Month: January 2019

The Invisible Fluid (1908)

THE INVISIBLE FLUID (1908)
Article 3254 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-17-2010
Posting Date: 7-12-2010
Directed by Wallace McCutcheon
Featuring Edward Dillon,D.W. Griffith, Anthony O’Sullivan
Country: USA
What it is: A comic trick film

A messenger boy delivers a fluid that causes people and things to vanish. He decides to use it for his own amusement, eventually turning to crime.

This movie has been described as one of the first to use the concept of invisibility. I may be splitting hairs here, but it’s not, because it’s not about invisibility at all. Those doused with the fluid vanish, which isn’t the same thing as becoming invisible; if something is rendered invisible, it’s still there but not visible, and in this movie, the doused people and items vanish completely; i.e., they’re not there. It’s played for laughs; its best moment is towards the end when the messenger boy finds himself being chased by a mob of angry people, and, tired of running, he makes the only defense he can. It’s mildly amusing, but let’s face it; the tricks here are pretty simple in comparison to some of the things Melies was doing at the time.

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The Queen of Spades (1916)

THE QUEEN OF SPADES (1916)
aka Pikovaya dama
Article 3253 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-16-2010
Posting Date: 7-11-2010
Directed by Yakov Protazanov
Featuring Tamara Duvan, Ivan Mozzhukhin, Vera Orlova
Country: Russia
What it is: Ghost revenge story

A poor soldier, obsessed with gambling but unable to do so due to lack of funds, becomes intent on learning the secret of a countess who knows a secret three-card combination that can make him rich.

Though I don’t think it’s as impressive as the British version of the story from the late forties, this Russian silent film is still quite useful, as it emphasizes other story details that are often overlooked in other versions. In particular, it gives us a much more elaborate backstory for the countess; the first third of the move involves the circumstances surrounding her discovery of the secret. It deemphasizes the soldier’s relationship with the countess’s ward (a ruse designed by the soldier to give him access to the countess), it clarifies some of the plot points, and it stretches out the climax by having the three cards played in succession over three nights. Somehow, these changes make this version of more interest than it would be otherwise. I haven’t read the original Pushkin story yet (though I do have a copy), so I wonder how closely it follows it. At any rate, I found this silent version quite watchable, though it lacks the eerie strengths of the British version.

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Yotsuya Kaidan Part II (1949)

YOTSUYA KAIDAN PART II (1949)
aka The Ghost of Yotsuya Part II
Article 3252 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-15-2010
Posting Date: 7-10-2010
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Featuring Ken Uehara, Kinuyo Tanaka, Keiji Sada
Country: Japan
What it is: Almost a ghost story

Torn by guilt and hounded by a blackmailer, the man who killed his wife finds himself haunted by her ghost… or could he be going mad?

This is the part of the story where the horror manifests itself, but the movie appears to have taken the tack that the ghost is not real per se, but a reflection of the husband’s guilt. In other words, we’re dealing not with the supernatural but with the descent into madness. This might be all well and good if my copy was in English or I understood Japanese, but since neither is the case, I’m mostly stuck with trying to read between the lines of long conversations. Personally, I think horror fans will get much more satisfaction out of the 1956 version. Still, there are interesting touches here; I like the movie’s interest in doors (there are a lot of scenes involving them, enough so I did notice it), and one of the eerier moments is when a wood platform seemingly changes its direction in the water of its own accord. I did a little hunting around and found some plot descriptions that helped a little; much of the talk involves a blackmail scheme against the murderer, continued investigations on the wife’s disappearance, and the involvement of a man who was forced to help hide the bodies.

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Yotsuya Kaidan (1949)

YOTSUYA KAIDAN (1949)
aka The Ghost of Yotsuya
Article 3251 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-14-2010
Posting Date: 7-9-2010
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Featuring Kinuyo Tanaka, Ken Uehara, Haruko Sugimura
Country: Japan
What it is: Part of a Japanese ghost story

A man, hoping to end his financial troubles, is tempted to have his current wife murdered so he can marry into a rich family.

I almost sat through both parts of this movie in one sitting before it occurred to me to check if IMDB split it into two movies, and, lo and behold, they did. Since I use IMDB as my guide in such matters, I decided I would review each movie separately and write separate reviews. Though this puts me in the somewhat awkward position of reviewing only half of a story, that’s not the biggest problem I have here, since it’s another case where I’m watching a movie in a foreign language without English subtitles. Still, I wasn’t totally lost; I’ve seen two other versions of this story, so I know the basic gist of the story. This first half ends with the murder of the wife, so this half really ends before the fantastic content really sets in, though the death of the wife through a deforming poison is certainly on the horrific side. There are some interesting visual touches, but since ninety percent of the movie is involved with the various plot elements that require talking, it’s really not that engaging when watched without understanding the language. It’s also much less explicit than the other versions I’ve seen; you never get a clear look at the wife’s deformity, because the moments it’s on display are pretty fleeting.

