009
Posting Date: 6-26-2009
Directed by Kurt Neumann
Featuring Lex Barker, Joyce Mackenzie, Raymond Burr
Country: USA

Tarzan must match wits with Ivory hunters who kidnap members of a friendly native tribe and use them as slaves.

On IMDB, this movie has a 5.0 rating, and a quick check of all of the other titles I have watched for this series which begin with the word “Tarzan” reveals it’s tied for the lowest with two other movies, TARZAN’S REVENGE and TARZAN THE FEARLESS. However, neither of those two movies are part of the series that began with TARZAN THE APE MAN in 1932, and would eventually lead to this one. For the first half of the movie, I was wondering why the rating was so low; it seemed like a derivative but passable Tarzan movie up to that point. Unfortunately, the movie goes off track at the halfway point, when Tarzan’s tree-house is burned down and he believes Jane has died in the inferno. He then proceeds to spend almost the rest of the movie in a surly mope. Not only is this a downer of the worst variety, but it’s also counter to what I believe is an essential quality of Tarzan; he’s only a step away from a savage jungle animal, and I find it impossible to believe that he would choose depressed moping over enraged violence. Had the series fallen this far from the original conception of the character? At any rate, this would be Lex Barker’s last movie in the role; Gordon Scott would take over in the role after this one.

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Tarzan and the Lost Safari (1957)

TARZAN AND THE LOST SAFARI (1957)
Article 2873 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-20-2009
Posting Date: 6-25-2009
Directed by H. Bruce Humberstone
Featuring Gordon Scott, Robert Beatty, Yolande Donlan
Country: UK

Tarzan rescues the passengers of a private plane that crashes in the jungle. They team up with an adventurer who agrees to lead them out of the jungle. However, the adventurer is in cahoots with a tribe of natives who wants to sacrifice the passengers to their god…

Gordon Scott is likable in the role, the color is nice, and there is lots of animal footage. Still, at heart, what we have here is a Double-Stuffed Safari-O with a third-rate plot whose predictability is incredibly apparent; there are no surprises and a lot of padding in this movie. Scott would appear six times as Tarzan before turning to sword and sandal movies. The fantastic content here is no more than the slight fantasy touches to any story about Tarzan.

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The Strangler (1964)

THE STRANGLER (1964)
Article 2872 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-19-2009
Posting Date: 6-24-2009
Directed by Burt Topper
Featuring Victor Buono, David McLean, Diane Sayer
Country: USA

Police are searching for a serial strangler who specializes in nurses. The killer is a seemingly mild-mannered man with an overbearing and manipulative mother.

This movie has one big plus; Victor Buono was a great actor who was wonderful at playing sinister characters who outwardly don’t seem so at first, and that’s just what is called for here. He is fascinating to watch, and when he’s on the screen, he holds your attention. This helps to make up for the fact that the script falls a little bit short. I’m particularly disappointed that the movie doesn’t really give us an understanding of what drives the killer to commit the murders of nurses in the first place; instead, it concentrates on the murders that only have a direct bearing on his relationship with his mother, which are departures from his usual pattern. This means we never really get the insight into what makes him tick, as we only see the murders that are logically motivated. I suppose the lack of insight was to be expected; after all, the minute the psychologist confuses schizophrenia with split personality, I knew the movie wasn’t going to be psychologically incisive. Still, for a low budget movie, it’s efficient and mostly well-acted, though I wasn’t impressed with the acting from Davey Davison, despite the fact that she’s given a prominent credit during the opening. In short, it’s good, but not great.

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Fantomas (1947)

FANTOMAS (1947)
Article 2871 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-18-2009
Posting Date: 6-23-2009
Directed by Jean Sacha
Featuring Marcel Herrand, Simone Signoret, Alexandre Rignault
Country: France

Detective Juve matches wits with super-criminal Fantomas.

If you take the five episodes of Louis Fuillade’s serial about the title character as one unit (IMDB lists the five episodes as different movies and I’ve covered them the same way), then this is the third version that I’ve seen of this story. Unfortunately, except for the second episode of the aforementioned serial, every version I’ve seen has been in unsubtitled French, and this one is no exception. In fact, this particular version is so dependent on words to flesh out its story that I couldn’t follow the story at all, hence the vague plot description above. It does seem, though, that the Fantomas in this movie is rather different than the ones I remember from the earlier versions; in fact, there are moments where the movie made me think more of Dr. Mabuse than Fantomas. The fantastic content is more marked though; there’s some definite science fiction content, with a number of strange machines, an odd-looking helicopter, and a death ray machine. A few nice visual moments help a little, and the action scenes at the end are fun, but it looks like I’m really going to need to see this one in English to appreciate it.

