Month: January 2019

Skeleton Frolics (1937)

SKELETON FROLICS (1937)
Cartoon
Article 3184 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-3-2010
Posting Date: 5-3-2010
Directed by Ub Iwerks
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Dancing skeleton cartoon

Skeletons arise from the graves and form a band.

There seems to be a sub-genre of musical skeleton cartoons during the early talkie era. This one is directed by Ub Iwerks, who worked as an animator for SKELETON DANCE in 1929, so he was returning to familiar ground. There’s no plot, but the animation is good and the gags are passable, and, unlike the others I’ve seen, this one is in color. This cartoon is available on the DVD of THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA.

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Pigs is Pigs (1937)

PIGS IS PIGS (1937)
Cartoon
Article 3183 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-2-2010
Posting Date: 5-2-2010
Directed by Friz Freleng
Featuring the voices of Billy Bletcher, Bernice Hansen and Martha Wentworth
Country: USA
What it is: Animated glutton’s nightmare

A pig with an insatiable appetite has a nightmare where he is force-fed tons of food by an evil scientist.

It’s understandable that my memory incorrectly classified this one as a Porky Pig cartoon, but it isn’t; though Porky went through several changes in his evolution, he always maintained the stutter, and that is noticeably absent in the pig here. I also remember that this cartoon was the stuff of nightmares when I was a kid; despite the fact that this isn’t one of the great Looney Toons cartoons, if you’ve seen it as a kid, it sticks in the memory. Nowadays I appreciate it for the wittiness of the force-feeding inventions; in particular, a machine that serves pies functions like a jukebox, and an olive dispenser is modeled after a gumball machine (a mechanical hand has to keep feeding it pennies). Still, it’s a lot of fun seeing this one again; I hadn’t seen it in four decades.

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Killer on the Loose (1936)

KILLER ON THE LOOSE (1936)
aka Killer at Large
Article 3182 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-1-2010
Posting Date: 5-1-2010
Directed by David Selman
Featuring Mary Brian, Russell Hardie, George McKay
Country: USA
What it is: B-Movie crime drama with slight horror elements

When a safe is robbed in a department store and the store manager is murdered, a clerk who is engaged to the female store detective is under suspicion. The detective must find the real killer.

The killer in this case is a designer of wax figures who also specializes in impersonating them, a gimmick that actually plays into the robbery/murder. This isn’t really a spoiler; the identity of the murderer is given to us fairly early in the proceedings, and the movie is more concerned with the pursuit of the criminal. The horror elements are slight; there’s a scene in a warehouse full of wax figures and a cemetery scene that provide some slight horror content, and the killer is a madman of sorts as well. Henry Brandon plays the killer, and he’s the best thing here; he comes across as convincingly malevolent. Still, there really isn’t much to this low-budget movie, though fans of Lon Chaney Jr. will find him here in a small role as one of the killer’s henchmen. All in all, a fairly minor b-movie.

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Stop, Look and Listen (1949)

STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN (1949)
Animated cartoon
Article 3181 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-28-2010
Posting Date: 4-30-2010
Directed by Eddie Donnelly
Voice actors unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Animated serial operetta parody

Oilcan Harry has both Pearl Pureheart and Mighty Mouse tied to a bull that is running from a locomotive. Pearl’s father is rushing to drill an oil well to get the money to pay for her ransom. Will Mighty Mouse be able to save the day?

From what I’ve seen of the various Mighty Mouse shorts so far, I’m of the opinion that the series only really achieved transcendence when it introduced Pureheart and Oilcan Harry, took on serials and operetta, and lifted the whole concept to levels of hilarious absurdity. The use of music in these cartoons helps keep the action fast and lively. It takes Mighty Mouse three minutes to remember he has superpowers; if that doesn’t seem all that long, keep in mind that’s half the cartoon. These cartoons may very well represent the pinnacle of Terrytoons’s output.

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Mickey’s Mechanical Man (1933)

MICKEY’S MECHANICAL MAN (1933)
Animated cartoon
Article 3180 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-27-2010
Posting Date: 4-29-2010
Director Unknown
Featuring the voices of Walt Disney and Marcellite Garner
Country: USA
What it is: Animated robot boxer short

Mickey is training a robot to battle a gorilla in the boxing ring. Complications ensue when he discovers that Minnie’s car horn drives the robot bonkers.

From this cartoon as well as THE ROBOT, I’ve come to the conclusion that boxing robots have been around (as an idea) for ages. As usual, this one is very well animated, but you’ll find the story utterly predictable; once you see how the robot reacts to Minnie’s car horn, you’ll know exactly how this short will play out. Still, how often do you get to see robots battling gorillas? Okay, there’s KING KONG ESCAPES, but it’s admittedly a rare notion.

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One Arabian Night (1920)

ONE ARABIAN NIGHT (1920)
aka Sumurun
Article 3179 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-26-2010
Posting Date: 4-28-2010
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Featuring Ernst Lubitsch, Pola Negri, Paul Wegener
Country: Germany
What it is: Arabian Nights epic

The beautiful favorite wife of a sheik is secretly in love with a handsome merchant. She hatches a plan to find another woman more beautiful than herself to lure the sheik into picking a new favorite wife, thereby leaving her free to pursue her affair. However, the woman she finds is a wild and unpredictable gypsy woman who is loved unrequitedly by a hunchback. Complications ensue.

