Month: February 2019

Free For All (1949)

FREE FOR ALL (1949)
Article 3353 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-4-2010
Posting Date: 10-19-2010
Directed by Charles Barton
Featuring Robert Cummings, Ann Blyth, Percy Kilbride
Country: USA
What it is: Inventor comedy

An inventor concocts a pill that can turn water into gasoline.

This one fell off of my hunt list some time ago, but someone pointed me in the direction of a copy, so I’m glad to finally review it. Yet, now having seen it, I really don’t have a lot to say about it. It’s a middling-to-fair comedy about an man who invents a pill that converts water into gasoline, and his run-in with an oil company who fears it will put them out of business and try to get the formula for themselves. It has some satirical possibilities, but the movie doesn’t really explore them, settling instead for hackneyed situations and forced contrivances. Still, it’s fun to see Percy Kilbride in something other than his Ma and Pa Kettle comedies, and the cast also features Percy Helton and Ray Collins.

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Gargoyles (1972)

GARGOYLES (1972)
TV-Movie
Article 3352 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-3-2010
Posting Date: 10-18-2010
Directed by Bill L. Norton
Featuring Cornel Wilde, Jennifer Salt, Grayson Hall
Country: USA
What it is: Monster movie

A skeptical writer and his daughter encounter a race of gargoyles, evil minions of the devil who want to take over the world.

I remember seeing the promos for this one on TV as a kid, and thinking how cool it was that a TV-Movie was going to be full of monsters. Of course, not having any control over the TV in my house, I missed the movie, and it’s only now, almost forty years later that I’ve gotten to see it. I would have loved it without reservations had I seen it back then; the monsters are great, you see them quite a lot, and even the somewhat arty jerky-slow-motion photography they use in the action sequences manages to keep from being annoying. As an adult, I still think the monsters are cool, but I have reservations on the movie as a whole. I found the script, direction and acting all rather weak; the scene where the writer and his daughter meet the desert rat is in particular badly written and awkwardly paced. My guess is that most of the budget on this movie went into the monsters, and the rest of the movie was given short shrift. I think it’s a bit of shame they couldn’t come up with a story that was worthy of the monster costumes. Oddly enough, it’s one of those genre TV-Movies that doesn’t feel like it was designed to launch a TV-Series. Overall, though, the great monster costumes and makeup still make this one fairly enjoyable.

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Funeral Home (1980)

FUNERAL HOME (1980)
aka Cries in the Night
Article 3351 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-2-2010
Posting Date: 10-17-2010
Directed by William Fruet
Featuring Kay Hawtrey, Lesleh Donaldson, Barry Morse
Country: Canada
What it is: Secret in the cellar story

A young woman helps her grandmother run a bed and breakfast which used to be a funeral home before her grandfather disappeared. However, more people start disappearing… and who is that person grandmother is secretly talking to in the cellar?

Well, despite the era it was made, it’s not a slasher movie; it’s more of a “house with a sinister secret” type of movie, and there isn’t an emphasis on gore. The movie’s not bad, but it’s no better than adequate. The movie builds its story around a twist that has been used before by a much better and more famous movie, and I’ll give the movie some credit for only borrowing the twist and not the whole structure of its inspiration. However, it fails to come up with a really strong story, either; it merely sets things up for the final twist, and you should be able to figure out what it’s going to be before we get there. The movie is slightly padded to get it up to running length, so certain scenes seem pointless; the sequence near the beginning where the young woman has an encounter with a black cat seems to imply that superstition will play into the story, but nothing comes of it. It’s watchable, but uninspired.

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Frankenstein: The True Story (1973)

FRANKENSTEIN: THE TRUE STORY (1973)
TV-Movie
Article 3350 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-1-2010
Posting Date: 10-16-2010
Directed by Jack Smight
Featuring James Mason, Leonard Whiting, David McCallum
Country: USA
What it is: Another take on the Frankenstein story

Dr. Frankenstein, distraught at the death of his brother, combines forces with Dr. Clerval to create life.

I wonder what they mean by “The True Story”; since the Frankenstein story is a piece of fiction, it seems rather silly to call any version the “True Story”. I assumed that it meant they were going to try to tell a faithful version of the original novel, but the story here is no more faithful to Shelley’s work than most of the other versions I’ve seen. So let’s just take it as another variation on the story and go from there.

