THE MEATEATER (1979)
Article 3516 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-6-2011
Posting Date: 3-31-2011
Directed by Derek Savage
Featuring Arch Joboulian, Dianne Davis, Peter Spitzer
Country: USA
What it is: Regional horror film

A disgruntled shoe salesman buys a movie theater in a small town in the hope of making a living on it. However, there’s a secret resident in the theater – a badly burned former employee who eats rats and kills intruders.

This zero-budget regional horror has title theme music that sounds like a cross between “The Funeral March of the Marionettes” and the theme from “The Addams Family”, and this just made me wonder if the movie was intended as a comedy. In truth, it’s a little hard to tell. It’s never made clear, but the psycho may also be a cannibal. That might explain the movie’s obsession with food; it seems that a good seventy-five percent of the movie is obsessed with food, with cops chowing down while investigating murders, lots of scenes at the concession stand, talk about Jimmy Dean sausages and a family sing-along of the Oscar Mayer Wiener jingle. Not to mention that the movie they’re watching (GRIZZLY SAFARI, which is described on the marquee as “wholesome” and is supposed to be G-rated as the new owner promises the real estate agent) is mostly about animals killing and eating each other. The killer has an obsession with Jean Harlow; he runs silent films of the star during the theater’s off hours, and if you notice that the theater owner’s teenage daughter has a resemblance to Harlow, you’ll guess at least one plot development along the way. It’s certainly hard to take a movie seriously when one of the names of the characters is Lieutenant Wombat. The movie is bad, but weirdly engaging nonetheless, if for no other reason that the moments of weirdness make it a little hard to get one’s mind around it.

MARK OF THE WITCH (1970)
Article 3515 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-5-2011
Posting Date: 3-30-2011
Directed by Tom Moore
Featuring Robert Elston, Anitra Walsh, Darryl Wells
Country: USA
What it is: Resurrected witch tale

A group of students studying superstitious rites performs a ritual to resurrect a witch; though it appears not to have worked, one of them has in fact been possessed by a witch. The witch intends to revitalize her coven and take vengeance on the descendant of the man who betrayed her.

For about the first twenty minutes, the movie is little more than a predictable set of cliches, including the pre-credits sequence where the witch, just prior to being hanged, places a curse on her betrayer. It’s not until the witch is resurrected that the movie starts showing a bit of imagination by incorporating some interesting details in the story; I particularly like the fact that the witch doesn’t come into the present with the knowledge of how the modern world works. The movie also works itself up to an interesting and slightly different ending. It does have moments of silliness, but that’s no real surprise; the movie’s biggest problem is that its pace is just too leisurely to work up much in the way of suspense, and you never really get caught up in the story. That being said, the movie is better than I expected it would be.

THE MAN FROM 1997 (1956)
TV-Episode of “Conflict”
Article 3511 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-1-2011
Posting Date: 3-26-2011
Directed by Roy Del Ruth
Featuring Jacques Sernas, Gloria Talbott, Charles Ruggles
Country: USA
What it is: Fifties science fiction, TV style

An immigrant janitor stumbles upon an almanac from the year 1997 in a book shop, and believes he can win the woman of his dreams if he uses the information to make himself rich. However, there’s another man searching for the book, and he’s from the future…

I’m not quite sure if this TV episode really qualifies as a movie per se; it runs about fifty minutes without commercials. Nevertheless, it’s listed as one in the Willis guide, and so I’m covering it. Personally, I’m just glad I was able to find it. What caught my eye from the very start was seeing that it was based on a short story by Alfred Bester, one of my favorite science fiction authors and one who has rarely been adapted for the movies. I’d recently read a collection of his short stories, but I didn’t recognize the story until the twist near the end involving a dollar bill. The story is basically a fairly gentle science fiction fable, despite a subplot involving gangsters who are after the almanac; the main thrust of the story involves the man from the future trying to convince the immigrant to sell the almanac to him for a dollar in the hopes that he won’t try to use the information to make his fortune, a situation which doesn’t sit well the the immigrant’s prospective girlfriend. It’s a fun little story, and the cast also features James Garner in an early role. Incidentally, there may be an error in the IMDB listing for this episode; the character of “Man” is listed as having been played by an actor named Johnny Vlakoz, who has no other acting credits to his name, which doesn’t surprise me, since Johnny Vlakoz is actually the character name of the immigrant in the movie.