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Mystery Mountain (1934)

MYSTERY MOUNTAIN (1934)
Serial
Article 2870 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-17-2009
Posting Date: 6-22-2009
Directed by Otto Brewer and B. Reeves Eason
Featuring Ken Maynard, Tarzan, Verna Hilie
Country: USA

Railroad detective Ken Williams is trying to discover the identity of a criminal known as the Rattler, who is trying to prevent the completion of a railroad tunnel through a mountain.

For me, the real mystery of this western serial is – what’s the fantastic content? Left to my own devices, I would have been at a loss. I might have guessed that the Rattler would have fallen under the category of “masked” killers, but usually this means the killer is wearing a hood or something that makes them look scary. In this case, the Rattler’s “primary” mask (see below) is a fake set of glasses with a nose and moustache, which makes him look like Father Guido Sarducci, who is not scary. Since I couldn’t quite accept that, I checked Don Willis’s guide to see what he had to say about it, and he mentions a plot element in which the Rattler disguises himself as various other characters through the use of very convincing “secondary” masks. I suppose this is a fantastic concept (and one I’ve always found singularly unconvincing), but I’ve seen this trick done so often in the movies that I tend to think of it as a movie convention rather than as an honest-to-goodness element of fantastic content. Unfortunately, that’s about all there is; I’ll leave it your own judgment whether this qualifies, but for me, it doesn’t.

As for the serial itself, it’s rather ordinary. Since most of the action is on horses, we don’t have the nonstop bailout cliffhangers, which is good. Ken Maynard is likable enough, Syd Saylor’s comic relief avoids being totally annoying, and the rest of the cast is forgettable, though Gene Autry appears in a small (and uncredited) role. The real scene-stealer here is Ken Maynard’s horse, Tarzan, who does some great tricks on occasion and ends up being the one to unmask the killer at the end. Otherwise, this one is run-of-the-mill.

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Spy in the Sky! (1958)

SPY IN THE SKY! (1958)
Article 2869 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-16-2009
Posting Date: 6-21-2009
Directed by W. Lee Wilder
Featuring Steve Brodie, Andrea Domburg, George Coulouris
Country: UK / USA

Spies are searching for a Soviet rocket scientist to learn his secrets.

False alarm, everyone. This is just another Gizmo Maguffin, and the Gizmo is just cashing in on the fears surrounding Sputnik; the closest we get to anything remotely in the realm of science fiction is seeing a light move across the sky during the opening title. From then on, it’s static Spy vs. Spy stuff, barely competent at best, aggressively snooze-inducing at worst. You’ll recognize the static style of Billy Wilder’s brother W. Lee Wilder here; he’s the same man who gave us PHANTOM FROM SPACE, KILLERS FROM SPACE and THE SNOW CREATURE.

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The Oldest Profession (1967)

THE OLDEST PROFESSION (1967)
aka e Plus vieux metier du monde
Article 2868 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-15-2009
Posting Date: 6-20-2009
Directed by Claude Autant-Lara, Mauro Bolognini, Philippe de Broca, Jean-Luc Godard, Franco Indovina, Michael Pfleghar
Featuring Michele Mercier, Enrico Maria Salemo, Gabriele Tinti
Country: France / West Germany / Italy

The history of prostitution is presented in six tales.

You know, it takes time to watch a movie. And when you watch a movie a day and you find the print of the movie you were watching has a fatal flaw, you don’t often have time to watch another movie. That’s my excuse for covering this one, despite the fact that my print is missing one whole episode. That might not have been fatal in a movie in which only certain segments contain fantastic content if the missing segment had been one lacking said content, but alas, I’m missing the one segment that takes place in the future directed by Jean-Luc Godard, reportedly the best one of the bunch. But I’m in no mood to watch another whole movie, so I’m reviewing it as is, with the addendum that I’m going to hunt for a more complete copy, and should I find one before I post this review, I’ll add the review of that segment as an addendum.

So what can I say about this episodic comedy about prostitution? It’s mostly lame. The prehistoric section (which has no prehistoric creatures and nothing to recommend it), the Roman section, and the one in Modern-day Paris are all forgettable and of little importance. The other two sections (one in revolutionary France and the other during the Gay Nineties) come off better and actually do a good job of giving us similar but opposite stories; in the first, a customer pulls a trick on a prostitute to keep from paying, and in the other, the prostitute tricks a customer (who she discovers is a banker) into marrying her. These two are good, but not great. Still, it’s the Godard piece that is supposed to be the highlight here. Let’s hope I have an addendum to add to this in the near future.