Taken as such, it’s not a bad attempt at the story; it has some interesting characters and performances and finds some novel variations on the concepts. Most of the performances are quite good, though I’m particularly partial to James Mason and David McCallum here; the latter may be giving the best performance I’ve ever seen from him. Still, there’s some moments here that fall flat; for example, I find Elizabeth’s cowering in fear from the “evil” butterfly to be singularly silly. I also find the portrayal of the monster rather inconsistent, sometimes seeming to be fairly coherent and at other times mouthing the same three words over and over – beautiful, Victor and Figaro. I also find the character of Elizabeth unbelievable, especially when she takes on the role of Victor’s conscience. It’s fairly bloody for a TV-Movie, and the scene where Clerval pours acid on a crawling arm is fairly shocking. At three hours, it’s a fairly daunting watch, but I think it was originally shown over a two-night period. And I do think that overall the movie does an interesting job of putting together pieces from the various versions of the story in a new way.

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The Mermaid (1965)

THE MERMAID (1965)
aka Yu mei ren
Article 3349 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-31-2010
Posting Date: 10-15-2010
Directed by Li Kao
Featuring Ching Lee, Ivy Ling Po, Yunhua Chen
Country: Hong Kong
What it is: Fantasy musical

A scholar is the promised husband to the daughter of a prime minister, but the scholar’s lack of money make him an undesirable choice. However, a beautiful carp spirit who lives in the pond has fallen in love with the scholar, and takes on the form of the prime minister’s daughter to pursue her romance. Complications follow.

There’s always something adventurous in exploring a genre you’ve never encountered before; this is the first Hong Kong musical I’ve encountered. Thankfully, the movie was subtitled in English, else I would have had a very difficult time following it. Though most of the subtitles are for lyrics to Chinese songs which simply don’t translate elegantly into other languages, the plot itself is fairly clear. The movie is imaginative, romantic, comic and exciting at different moments; it’s certainly different than anything else I’ve seen from the Shaw Brothers. Ultimately, the movie charmed me; the simplicity of the story helped me to deal with the more difficult and exotic aspects of the production. I don’t know how many more movies like this I’m going to see, but I suspect that this is a good introduction to the form.

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The Eyes Behind the Stars (1978)

THE EYES BEHIND THE STARS (1978)
aka Occhi dalle stelle
Article 3348 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-29-2010
Posting Date: 10-14-2010
Directed by Mario Gariazzo
Featuring Robert Hoffmann, Nathalie Delon, Martin Balsam
Country: Italy
What it is: UFO conspiracy movie

A photographer and a model encounter UFOs and are kidnapped. Reporters and police investigate. A secret group tries to cover up the story.

I like the title; it has a nice poetic feel to it. It’s a pity that the movie itself is a dull and tired affair. It’s one of those movies that I like to place in a special subset of science fiction movies that are primarily of interest to those who firmly believe that we have been visited by UFOs constantly over the last fifty years but, due to a government conspiracy, all knowledge has been suppressed. This movie is pretty much a sop to that outlook, and the minute the brutal cover-up group known as the Silencers shows up, I saw this turning into a typical conspiracy thriller with the usual ending, and that’s just what it is. I’d say the movie is a downer, except saying that would imply that the movie engaged you enough to get you emotionally involved in the first place, and such is not the case. There are much better UFO and conspiracy movies out there.

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The Evictors (1979)

THE EVICTORS (1979)
Article 3347 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-28-2010
Posting Date: 10-13-2010
Directed by Charles B. Pierce
Featuring Vic Morrow, Michael Parks, Jessica Harper
Country: USA
What it is: Horror thriller

During World War II, a young couple moves to a farmhouse in Louisiana so that the man will have a job that will make him too valuable domestically to be drafted. However, the house has a history of violent death somehow tied to an eviction fourteen years earlier that turned violent.

I don’t mind the deliberate pacing of this horror thriller, though a horror movie that goes on for almost twenty-five minutes before it even hints that it may be a horror movie is bound to turn off some people. I also really like the strong period and regional flavor of the movie. And, as a thriller, it works well enough for most of the movie. The movie loses steam near the end, though, as it starts relying on plot twists that tie the action to the somewhat muddled and confusing opening eviction sequence. Then it tries for one final twist which is especially hard to swallow, partially because there’s no logical reason for it and partially because it’s hard to believe that someone would go for nineteen years without replacing a broken pair of reading glasses. It’s supposedly based on a true story, but count me among the dubious.

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The Elephant Man (1980)

THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980)
Article 3346 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-27-2010
Posting Date: 10-12-2010
Directed by David Lynch
Featuring Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft
Country: USA
What it is: Biography of a deformed man

A noted doctor rescues a hideously deformed man from a freak show. But can this man ever hope to have a normal life in his new environment?