Still, I bet no one will be surprised what tomorrow’s movie will be now.

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Superman II (1980)

SUPERMAN II (1980)
Article 3250 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-13-2010
Posting Date: 7-8-2010
Directed by Rchard Lester and Richard Donner
Featuring Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty
Country: UK
What it is: Superhero sequel

Superman must contend with the plottings of Lex Luthor as well as a trio of criminals who come from the planet Krypton, meaning they have the same superpowers as he does.

As I remember it, this movie had a very high reputation at the time it came out, and I think a lot of critics considered it superior to the first movie. I was more than a little surprised to see its rating on IMDB at 6.7; that’s not a bad rating, mind you, but it’s rather low for a movie that had the reputation of being a real classic. This was one I remember going to see in theaters when it was out (I never saw the original movie until many years later) in the hope that it would prove to be as fun and memorable as STAR WARS had been for me. I remember walking out of the theater disappointed; for me, the magic just wasn’t there.

Watching it again after all these years, I feel better able to express why I was disappointed. I wanted a serious take on the character and the story, not the part camp/part comic take that this movie mostly aspires to. I wanted a Lex Luthor that would prove an intimidating and real menace to the man of steel, not the egotistical buffoon we get here. There are some things I like in this movie; Christopher Reeve does a fine job, especially in the role of Clark Kent. Terence Stamp practically steals the movie as General Zod, though it should be pointed that he has one advantage in that he’s playing a character that I had no preconceptions about. I also find the performances very good, including Gene Hackman’s if I consider that he was playing the part as written rather than I would have liked it to have been written. My problems are with the script; I dislike the general air of campiness that undermines my ability to take the movie seriously. The plot moments I dislike the most are the petty revenge at the diner near the end of the movie, and (especially) the contrived situation whereby Superman is supposed to lose his powers permanently; you know this type of plot point is going to prove to be a cheat, and sure enough, it does.

For me, the saddest thing about my first viewing experience with this movie is that I mistook my dislike for this movie in particular to mean that I disliked the whole superhero genre in general. I now know that is not true, but it took me years to discover that. Fortunately, there’s still time give the whole genre that second chance.

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Soylent Green (1973)

SOYLENT GREEN (1973)
Article 3249 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-12-2010
Posting Date: 7-7-2010
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Featuring Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors
Country: USA
What it is: Seventies dystopian science fiction

In the overpopulated future, a policeman investigates the murder of a rich businessman. The policeman believes the murder was an assassination by a gang of conspirators who considered the businessman an undependable risk who might reveal secrets about a food manufacturing plant.

In one sense, this movie reminds me of PSYCHO; both movies are somewhat compromised by the fact that practically everybody knows what the big plot twists are, so the movies can’t really surprise you in that regard anymore. Still, the big end revelation is merely the movie at its most melodramatic and sensational; the movie also makes its points in much subtler ways, and for me, the real heart of the movie is that it uses the basic conspiracy investigation plot structure as a springboard for scenes in which we explore the impact of overpopulation. The movie is a touchstone for seventies dystopian SF, and it marks the third of the three science fiction movies for which Charlton Heston is most remembered for, the other two being PLANET OF THE APES and THE OMEGA MAN. Though Heston may be the protagonist here, the movie is stolen by Edward G. Robinson as the aging book who assists Heston and who remembers the good old days before overpopulation; Robinson’s reactions to rediscovering the pleasures of eating real food are priceless. The movie’s high point is the scene where Robinson “goes home”; this was Robinson’s last movie, and I can’t think of a single actor whose final scene was as immensely moving as Robinson’s is here. The movie also features a Whit Bissell in a cameo as the governor who has a hand in the conspiracy.

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Satan’s Slave (1976)

SATAN’S SLAVE (1976)
aka Evil Heritage
Article 3248 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-11-2010
Posting Date: 7-6-2010
Directed by Norman J. Warren
Featuring Michael Gough, Martin Potter, Candace Glendenning
Country: UK
What it is: Devil worship/terrorized woman movie

A woman goes with her parents to visit an uncle she hasn’t seen in ages. When the parents die in a mysterious car accident, she is taken care of by the uncle and his son. Unfortunately, they have ulterior designs on the woman…

