Month: April 2019

The Seven Dwarfs to the Rescue (1951)

THE SEVEN DWARFS TO THE RESCUE (1951)
aka I sette nani alla riscossa
Article 3465 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-2-2010
Posting Date: 2-8-2011
Directed by Paolo William Tamburella
Featuring Rossana Podesta, Roberto Risco, Georges Marchal
Country: Italy
What it is: Fairy tale sequel

While Prince Charming is off to the wars, Snow White is kidnapped by the evil prince of darkness, who is intent on making her his queen. It’s up to the plucky seven dwarfs to come to her rescue.

Advance word has it that this particular children’s movie is the bottom of the barrel, the worst of the worst, so bad it’s funny, etc. Well, I’ve seen worse, including a few that don’t even have the excuse of having been dubbed into English from other languages. I’ve also seen bad children’s movies that have been funnier and weirder; practically anything from Mexico would fill the bill here. And though it’s been obviously shot with a badly undernourished budget, the movie does dredge up a bit of authentic (albeit austere) fairy tale atmosphere. Also, it has enough energy to keep you from nodding off. Its worst problems involve its attempts at humor; the comic antics of the seven dwarfs are terribly lame, and the jokes about Snow White’s fat nanny certainly don’t improve things. My question is – did they find time to come up names for all of the seven dwarfs? I only caught five myself; Mousey, Toto, Chubby, Andy and Nicky. Strangest sequence: the dwarfs fall into a trap that takes them underwater into a kingdom of water nymphs.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)

THE GHOST AND MR CHICKEN (1966)
Article 3464 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-31-2010
Posting Date: 2-7-2011
Directed by Alan Rafkin
Featuring Don Knotts, Joan Staley, Liam Redmond
Country: USA
What it is: Haunted house comedy

A timid typesetter, aspiring to become a reporter, agrees to spend the night in a mansion that was the site of murders several years ago, and is now believed to be haunted.

The idea of a comedy star appearing in a haunted house comedy was certainly nothing new at the time, and this could have easily ended up being just another in a long tradition. Fortunately, the movie foregoes the usual plot mechanisms of that type of movie and gears the story to take advantage of Don Knotts’s strengths. When his character makes an embarrassing mistake, it’s not for the sole purpose of getting a laugh, because the movie shows the repercussions of that embarrassment, and we feel his pain and frustration at his self-awareness, and this gets us emotionally attached to his character. The haunted house scene that is the centerpiece of the movie is fairly short; most of the movie deals with the fallout of the story of his stay, and the eventual need to prove to all concerned that what he experienced wasn’t merely the result of an overactive imagination. Overall, the story doesn’t really hold up, but when you get down to it, the story is merely a springboard to use the talents of Don Knotts, and he does his usual very good job.

1 CommentLeave a comment

Killah Priest (1977)

KILLAH PRIEST (1977)
aka Shao Lin zu shi, Killer Priest, Kung Fu Exorcist, Shaolin Tamo Buddhist Monk
Article 3463 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-29-2010
Posting Date: 2-6-2011
Directed by Fu Di Lin
Featuring Chin Hai Chen, Lei Chen, Sing Chen
Country: Hong Kong / Taiwan
What it is: Mystical martial arts mayhem

A doctor is suspicious of a Taoist priest who has come to his village to solve their drought by praying for rain. The priest is not to be trusted… but fortunately, a Buddhist monk shows up with the mission of making the doctor his pupil and teaching him the 18 styles of Shaolin kung fu.

This movie first entered my list under the title KUNG FU EXORCIST; it remained so elusive (partially because the original Chinese title was unknown) that I finally consigned it to my “ones that got away” list. However, doctor kiss recently passed on new information to me about the original Chinese title, and was able to point me in the direction of finding the movie under the other English title (under which it had a VHS release in this country) listed in the heading. I think this may prove to be my first real encounter with the whole Hong Kong Kung Fu genre, though INFRAMAN may also qualify, and my hats go off to the hardy souls who research these movies; my head was swimming just trying to match the movie credits on the actual print with those listed on IMDB, as the variant spellings of names are mind-bogglingly confusing.

Of course, there was no way this movie was going to live up to the KUNG FU EXORCIST title, but I didn’t expect it would. The main fantastic content is a revelation towards the end of the movie, but it could be argued that the whole thing is a fantasy as well. The martial arts sequences are almost giddily unrealistic; they’re thoroughly unconvincing while nonetheless remaining fascinating pieces of gymnastics and choreography. I don’t know how many of these movies I’m going to see, but I’m willing to bet there are as many conventions to the genre as there are for sword-and-sandal movies. If I do catch more of these, I wonder how often I’ll run into the phenomenon of Sound-Enhanced Gesturing; a lot of the training sequences involve people making gestures to vivid sound effects. There’s also lots of flips and tree-jumping.

