Month: June 2019

Hansel and Gretel (1908)

HANSEL AND GRETEL (1908)
Article 3554 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-15-2011
Posting Date: 5-8-2011
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: Germany
What it is: Fairy tale

Two children get lost in the woods and encounter a witch who means to eat them.

With a running time of only three minutes, there’s really not a whole lot to say about this early short from Fita-Film. Still, I do admire sometimes how efficiently these early silents can tell familiar stories, and this one does a decent job of hitting the main points of the story and telling it clearly and concisely. It’s not a bad little silent short.

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The Feast of Satan (1971)

THE FEAST OF SATAN (1971)
aka Las amantes del diablo, Feast of the Devil
Article 3553 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-14-2011
Posting Date: 5-7-2011
Directed by Jose Maria Elorrieta
Featuring Espartaco Santoni, Krista Nell, Teresa Gimpera
Country: Spain / Italy
What it is: Mild devil worship movie

A woman is discovered in a state of near shock and with her hair turned white overnight. The woman is taken to a hospital, but disappears shortly afterwards. The woman’s sister decides to investigate her fate, and links her with a doctor who seems to have supernatural powers.

I have to admit that I found the first half of this movie rather confusing because several of the female characters had the same hair color and little in the way of differentiating physical traits to help me tell them apart; it’s a bit similar to the problems I have with a lot of B movies where all the males where identical suits and hats, and I always swore that if I ever directed a film, I would take special care to make sure that each member of my cast looked different enough from each other so that I wouldn’t cause viewers the same problem. Nevertheless, there were things about this movie that I quite liked; despite the fact that it was dealing with very similar and familiar situations (I don’t know how many movies I’ve seen where someone strikes out on their own to find out what happened to a relative only to run the risk of suffering the same fate), there was some quite interesting character touches that made me hope the movie would really go somewhere different. Unfortunately, the movie never really picks up a good head of steam, and the climax is surprisingly dull. In the end, it’s a movie that promises a lot more horror than it ever delivers.

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The Wailing (1981)

THE WAILING (1981)
aka Fear, Murder obsession(Follia omicida)
Article 3552 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-13-2011
Posting Date: 5-6-2011
Directed by Riccardo Freda
Featuring Stefano Patrizi, Martine Brochard, Henri Garcin
Country: Italy / France
What it is: A bit of a hodgepodge

An actor returns home to his mother for a visit. He is believed to have killed his father when he was in a trance, but he doesn’t remember it. He brings his girlfriend with him, and other friends of is show up. And then the murders start up…

There’s a lot of what you’d expect from an Italian horror movie of the period; there’s several nude scenes, hints of an incestuous relationship, some gory murders, and a mansion full of creepy rooms. The first half is rather dull, as it largely sets up one of those “psycho killers on the loose” plots, but the second half overloads this plot with other touches, throwing psychic powers, black magic, a RASHOMON-like “what really happened when the father died” subplot, and a bit of giallo into the mix. As such, the movie has a certain curiosity value, but it’s not particularly well done, and the extraneous and unnecessary plot elements make it come across as rather silly. It’s not awful, but it’s nothing to write home about either.

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Marie Chantal contre Dr. Kha (1965)

MARIE CHANTAL CONTRE DR. KHA (1965)
aka Marie Chantal vs. Dr. Kha, The Blue Panther
Article 3551 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-12-2011
Posting Date: 5-5-2011
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Featuring Marie Laforet, Francisco Rabal, Serge Reggiani
Country: Spain / France / Italy / Morocco
What it is: Spy comedy/thriller

An adventuress/sportswoman comes into possession of a brooch called the Blue Panther, and finds herself targeted by spies intent on getting their hands on the item.

I found this one was described as something of a James Bond style spy thriller, though the description doesn’t quite fit. This is not to say that it doesn’t borrow somewhat from those movies; we have a supervillain, eccentric henchmen (my favorite is the Russian spy who takes orders from his preteen child), and a certain amount of gadgetry on hand. But the central element – a superspy hero – is not present; Marie Chantal is not a spy, but just a woman who has gotten caught up in the espionage. Furthermore, the tone is markedly different from what we’d expect in a Bond film; in fact, if this movie is aiming for anything in particular, I think it’s charm, and for what it’s worth, it does have that, for I find the movie quite charming. This is not to say that the movie is totally successful; it’s a little too murky around the edges, and it’s not quite satisfying, especially near the ending, when the escape from the fortress of the supervillain occurs with far too much ease. Still, I really like Akim Tamiroff’s supervillain, Dr. Kha, a man of such sharp intelligence that he can predict what people are going to do. The reason he is foiled by Marie Chantal is because she is unpredictable. As heroine and villain, they’re a good match, and I actually feel kind of sad the that the sequel it sets itself up for at the end never materialized.