ADDENDUM – Well, I found a copy with Godard section, and it is easily the best of the bunch. It’s the one that shows the most creativity, and its view of the future is somewhat similar to the one in ALPHAVILLE. It mainly involves a time when visitors supply robot prostitutes for its guests, but a man wants a replacement because his can’t talk, but he finds that robots are a bit specialized, and the one that can talk isn’t able to… well, I won’t give anything away on this point. The weirdest touch has people eating from aerosol cans (there goes the ozone layer), and the big question I have is this: why is the character who is supposed to be human the one who most talks like a robot? It’s a good segment, but not great, and overall, the movie is on the weak side.

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The Magician (1958)

THE MAGICIAN (1958)
aka Ansiktet
Article 2867 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-14-2009
Posting Date: 6-29-2009
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Featuring Max von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Bjornstrand
Country: Sweden

A magician and his troupe arrive at a town where they are forced to stay under the eye of the leading townspeople who want to witness their performance with the aim of debunking the supernatural elements. However, the magician has a few more tricks up his sleeve than expected…

This is the weakest of the four Ingmar Bergman movies I’ve seen for this series, but that’s no putdown; after all, the other three (THE SEVENTH SEAL, THE VIRGIN SPRING and WILD STRAWEBERRIES) are considered some of his finest works. It is, however, the movie I’ve seen that may be the closest to a horror movie he’s made, and at least one scene (in which a coroner finds himself terrorized by the man on whom he’s just performed an autopsy) wouldn’t be out of place in a horror film. It’s basically a struggle between reason and the supernatural, with the magician and his troupe against a collection of skeptical townspeople. Max von Sydow is fascinating as the magician; he pretends to be a mute, but that’s only a front. Gunnar Bjornstrand is also fine as the doctor who performs the autopsy, as is Naima Wifstrand as a grandmother who may or may not be a witch. Bergman’s usual themes crop up here again, but that adds to the appeal. The movie also opens with a fun scene in which the troupe passes through a forest believed to be haunted.

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Les freres corses (1962)

LES FRERES CORSES (1962)
aka The Corsican Brothers, I Fratelli Corsi
Article 2866 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-13-2009
Posting Date: 6-19-2009
Directed by Anton Giulio Majano
Featuring Geoffrey Horne, Gerard Barray, Nerio Bernardi
Country: France / Italy

Two Siamese twin brothers are separated and raised in different worlds when their family is massacred. They meet again many years later when one of them undertakes to kill a tyrant.

This version of the Dumas novel is in French without subtitles, and, though I’m at least a little bit familiar with the basic story and have seen the earlier version with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. the story has never really planted itself firmly in my mind. This means that I was fairly lost for most of the movie, though the fantastic element (the brothers have a psychic link in which one can feel the other’s pain) is apparent, if used only slightly. Going on feel, though, the movie seemed fairly ordinary; it’s more talk than action, and only seems to come to life at the beginning and end of the movie. To be sure, a dubbed or subtitled version would give me a better chance to judge it, but I doubt that I’d radically change my opinion if I saw one.

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Fata / Morgana (1965)

FATA/MORGANA (1965)
aka Left-Handed Fate
Article 2865 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-12-2009
Posting Date: 6-17-2009
Directed by Vicente Aranda
Featuring Teresa Gimpera, Marianne Benet, Marcos Marti
Country: Spain

In a city that is nearly empty (the residents having departed due to “collective fear”), a model discovers that she is to be the victim of a murder before the day is through. A detective who knows about the upcoming murder seeks to prevent it.

I’d like to describe this one as a bizarre thriller, but I can’t; it’s too arty to really work up much in the way of thrills, though I have no problems with the word “bizarre” here. I’ve only seen one other movie by this director (THE BLOOD-SPATTERED BRIDE), and, if anything, it makes me understand why some of the scenes in that movie are pretty strange as well. Still, with art movies, they either work for you or they don’t, and, though I don’t agree with the whole theme of “people who are born to be murdered” that is central to the story here, it more or less worked enough that I was not bored. Some bizarre scenes stand out; a woman kills two men with a fish, a series of men try to pick up the model as she walks down the street, a group of men steal the model’s image from a billboard, and a man completely disguises his face with bandages a la the invisible man. It’s odd, but it may benefit from a second watching.

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