I’m going to hold off on a critical evaluation; I suspect I’ll have to see more of these movies to gain a perspective. Nevertheless, this makes for an interesting introduction.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Catacombs (1965)

CATACOMBS (1965)
aka The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die
Article 3462 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-28-2010
Posting Date: 2-5-2011
Directed by Gordon Hessler
Featuring Gary Merrill, Georgina Cookson, Jane Merrow
Country: UK
What it is: Thriller

A man is stuck in an unhappy marriage with a rich but dominating woman. He hatches a plot with one of his wife’s business associates to kill her for the money. However, complications arise…

One of these days I’m tempted to make a list of the most imitated movies of all time, and on that list will appear a French thriller from the fifties that inspired a whole slew of imitations. Here’s another one of them, and once you recognize the pattern, there will be very little to surprise you plotwise here. However, it does get some points for interesting characters and the avoidance of stereotypes; Gary Merrill gives a strong performance that makes you feel just what it must be like to have to make love to a woman who repulses you, and Georgina Cookson’s domineering wife character has some really fascinating ways of wielding her power. This was also Gordon Hessler’s first movie as a director, and overall it holds up pretty well; it’s certainly easier to follow than some of his more famous movies. Not bad.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Wizard of Gore (1970)

THE WIZARD OF GORE (1970)
Article 3461 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-27-2010
Posting Date: 2-4-2011
Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis
Featuring Roy Sager, Judy Cler, Wayne Ratay
Country: USA
What it is: Gory head games

A magician named Montag the Magnificent performs extremely gory magical tricks on audience members; they leave the stage unharmed but later are found dead with their wounds intact. Could someone be stalking his volunteers and imitating the horrible tricks… or could it be Montag himself who is responsible?

Unless I’ve miscalculated, this should mark the end of my coverage of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s infamous gore movies from the sixties and seventies, though I’m probably not through with him yet; he has a few non-gore movies from the period that qualify, and he has resumed film-making in the last decade. This may be his most interesting movie since 2000 MANIACS, if for no other reason than the plot goes off into bizarre directions having to do with the nature of dreams and reality. Taking this into account, the bizarre jagged editing during the gore sequences actually contributes to a dreamlike atmosphere where you’re not supposed to be sure what the reality is. It’s almost as if he took the tacked-on ending concept for MONSTER A-GO GO and made a whole movie around it, one that would sustain the idea. Granted, the movie is still atrociously made; the acting is mostly abysmal, the pacing is bad, the sound is horrible…it’s the usual flaws you find in his movies. Furthermore, certain plot elements seem to promise revelations that never come; I’d like to know why Montag is stealing the corpses of the volunteers, but we never find out, and the movie even acknowledges that we don’t. Still, the movie does demonstrate that there was more to him than just the gore. Nevertheless, despite his positive qualities, I do find myself realizing that after I’ve seen each one of his gory movies, I really don’t have much motivation to watch any one of them again, which makes me suspect that his appeal will remain largely to gorehounds.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Whip Hand (1951)

THE WHIP HAND (1951)
Article 3460 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-26-2010
Posting Date: 2-3-2011
Directed by William Cameron Menzies
Featuring Carla Balenda, Elliott Reid, Edgar Barrier
Country: USA
What it is: Espionage thriller

A reporter on a fishing trip becomes suspicious of a small town and its secrets, and decides to investigate. And the rich eccentric on the outskirts of town has something to hide…

Of the three science fiction films made by William Cameron Menzies during the fifties, this is the least interesting, partially because the plot is pretty weak and partially because the fantastic content (a super-virus) is more of a Gizmo Maguffin than anything else. It does have an interesting history, though; IMDB lists that Bobby Watson (who made something of a career of playing Hitler) originally appeared in the movie, but his scenes were deleted. That’s because producer Howard Hughes decided that the original villains of the movie (Nazis) should be changed to communists to make it more relevant, and the movie was extensively reshot. The movie has an appropriate sense of paranoia, but it overuses it to the point that it gets fairly tiresome and starts to seem far-fetched. It also lacks the visual sense I usually associate with Menzies films. All in all, I found this one a disappointment.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The War of the Gargantuas (1966)

THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS (1966)
aka Furankenshutain no kaiju: Sanda tai Gaira
Article 3459 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-25-2010
Posting Date: 2-2-2011
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Featuring Russ Tamblyn, Kumi Mizuno, Kenji Sahara
Country: Japan
What it is: Giant monster movie

A human-shaped undersea creature is terrorizing boats on the ocean. Witnesses claim the monster is the one raised by scientists, but the scientists don’t believe it is the same creature. However, it turns out there are two creatures, one an evil clone of the other.