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The Living Idol (1957)

THE LIVING IDOL (1957)
Article 3550 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-11-2011
Posting Date: 5-4-2011
Directed by Rene Cardona and Albert Lewin
Featuring Steve Forrest, Lilane Montevecchi, James Robertson Justice
Country: USA / Mexico
What it is: Reincarnation and ancient curses

A young woman becomes the focus of a scientist fascinated by the history of human sacrifice who believes she might be the reincarnation of the victim of an ancient ritual involving sacrifice to a jaguar god… and he’s intent on testing his theory.

This movie sat on my hunt list for the longest time before a copy showed up. I’m very glad to have finally seen it; in some ways, it’s a variation on your basic “mad scientist” movie, only centered on reincarnation, superstition and ancient rituals. The end result is often fascinating; I’ve never really seen a story like this, and there are moments that are startlingly effective. Yet, for all that, the movie is a misfire; despite a fascinating story, it suffers from awkward and bizarre pacing, and its potentially scary scenes are badly ruined by an over-reliance on clumsy narration. I suspect that the problem may be that co-director Albert Lewin also wrote the novel on which the movie was based, and I found myself wondering if he just couldn’t let go of certain prose passages. Yet, between the fascinating characters and ideas, I firmly believe this could have been a classic. In my personal opinion, this is the type of movie that should be remade in the hopes that someone can circumvent the problems and make it work. As it is, I’m very glad to have seen it, but understand why the movie is rather difficult to find and appreciate.

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Genuine (1920)

GENUINE (1920)
Article 3549 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-10-2011
Posting Date: 5-3-2011
Directed by Robert Wiene
Featuring Fern Andro, Hans Heinrich von Twardwoski, Ernst Gronau
Country: Germany

A Lord keeps a dangerous wild woman locked up because of her destructive seductive powers over men. However, she escapes, and….

Robert Wiene is known primarily as the director of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. This movie is done in roughly the same style, which makes it at least visually of interest. However, I’m a little reticent at judging the movie based on the print I’ve seen, seeing as it is the 43-minute condensation of the movie; there are obviously scenes missing. Those expecting a conventional vampire will be disappointed; the title character is more of a vamp/femme fatale, which were commonly called vampires in that era. The story is muddled; why does the ring keep the servant in line? How did the barber’s son get away from Genuine? Just what powers does she have? The movie is never really clear about these, and overall it’s just not a very satisfying movie. Still, I think the skeleton clock is a nice piece of decor.

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Liebe, Tod und Teufel (1934)

LIEBE, TOD UND TEUFEL (1934)
aka Love, Death and the Devil
Article 3548 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-9-2011
Posting Date: 5-2-2011
Directed by Heinz Hilpert and Reinhart Steinbicker
Featuring Kathe von Nagy, Albin Skoda, Brigitte Horney
Country: Germany
What it is: Deal with the devil variation

A man buys a magic bottle that will grant him anything he wishes… but if he doesn’t sell it to someone for less than he paid, he will lose his soul.

I knew when I was going into this that I would be watching an unsubtitled German language film, so I was hoping to find a good plot description to help me sort it out. Alas, all I was able to find were some short plot descriptions with the above stated plot, but it’s not enough to sort out the subtleties of the story. I’m assuming that this is pretty late in the chain of affairs for this bottle, when the price is so low it would be next to impossible to sell the bottle for less. There’s some interesting scenes here and there that I’d like to find out more about; in particular, I wonder what the one man has on his back that frightens away his Oriental manservants. From what I can tell, the movie is mostly famous nowadays for having a classic song sung by Brigitte Horney.

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A Roadside Inn (1906)

A ROADSIDE INN (1906)
aka L’hotel des voyageurs de commerce
Article 3547 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-6-2011
Posting Date: 5-1-2011
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Minor Melies

Three pranksters invite a drunkard to spend a night in a room in a hotel so they can play jokes on him.

The primary joke involves a dummy dressed up to look like a ghost and run by strings; this is to frighten the drunkard. For a Melies film, this is singularly unambitious, though it does have a sort of split-screen effect with half of the screen in the bedroom and the other half out in the hall. Though the fantastic content involving the ghost is faked, the ending has a twist that moves it into the realm of fantasy, although I’m not sure of exactly what happened. As stated above, this is fairly minor entry in Melies’s oeuvre.

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