The only fantastic content in this Arabian Nights story is the presence of a hunchback; other than that, the only reason I can think that this movie would qualify is by association, since many other Arabian Nights stories have more fantastic elements. Of the Lubitsch films I’ve seen for this series, this is my second favorite, but you must bear in mind that two of the others I’ve seen (THE EYES OF THE MUMMY and THAT LADY IN ERMINE) are considered his weakest movies, and this one is considered just a hair better. Lubitsch himself was extremely disappointed by his own performance as the hunchback here, and it was his last acting role. I quite liked the movie, though it is admittedly over the top, but the energy is very high, and it manages to tell its complicated story with verve and clarity. Much of the story is comedic, though it takes some tragic turns towards the end. Pola Negri is definitely memorable as the wild gypsy woman, and Paul Wegener shows up as the jealous sheik. My favorite story thread has the hunchback seeking solace from his pain by imbibing of a drug that puts him into a deathlike state, only to have his supine body embark on a series of unexpected adventures when it is stolen by thieves that mistake it for booty.

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The Robber Symphony (1936)

THE ROBBER SYMPHONY (1936)
Article 3178 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-25-2010
Posting Date: 4-27-2010
Directed by Fredrich Feher
Featuring Hans Feher, Magda Sonja, George Graves
Country: UK
What it is: Surreal crime musical?

A bag of loot is stashed in a piano that belongs to a family of traveling entertainers. A gang of robbers tries to get the loot back, and though they kidnap two members of the troop, the third, a young boy, has run off with the piano.

“The Motion Picture Guide” classifies this movie as a fantasy, but whether this movie actually belongs to that classification is a difficult thing to settle. A straightforward discussion of the plot yields little to qualify that classification, but the style in which the movie is shot is determinedly non-realistic, what with its surreal images (an orchestra made up of mustachioed men in bowlers is one touch) and it’s various cinematic techniques (lots of fast motion photography and the occasional moments in which the film is run backwards) tend to give us the feeling that this takes place in another world entirely. Apparently, English and French versions of the movie were made, but the movie tries as much as possible to rely on visuals and music to tell the story (in fact, the credits do not speak of the movie of having been directed but of having been “composed”) that the language is almost secondary; in fact there are moments where the talking is more for the sound of what’s being said rather than for the substance of it. All around, this is one strange and unique movie, sometimes confusing, but made with energy and wit. Director Friedrich Feher appears as an actor in THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, and uncredited co-producer Robert Wiene directed that silent classic, so this should give you a bit of an idea of what you’re getting into here.

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The Pit and the Pendulum (1913)

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1913)
Article 3177 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-24-2010
Posting Date: 4-26-2010
Directed by Alice Guy
Featuring Darwin Karr, Fraunie Fraunholz, Blanche Cornwall
Country: USA
What it is: Fragment of a Poe adaptation

A thwarted suitor joins the Inquisition to get revenge on a romantic rival.

The only copy I’ve been able to find of this movie is a seven-minute one on Yahoo video, and I suspect it’s only a fragment. It sets up a backstory in which a man is framed for the theft by sorcery of church property, and given that this is discovered by the Inquisition, this no doubt leads to the man being tortured in the method described by the Poe story. The movie cuts off just as the the man is framed for the theft, which makes me suspect that this is just a fragment. I suppose this shouldn’t count, but it’s late at night and I don’t have time to watch another movie, so I’ll beg your indulgence on this one.

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Le voyage imaginaire (1925)

LE VOYAGE IMAGINAIRE (1925)
aka The Imaginary Voyage
Article 3176 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-23-2010
Posting Date: 4-25-2010
Directed by Rene Clair
Featuring Dolly Davis, Jean Borlin, Albert Prejean
Country: France
What it is: Surreal fantasy/comedy

A timid bank clerk tries to win the heart of a female co-worker, but finds himself at odds with two other co-workers who also try to win her attention. He enters into a dream world where he must learn to overcome his timidity to win her.

Some of the above plot description may be a little inaccurate, since my copy of this silent movie only had Italian title cards, but I don’t think I’m far off the mark. The fantasy sequence that makes up most of the film, with the sequences in which our hero enters the underworld and transforms some old crones into beautiful women and the one in the wax museum where the figures come to life being the high points of the movie. This being a Rene Clair movie, it has that lightness that keeps the fantasy sequences from getting heavy handed; I find it rather fitting that one of the heroes of the wax museum sequence is a Charlie Chaplin figure come to life. There’s a bizarre alligator creature that eats clothes, a man in a cat costume, the transformation of a woman into a mouse and a man into a dog. It’s all very indescribable, but likable in its own way.

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The Singing Princess (1949)

THE SINGING PRINCESS (1949)
aka La rosa di Bagdad
Article 3175 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-22-2010
Posting Date: 4-24-2010
Directed by Anton Gino Domenighini
Featuring the voices of Julie Andrews, Patricia Hayes, Stephen Jack
Country: Italy
What it is: Animated Arabian Nights story

The beautiful princess Zeila becomes the amorous target of the corrupt Sheikh Jafar, who uses a magician named Burk to cast a spell over her. Only her childhood friend Amin can save her.

If you do a chronological sort on the movies of Julie Andrews on IMDB, you may be startled to find that her first movie was this animated fantasy from Italy made in the late forties; she would have been 14 years old when this one was made. However, if you pay attention to the opening credits, you will see the copyright for the English version is much later – 1967; this was obviously not her first film. I can’t help but notice that several of the user comments on IMDB fail to take this into account. The movie makes a lot of fuss about her involvement here; it stars “the magical voice of Julie Andrews”, but, truth to tell, the semi-operatic tunes she warbles here just aren’t very memorable. The animation is obviously modeled off of the work of Disney, and even if it doesn’t flow as well, it does seem to have a rhythm all its own. The story itself is a variation of Aladdin, with the genie from that story making an appearance late in the movie. The English version isn’t done with a lot of care; the syncing is off, and there are moments where characters speak with no voices coming out at all. This makes for a very uneven viewing experience, but there are some neat moments in the story; I love a creatively staged dance with three snakes, and Amin’s final confrontation with the evil magician is a definite highlight.

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