This is a sequel to FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD, but the American version of the movie obscures the connection. This was fairly easy to do; it looks as if between the two movies, the visual conception of the monster was radically changed, so the creature Sanda here bears little resemblance to the monster from the original movie. The earlier movie is largely dismissed as one of the weaker kaijus, but this one has a strong cult following and many choose it as their favorite Japanese monster movie. In some ways I can see why; Gailah the sea creature is one of the nastier kaiju monsters, if for no other reason than it explicitly eats people, something that is mostly implied for the other monsters. There’s some memorable scenes here; when Gailah takes a woman out of her apartment, we expect a KING KONG-like moment, but instead the monster eats her and spits out her clothing. Other memorable scenes; a laser attack on the monster destroys hundreds of trees, the good monster discovers the truth about the evil monster, and a lounge singer sings the unfortunate song “The Words get Stuck in my Throat”. In some ways, the fact that the monsters are humanoids helps the movie, as the battles are more lively than in some of the other kaijus. There’s also a bit of emotional resonance when we discover that the military plans to show little attempt to differentiate between the good and evil monsters, and will seek to destroy both. This is one of the more memorable kaijus out there.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Reborn (1981)

REBORN (1981)
Article 3458 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-24-2010
Posting Date: 2-1-2011
Directed by Bigas Luna
Featuring Dennis Hopper, Michael Moriarty, Antonella Murgia
Country: Spain / USA / Italy
What it is: Religious fantasy

A TV preacher / faith healer finds himself paired up with an Italian woman to make a countrywide tour. The woman’s healing powers are real, however, and when the man who brings her to America leaves her pregnant, complications arise.

This was one of those movies that, for most of its running time, had me wondering what the point of it was going to be. I didn’t get the gist of it until late in the movie, when the woman in question goes into labor and gives birth in a gas station; a decoration in the door of the station gave me the clue I needed, and though I haven’t sorted everything out with absolute clarity, I can say at the very least that this satire on faith healing is not the work of a skeptic, but of a believer. It was this clue, for example, that made me understand what the purpose of the mysterious helicopter was, and I’m actually quite taken by the realization of what it symbolized. My print runs only about 92 minutes, and the whole movie runs 105 minutes, so I’m probably missing something. The movie is often confusing, but it’s anchored by three fine performances; both Dennis Hopper and Antonella Murgia are very good, but Michael Moriarty really steals the movie with an unusual and offbeat role. One final note: since I don’t gear my watching system towards the holidays, it’s rare when I actually watch a movie that’s fitting for a holiday. This may be an exception; once you know what it’s about, it’s a fitting choice for Christmas Eve.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Dark (1979)

THE DARK (1979)
Article 3457 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-23-2010
Posting Date: 1-31-2011
Directed by John “Bud” Cardos and Tobe Hooper
Featuring William Devane, Cathy Lee Crosby, Richard Jaeckel
Country: USA
What it is: Extraterrestrial/zombie movie

Someone or something has been killing people nightly, and the police can’t capture it. A writer and a reporter team up to catch it.

The killer turns out to be an extraterrestrial, and that’s not a spoiler since it’s given away in the opening crawl. It also mentions it in the closing crawl. As for the rest of the movie, there’s a passing comment about it being an extraterrestrial, but that’s never really established anywhere else in the movie. Apparently, that’s because the monster was originally supposed to be a zombie, but the movie was so poorly received in that form that it was reedited to make it seem like an extraterrestrial instead. It apparently didn’t help; the movie has a fairly poor reputation, and I was expecting a truly horrible stinker. In truth, I found it tolerable; it’s not good, but the only thing that really annoyed me was that “scary” whispered voice that sounded like it was speaking Esperanto when it wasn’t saying “Darkness” over and over again. The monster costume was lame, but the movie mostly keeps it in the dark. Some of the dialogue is also quite silly. But I did like the odd touches to the plot enough that the movie never really got on my wrong side. By the way, Angelo Rossitto pops up once again as a newsboy, and on checking his info on IMDB, I just learned that he was born in Omaha, where I currently live.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Virus (1980)

VIRUS (1980)
aka Fukkatsu no hi
Article 3456 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-22-2010
Posting Date: 1-30-2011
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
Featuring Glenn Ford, Chuck Connors, Olivia Hussey
Country: Japan
What it is: Ambitious end of the world epic

A deadly biological weapon is unleashed that decimates the world. Soon, only a small group isolated in Antarctica is left alive to find a cure.

I’ve heard tell that the full version, which runs 156 minutes, is much better than the abbreviated 103 minute version I have. I’m willing to buy that; my version has a somewhat unfocused, rushed and confusing feel that could easily be the result of large chunks of footage having been cut. Still, the end result isn’t disastrous, and at about the halfway point a new development (involving an earthquake and an automatic missile launching system) gives the movie some much needed focus just when it needs it. I do like the international flavor of it; though it was a Japanese production, it uses actors of many countries and has a number of familiar faces; outside of those listed above, you’ll also see Henry Silva, Robert Vaughn, Sonny Chiba, Bo Svenson and Arthur Kennedy, just to name a few. Still, the movie proved to be a major flop, and given the ending, I’m not really surprised.

0 CommentsLeave a comment