The first scene establishes there’s some devil worship going on. The second establishes that the son is a sadistic sexual deviant. The strange car accident establishes that something mysterious is going on. After these three scenes, we pretty much have the central situation set up, and, truth to tell, there’s not a whole lot of mystery about what sort of horror the woman is going to have to face before it’s all through. Still, there’s an awful lot of running time to fill up, so how does the movie fill it? Well, like so many bad movies of this sort, it fills it up with vagueness; we get lots of dropped hints about what’s going on, a romantic triangle subplot involving one of those characters who only exists in a movie like this to give the villains someone to kill, and lots of uninteresting chatter. If the goings-on were truly mysterious, this might work; unfortunately, since you have a good idea early on where the movie is going, the vagueness becomes more infuriating than compelling. Combine this with deliberate pacing, a misplaced emphasis on subtlety, dull direction, and an unexciting score, and you have one of the duller stretches of cinema that I’ve sat through. Even the scenes of gore and sex that pop up feel too detached to have any real power. Good touches here and there help, but even these don’t really lead anywhere new. All in all, this is one dull exercise in horror.

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New Year’s Evil (1980)

NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980)
Article 3247 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-10-2010
Posting Date: 7-5-2010
Directed by Emmett Alston
Featuring Roz Kelly, Kip Niven, Chris Wallace
Country: USA
What it is: Anemic slasher flick

A female DJ hosting a punk/new wave radio show on New Year’s Eve gets calls from a psycho named Evil who claims he’s going to kill someone at midnight for every time zone. The police believe that he intends the DJ to be the final victim.

How authentically punk/new wave is this movie? Well, at one point, we see a punkish musician stick his tongue out to the camera while the music the band is playing sounds like a guitar jam from the Allman Brothers. Later on, when a policeman addresses a crowd of angry punkers on a dance floor, one of the infuriated punks yells “Shut up!” Conclusion: if this was what punk was all about, it was a pretty feeble movement. Fortunately, I’m familiar enough with punk music to know it wasn’t feeble; it’s this movie that’s feeble. Gorehounds in particular will be disappointed; the movie actually gets less and less bloody as it goes along, and ends up feeling more like a police/crime movie than a horror thriller in the final reels. There’s a couple of interesting moments, but a plethora of stupid ones as well, and you’ll see the final twist coming a mile away. This is not one of the high points of the slasher genre.

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Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride (1973)

COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE (1973)
aka The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Article 3246 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-9-2010
Posting Date: 7-4-2010
Directed by Alan Gibson
Featuring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Coles
Country: UK
What it is: Updated Vampire mayhem

A group of four VIPs are photographed taking part in Satanic rituals with a fifth unknown person. One of the VIPs is a scientist who develops a deadly strain of bubonic plague. Could Dracula be behind it all?

With this movie I finish off Hammer’s Dracula series, and the only reason I can’t say that it couldn’t have ended on a stranger note is that THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES was just around the corner. Still, this movie is a pretty odd amalgam at that; in fact, if it weren’t for the vampirism touches, this feels more like a Fu Manchu movie than a Dracula movie. In the end, I don’t know why Dracula needs both Satanic rituals AND a deadly bubonic plague virus to spread his evil, and the movie has that “everything but the kitchen sink” air about it. I do get the sense that they were starting to scrape the bottom of the “how to kill the vampire” barrel here, with a hawthorn tree and an indoor sprinkler system called into play to defeat the vampires. Dracula himself comes across as more of a super-villain rather than a creature of ancient evil, and the movie never really gels. Still, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are very good as usual, and despite the silliness factor the movie is entertaining enough.

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The Road Warrior (1981)

THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981)
aka Mad Max 2
Article 3245 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-8-2010
Posting Date: 7-3-2010
Directed by George Miller
Featuring Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston
Country: Australia
What it is: After-the-Apocalypse action flick

It’s after the apocalypse. A loner on the search for gasoline comes upon a compound that refines it, but the compound is under siege by a gang of punks led by a masked figure known as Humungus. The loner finds himself drawn into the struggle for the gasoline…

I’m not a fan of action movies; if the story, characters or humor don’t interest me, I don’t care how many car crashes and explosions they throw into the mix. So when I say this is one of my favorites of the genre, it says something about how well it’s put together. The characters are interesting, compelling and fun; outside of tortured loner Max, we have Bruce Spence’s gangly Gyro Captain, the willful Feral Kid, the more-animal-than-man mohawk-styled Wez, the leader of the pack known as Humungus (I really wonder if he would have spared the lives of the people in the compound if they had walked away from the fuel), not to mention the well-defined characters in the compound itself. Furthermore, the action sequences are to-the-point and tied to the story; for example, there are only two explosions in the movie, and they are both important to the story and not just there for show. Great little touches abound; I like the scene with Max, the Feral Kid and the music box, the first meeting with the Gyro Captain, and the clever (and very logical) twist at the end of the movie when it looks as if the mission has failed. This movie proved to be extremely popular and inspired many imitations; in fact, it became the template for after-the-apocalypse movies for years to come, though I’ve never seen one that did it better. Highly recommended.

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