This is one of those movies that always brings tears to my eyes when I watch it. Granted, that’s one of the intentions of the movie, and occasionally it tries a little too hard to jerk the tears; there’s a number of lines and moments that would benefit from a bit of rewriting and careful pruning. Yet these moments don’t damage the movie as a whole because there’s something so compelling in the way that the movie tries to get us to understand and empathize with John Merrick and what his life must be like having been born with such extreme deformities. It makes sense that he might himself weep when the doctor’s wife treats him with courtesy; the idea that a pretty woman might treat him this way after all the others have run away screaming may be unthinkable to him. No, the movie doesn’t turn away from the darkness or difficulties; we have moments where the doctor ponders his own morality in his use of John Merrick, and even when the actress visits Merrick, there is a real awkwardness to the meeting that makes one wonder whether the she herself is questioning her own motives. And the lower class exploiters (Bytes and the night porter) are never very far away. Mel Brooks of all people was an executive producer, albeit uncredited, and this would be the second full-length movie made by cult director David Lynch; it would prove to be one of the real anomalies in his oeuvre.

As a final note, I always found it interesting that the stage production Merrick attends near the end of the movie seemed more like a compendium of special effects than a real-life stage production. It was only watching it this time that I realized that we were seeing it through Merrick’s eyes, and it made me wonder what it would have been like had I never seen a movie in my life but was then allowed to see one and only one; I wonder how my memory would have recorded that experience.

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Dr. Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo (1972)

DR. JEKYLL Y EL HOMBRE LOBO (1972)
aka Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf
Article 3345 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-27-2010
Posting Date: 10-11-2010
Directed by Leon Klimovsky
Featuring Paul Naschy, Shirley Corrigan, Jack Taylor
Country: Spain
What it is: Monster mash

When an English couple visits Transylvania, the husband is killed by thugs, but the wife is saved by Waldemar Daninsky. She takes him to England to cure him of his lycanthropy… to a certain Dr. Jekyll.

It’s a good thing Paul Naschy’s sincere love of the classic monsters counts for a lot; otherwise, there wouldn’t be a lot to recommend in this somewhat stolid and muddled compendium of horror cliches mixed with bizarre plot elements and an eye towards exploitation. Some of the plot elements are real head-scratchers; if someone out there can logically explain why turning Waldemar into Mr. Hyde will cure him of his lycanthropy, I’d love to hear it. As usual, Naschy gets to play both hero and monster, with the real villains of the movie being some boorish villagers and Dr. Jekyll’s insanely jealous (and just plain insane) girlfriend. Still, some good ideas pop up; I like the concept that one of the rampages occurs because Waldemar is caught in a malfunctioning elevator for a long period of time. Still, I’m willing to bet the original language version is better than the dubbed one I’ve seen. Leon Klimovsky’s direction is pretty pedestrian, but I will have to admit having been totally blindsided by an unexpectedly arty transformation sequence near the end of the movie. This is not one of the better Waldemar Daninsky movies, but it’s not the worst either.

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Judex (1963)

JUDEX (1963)
Article 3344 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-25-2010
Posting Date: 10-10-2010
Directed by Georges Franju
Featuring Channing Pollock, Francine Berge, Edith Scob
Country: France / Italy
What it is: Crime drama

A corrupt banker is threatened by a mysterious figure of justice named Judex; he must either give his fortune away to those he cheated or die. When Judex seems to make good on his threat, a woman who was hoping to marry the banker seeks to get hold of papers the banker had been using for blackmail so that she can make a fortune. This puts the banker’s innocent daughter at risk. Will Judex be able to save her?

Not only was Georges Franju a fine filmmaker in his own right, he was also an archivist and a lover of classic cinema. This is his tribute to classic serial-maker Louis Feuillade; it’s an adaptation of Feuillade’s own 1916 serial JUDEX. I saw the Feuillade version seven years ago, and found it nearly impossible to follow because the subtitles were in untranslated French, so this version which tells pretty much the same story is a revelation. Still, it’s no wonder I was confused; since Judex employs tricks I would be more likely to expect from a Fantomas-style criminal, and the banker’s crimes were mostly talked about rather than shown, it was very difficult to sort the good guys from the bad guys. In its own right, this is a fine and entertaining adaptation; it perhaps relies overmuch on outrageous coincidence at times (and that applies equally well to Feuillade’s original serials), but it has a real sense of fun and there’s even a touch of lyricism to it as well; I particularly like the scene with the mysterious magician at the party. Like the original serial, the only fantastic content is a closed-circuit television unit used in the banker’s prison cell, which, since this adaptation also takes place in the same time period as the original serial, is a scientific anachronism.

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