Month: December 2018

The Omegans (1968)

THE OMEGANS (1968)
Article 3025 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-19-2009
Posting Date: 11-25-2009
Directed by W. Lee Wilder
Featuring Keith Larsen, Ingrid Pitt, Lucien Pan
Country: USA / Philippines

An artist discovers that his wife is having an affair with an adventurer. When he discovers that the water from the area where they took an expedition is radioactive and destroys those who bathe in it and drink it, he comes up with an insidious idea for his revenge.

Here’s a good example of a bad story done badly. You have the premise up above. From the point where the premise is established, the movie simply follows a straight line to its conclusion, with no twists, no surprises, and little in the way of interest level. Furthermore, W. Lee Wilder remains one of the least interesting directors to ever work in the genre; the scenes are all static and poorly staged, the energy in non-existent, and the whole production is thoroughly uninspired. The Omegans of the title refer to the tribe that lives near the water in question, but they barely play a role in the story, which is more concerned with its standard triangle plot. This one is truly a waste of time.

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Night Warning (1983)

NIGHT WARNING (1983)
aka Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker
Article 3024 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-18-2009
Posting Date: 11-24-2009
Directed by William Asher
Featuring Jimmy McNichol, Susan Tyrrell, Bo Svenson
Country: USA

When his parents die in a freak car accident, a boy is raised by his aunt to the age of seventeen. Unfortunately, the aunt is demented, and when she murders a TV repairman who rejects her sexual advances, a homophobic policeman believes the boy is responsible for the murder. To complicate things, the aunt begins scheming of a way to keep the boy from leaving home for college…

I went into this one expecting the usual slasher film, but it really belongs to an earlier era when the psychos were given real motivations and weren’t just supernatural killing machines. The movie has two big pluses. One is that Susan Tyrrell is fascinating as one of the most seriously twisted psychos in screen history, and her character gets worse and worse as the movie proceeds. Also, the surrounding story is much better than usual, with the focus on an investigation of the murder that is itself twisted by one man’s homophobia; Bo Svenson’s bullying character is truly repellent. The movie does falter a bit in the latter half, and I was really disappointed when the movie started falling back on certain slasher movie cliches that don’t really belong here. Nevertheless, the movie is very good, and it’s nice to see a movie that handles the theme of homophobia and features a sympathetic non-stereotyped gay character.

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The Miracle (1959)

THE MIRACLE (1959)
Article 3023 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-17-2009
Posting Date: 11-23-2009
Directed by Irving Rapper and Gordon Douglas
Featuring Carroll Baker, Roger Moore, Walter Slezak
Country: USA

During the Napoleonic wars, a novitiate in a Spanish convent falls in love with an English soldier. She prays to a statue of the Madonna for a miracle, and when none is given, she tears off her nun’s outfit, leaves the convent, turns against Christianity, and seeks her soldier. The statue comes to life, puts on the nun’s outfit, and replaces the novitiate at the convent, while the ex-novitiate learns the price of turning against God.

Truth be told, I was expecting another one of those miracle movies akin to THE MIRACLE OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA, but that’s hardly what this is like; they openly claim the story is a legend from the beginning, and it’s more like a long Catholic-themed soap opera than anything else. It’s overwrought and very Hollywoodish; it’s one of those movie where all the nuns wear immaculate makeup and every random group of singing soldiers, peasants, or nuns sounds like they’ve had years of musical training. In particular, the symbolism is so blatantly obvious that it verges on camp (twice the heroine ends up literally with the blood of her lovers on her hands). The acting from the leads isn’t particularly good, and Walter Slezak’s role is a little too silly, but the movie is stolen by Torin Thatcher in a cameo as Wellington; he brings an authority to his role that is sorely missing from the rest of the movie. Before it’s all through we get gypsy passion, bullfighting, Spanish dancing, the battle of Waterloo, a second miracle, and guilt-tripping galore. It’s a little to silly to have real impact, but it is entertainingly watchable for all that, if a bit too long.

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Lady Dracula (1978)

LADY DRACULA (1978)
Article 3022 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-16-2009
Posting Date: 11-22-2009
Directed by Franz Josef Gottlieb
Featuirng Evelyne Kraft, Brad Harris, Theo Lingen
Country: West Germany

A former female victim of Dracula is revived in modern times. A policeman investigates the resulting vampire killings, unaware that his new girlfriend is the Lady Dracula.

