MOON ZERO TWO (1969)
Article 3015 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-9-2009
Posting Date: 11-15-2009
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Featuring James Olson, Catherine Schell, Warren Mitchell
Country: UK

A spaceship pilot is hired to help crash an asteroid made of sapphire into the far side of the moon. However, he finds himself embroiled in a plot that involves the murder of a moon miner and the theft of his claim, as it is the location where the asteroid is expected to land.

Much of the advertising for this movie put it forward as a science fiction western, and I can see how something like that could work; if you consider the old west and outer space as new frontiers, you can see the connection. However, the “western” elements of this science fiction movie seem either ill-advised (six-guns on the moon?), silly (“Moon Fargo”) or inconsequential (dressing up the local bar like a saloon and having the dancers wear cowboy hats); about the only strong western element is that the storyline involves miners and claim-jumping. The style doesn’t have any particularly western feel to it, and the music seems more James-Bondish than westernish. Even the opening animation (which leads you to believe the movie is going to be a comedy) has no particular western feel to it, and the cold-war theme of the animation has no reflection in the movie itself. Granted, I’m not surprised the movie fails to feel in any way like a western – I’ve never got the sense that the British were particularly adept at handling that mostly American form.

Ignoring all the western foofaraw for the moment, I do think the movie has a decent plot, and there are some fun moments here. Nevertheless, the movie falls flat; the pace is often turgid, and James Olson, though not a bad actor, lacks the charisma to make his character appealing. As a result, the movie never really takes off. This one can be chalked up as one of Hammer’s failed experiments.

MISTRESS OF THE WORLD (1960)
aka Die Herrin der Welt – Teil 1
Article 3014 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-8-2009
Posting Date: 11-14-2009
Directed by William Dieterle and Richard Angst
Featuring Martha Hyer, Micheline Presle, Carlos Thompson
Country: France / Italy / West Germany

When a trio of scientists discovers a formula that allows a magnetic field to knock out electricity over a large area, they become the target of kidnappers. Interpol is called in to find the scientists and recover the formula.

What we have here is another example of the Gizmo Maguffin; the formula is used towards the beginning of the movie, and the rest of the movie involves heroes and villains fighting over the formula. It’s directed by Williem Dieterle, who was responsible for some great movies during the thirties and forties. On one level, I really like this movie; it has a markedly different feel than many other spy movies, with the spies doing a lot more team-oriented work rather than the usual lone-wolf approach of most of the other movies of this genre. It also attempts a higher level of realism than those movies; parts of the movie almost feel like a police procedural of sorts. There’s some particularly wonderful location work as well, especially during the last part of the movie which takes place at Angkor. Unfortunately, most of the movie is slow-moving and too talky; when the heroine lashes out at the Interpol agents for doing nothing but talking, you’ll feel for her.

It’s possible the problems with the movie may have to do with the cutting of the English-language print; my source for the movie tells me that it was cut heavily. This presents a bit of a mystery to me; my cut runs 106 minutes, longer than the IMDB time of 98 minutes, which seems to imply that very little was cut but new footage was added. However, I can’t help but notice that the German title indicates that this was Part 1, and a follow-up movie that ran 89 minutes was also shot. Is it possible that my print is actually a shortened version of the combined footage of both movies? This seems likely; the cast for the second movie seems the same, and includes characters that would have been dead for the sequel had my print been for the first movie only. If this is true, than a good eighty minutes is missing here.

MESSAGE FROM SPACE (1978)
aka Uchu kara no messeji
Article 3013 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-7-2009
Posting Date: 11-13-2009
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
Featuring Sonny Chiba, Jerry Ito, Vic Morrow
Country: Japan

When the planet of Jillucia is overrun by the invading Gavanas, a small resistance group releases eight liabe nuts to pick a task force to help them defeat the enemies. However, the chosen ones seem unwilling to help, and the Gavanas are now setting their sights on Earth.

I’ve heard this Japanese STAR WARS ripoff was quite horrible, but the first ten minutes gave me some hope; it was definitely a STAR WARS ripoff, but I rather liked to Oriental costume designs, and the spaceship that was modeled off of a sea ship was really rather clever. But once I met the annoying juvenile delinquents and their spunky rich girl friend who were the first recipients of the nuts, I lost hope and I never recovered it. At least Vic Morrow is there to give us some sense that what’s happening is important, and even he’s saddled with one of those cutesy robots that appeared in the wake of R2D2 and C3PO. The movie is ultimately charmless, badly dubbed, messily plotted, and poorly edited. Those who uncritically like spaceships and watching things explode will like this one best. Me, I still prefer the clean plotting and the relatively uncluttered production of its model.