Here we have, as a follow-up to OLD DRACULA, another comic take on the Dracula legend. Unfortunately, this one is in German, and the subtitles appear to be in Dutch, so my hopes of following the story are gone. Still, if the movie’s 3.6 rating on IMDB is any indication, it’s only a hair better than yesterday’s movie (which came in at 3.0). There’s some comic bits with undertakers, costume parties, midgets and blood banks. The story is by Brad Harris, who appeared in several sword-and-sandal movies as well as the Kommissar X series; he also plays the policeman in charge of the investigation, whose boss has one of the silliest widow’s peaks I’ve seen in a movie. The movie also features the last performance of Stephen Boyd, who appears as Dracula at the beginning of the movie. Only a handful of the gags are visual; the ones with the undertakers look somewhat amusing. Still, until I see an English language version, I’m going to reserve judgment.

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Old Dracula (1974)

OLD DRACULA (1974)
aka Vampira
Article 3021 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-15-2009
Posting Date: 11-21-2009
Directed by Clive Donner
Featuring David Niven, Teresa Graves, Peter Bayliss
Country: UK

Dracula has begun allowing tours of his castle, which gives him a fresh supply of blood as well as the opportunity to find a rare blood type that will revive his wife, Vampira. He does find the right blood type, but when his wife is revived, she also turns black. He then goes to England to find the donor of the original blood in the hopes that he can change her back.

I was aware that the movie had undergone a title change from VAMPIRA to cash in on the success of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, so I didn’t go in expecting that this comedy was going to attempt to emulate that one in any way; I planned to review it on its own terms. Still it’s a fairly weak comedy. The cast is game enough; all three leads put their best feet forward to make a go of it, and each one adds a little flavor to the mix. What fails them is the script; despite a couple of cute ideas here and there, it’s painfully short on laughs, and the story gets less and less interesting as it goes on. It all builds up to a twist that is a) obvious once you see the setup, and b) awful when you see the final make-up job. I’d like to see some of these touches in a better movie; I like the idea that a vampire has varying amounts of control over his victims depending on how long he bites them, and that if he keeps the time short, the victim doesn’t become a vampire. I can’t really say I was disappointed by the movie, as it was actually a little better than I expected, which wasn’t much. Teresa Graves would go on to the role of Christie Love, and then left acting shortly afterward.

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The Night Child (1975)

THE NIGHT CHILD (1975)
aka Il medaglione insanguinato
Article 3020 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-14-2009
Posting Date: 11-20-2009
Directed by Massimo Dallamano
Featuring Richard Johnson, Joanna Cassidy, Ida Galli
Country: Italy / UK

A documentary maker gives his daughter a medallion that once belonged to his deceased wife. Is the medallion making the girl a murderer who is intent on killing the other women in her father’s life?

Director Massimo Dallamano started his career as a cinematographer, and you can tell; the movie seems to exist for its beautiful cinematography, and there are sections of it that feel more like a travelogue than a horror movie. It’s been described as a knock-off of THE EXORCIST, and it is, to some extent, but it prefers to borrow from the quieter aspects of that movie rather than the more spectacular ones usually emphasized in knock-offs. It’s an uneven movie; there are some eerie moments (especially in a castle where a rare painting is found), some dull moments (the travelogue sequences), and the odd music is sometimes effective, sometimes tiresome. It’s almost too quiet in some ways, but I can understand this; the movie is most likely to stumble or come across as silly when it gets louder or more blatantly horrific. And I’m not quite sure at this point whether I like the ending or not, though there is a certain queasy logic to it.

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The Name of the Game is Kill (1968)

THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL (1968)
Article 3019 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-13-2009
Posting Date: 11-19-2009
Directed by Gunnar Hellstrom
Featuring Jack Lord, Tisha Sterling, Colin Wilcox Paxton
Country: USA

A Hungarian immigrant is picked up by a woman who lives with her two sisters and their mother in a filling station. After an attempt to run him over sends the immigrant to the hospital, he returns to the filling station. There he attempts to win the youngest daughter and seeks to discover the hidden mystery of the family; what happened to the long-missing father?

One of the reasons this odd little psychothriller works is that the mystery element is very strong; all three of the daughters and the mother seem off, and all of them come across as if they might be responsible for the death of the missing father. Furthermore, we are given three contradictory stories about the death of the father. Even at that, the movie has at least one truly memorable twist near the end that I didn’t see coming, though it is a twist that has popped up before in other movies. There are good performances all around; I liked Jack Lord’s performance, as I primarily remember him as McGarrett in “Hawaii Five-O”, and it was great to see him in a totally different type of role here, but it’s the performance of T.C. Jones that really makes the movie work at certain crucial moments. Furthermore, I can’t help but have a bit of affection for any movie that prominently features music by The Electric Prunes.