THE MEDUSA TOUCH (1978)
Article 3008 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-2-2009
Posting Date: 11-8-2009
Directed by Jack Gold
Featuring Richard Burton, Lino Ventura, Lee Remick
Country: France / UK

When a man is found bludgeoned almost to death in his apartment, a police inspector seeks to find the murderer. His search leads him to the knowledge that the victim may have powers of destruction that make him a threat to society. Furthermore, despite his injuries, the victim refuses to die… and his brain is getting stronger.

If you’re a fan of fantastic cinema, then it can be rather tiresome to run across one of those movies that dwells overmuch on the subject that “no one will believe what’s happening”, even if it is essential to the plot. This is why the first three-fourths of this movie gets tiresome; I get a little antsy waiting for the movie to take the concept to the next level, and I don’t need to see continually mounting evidence that this character really has the powers in question. Nevertheless, the movie manages to build to a neat little thriller once it finishes setting up its premise, and it raises a number of interesting moral questions in the process. Oddly enough, the movie doesn’t really take off until it manages to solve the mystery that drives its first three-quarters, but the universally strong performances from all concerned help to keep us interested despite its flaws. Oddly enough, my favorite little touch to the mystery is one you can figure out on your own; immediately after the murder, the television is switched off, but when the body is discovered, the television is back on. I don’t recall it being solved directly during the course of the movie, but you should be able to figure out why it’s on.

MATCHLESS (1967)
Article 3007 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-1-2009
Posting Date: 11-7-2009
Directed by Alberto Lattuada
Featuring Patrick O’Neal, Ira von Furstenberg, Donald Pleasence
Country: Italy

An American journalist, while a prisoner in China, acquires a magic ring that can turn him invisible for limited periods of time. When he returns to the U.S., he is sent on a mission by the military to track down a genius master criminal to acquire his secrets.

This spoof of the Bond movies doesn’t have much of a reputation, but I found it amusing enough in a harmless sort of way. I’m a bit amused that the fantastic content involving invisibility seems to involve magic rather than science, which is kind of odd for the superspy genre. It’s also fun to see Henry Silva in a more comic role than usual for him, and, for my money, Donald Pleasence is a lot more fun as the villain of this movie than when he played Blofeld. I also liked a car chase scene that ends up with the cars on top of a moving train. I’d hardly call it a great movie, but this cross between INVISIBLE AGENT and the Bond movies did keep me consistently entertained.

MARK OF THE DEVIL (1970)
aka Hexen bis aufs Blut gequalt
Article 3006 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-31-2009
Posting Date: 11-6-2009
Directed by Michael Armstrong and Adrian Hoven
Featuring Herbert Lom, Udo Kier, Olivera Katrina
Country: West Germany

A town hopes the arrival of witch-hunter Lord Cumberland will free them from the tyranny of their local witch hunter, who has been abusing his authority for personal satisfaction. However, the new witch-hunter may be even worse…

One of the tag lines for this movie was “likely to upset your stomach”, and patrons were given barf bags when the movie was shown. Obviously, this witch-hunting / torture film modeled off of WITCHFINDER GENERAL wasn’t going for the art house crowd. The dubbing is often quite bad, the musical score thinks the movie is a romance or a swashbuckler, and the editing makes the movie quite confusing at times. It also does wallow in the exploitative sadism it mires itself into, which is probably the reason the movie was successful enough to spawn a sequel. Still, it does manage to have a storyline as well, occasionally it shows an interesting insight into the witch-hunting mindset, and it’s anchored by a good performance from the ever-dependable Herbert Lom. Apparently, the movie was originally to be directed by Michael Reeves (who probably would have given us something a little better), but when he died, the direction passed Michael Armstrong, who, according to IMDB, was Reeves’ assistant during WITCHFINDER GENERAL, though they list no credit for him; at any rate, I got the impression Armstrong knew a bit about Reeves’ style, but didn’t quite know how to make it work. Also, according to IMDB, the original ending featured the dead rising up and pulling the character of Christian into the abyss, but it was nixed by one of the directors. This ending makes no sense to me at all, given that the character of Christian is the closest this movie comes to a hero. I wonder if this piece of trivia is mistaken, and whether it might actually be Lord Cumberland who was to be pulled into they abyss; if not, it would have been one of the most cynical endings in movie history.