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My Son, The Hero (1962)

MY SON, THE HERO (1962)
aka Arrivano i titani
Article 3018 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-12-2009
Posting Date: 11-18-2009
Directed by Duccio Tessari
Featuring Pedro Armendariz, Giuliano Gemma, Antonella Lualdi
Country: Italy / France

The king of Crete is placed under a curse that says that he will die when his daughter falls in love with a man; he decides to isolate her so that she may meet no man. The gods decide to release a Titan named Krios from Hades so that he can try to meet the isolated princess and bring about the king’s fate; if he succeeds, his fellow Titans will also be released.

This is one of the more offbeat sword-and-sandal movies out there. It’s something of a comedy, but I prefer to think of it as a light-hearted take on the genre, and it finds a nice balance between action, adventure and humor. It takes a slightly different approach than the others; our hero isn’t extremely strong, but he’s very clever and uses his wits to accomplish his ends. There are some good highlights here; the scene where Krios takes part in the hunt of a slave in which he reasons out the actions the slave will take in making his escape is one, and the final battle in which Krios is joined by his fellow Titans is another. In the interim, Krios sneaks back into Hades to steal Pluto’s headpiece, faces a Gorgon, and borrows some weapons from a cyclops. The use of music is very different here as well; in particular, I like the music during the scene where the slave destroys a bridge. It takes a little while to get started, and it’s overlong, the dubbing is uneven (the acting is quite good, but the lip synch is very bad at times), but it may be one of the most creative variations on a genre that is too often overly predictable.

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The Music of the Spheres (1984)

THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES (1984)
Article 3017 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-11-2009
Posting Date: 11-17-2009
Directed by Philip Jackson
Featuring Anne Dansereau, Peter Brikmanis, Jacques Couture
Country: Canada

After an economic collapse in the future, the world is controlled by semi-sentient computers which have psychic connections with their human counterparts. When a project is initiated that involves the shifting of asteroids out of their orbits, a computer known simply as The Beast begins receiving communications from outside the system… despite the fact that this is impossible.

Sometimes the title of the movie can tell you quite a bit about it. In this case, the title prepared me for something out of the ordinary, with touches of poetry and mysticism. In many ways, that odd sense permeates the movie itself; from the opening credits (which are listed in both English and French, which should clue you off that this one comes from Canada) to the incessant chatter of radio voices to the lyrical music to the off-putting acting style, there is a real sense of something different here. It should be no surprise that it’s an art movie, and an extremely cheap one at that. The acting style is most striking; characters often deliver their lines as if they’re not quite in the moment, and though this may seem amateurish, it also somehow fits the feel of everything else. It’s often rather static; we have long conversations that are occasionally impenetrable, and anyone expecting much in the way of action will be very disappointed. I’m not surprised that the movie has a 4.1 rating on IMDB; I can easily see this movie annoying and boring many viewers. I myself can’t quite dismiss it; there IS something going on in these static conversations, I became fascinated by the choices of names for the various people, places and things (“The Beast”, “Melody”, “Einstein”, “Atlantis”). Maybe it’s all piffle, but if so, it’s interesting piffle, and I plan to watch it again some time to sort out more of the details. And it’s also fun to catch another movie about men moving asteroids around so soon after MOON ZERO TWO.

P.S. In the interim between the time I first wrote this review, the IMDB rating of this movie has moved up to 5.6. It looks like the reputation of this one is beginning to rise.

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King of the Rocket Men (1949)

KING OF THE ROCKET MEN (1949)
Serial
Article 3016 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-10-2009
Posting Date: 11-16-2009
Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Featuring Tristram Coffin, Mae Clarke, Don Haggerty
Country: USA

A madman is knocking off members of Science Associates to get the secrets of their inventions. One scientist who has gone into hiding has invented a rocket suit, and security chief Jeff King dons it in order to find the identity of the evil Dr. Vulcan.

This is the first and best of the three “Rocket Man” serials, often thought of as the Commando Cody series because of the character’s name in the middle serial. The title is a bit of a lie; there’s really only one “Rocket Man”, and he’s not a king, but he’s named “King”, which makes me wonder if they had named him Pope, what the name of the series would be. It’s more solidly made and less cheesy than the other serials, though the fantastic content is greater in its follow-ups; though there are plenty of science fiction contraptions in this one, there are no alien invaders. The villain has one of those FFICs with OIE (for those who don’t remember, that’s a Free-Floating Inviso-Cam with Optional Instant Editing, an item which pops up in movies so that villains can watch what’s going on in areas where there is no noticeable camera). It’s a little odd to see perennial villain Tristram Coffin as the hero in this one, but he does the best he can. I suspect the whole idea came from an attempt to emulate the character of Superman, only without the invulnerability which no doubt made it a little more difficult to come up with effective cliffhangers.

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