Month: November 2019

They Came to a City (1944)

THEY CAME TO A CITY (1944)
Article 3962 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-25-2012
Directed by Basil Dearden
Featuring John Clements, Googie Withers, Raymond Huntley
Country: UK
What it is: Utopian meditation

Several people from different walks of life are pulled together to visit a mysterious Utopian city.

This movie ended up on my “ones that got away” list, but it looks like I’ve been finally able to land a copy. It’s perhaps no surprise that this one was so hard to find; it’s a rather long-winded meditation on how various people would react if they encountered a Utopian world, hardly the type of subject that would be popular. I was originally tempted to describe it as a cross between OUTWARD BOUND and LOST HORIZON, but I don’t think the latter movie is really a good comparison; unlike that movie, this one doesn’t make any attempt to describe or portray the Utopia, and we only get vague second-hand details from those who have seen it. Unfortunately, this tends to make the movie feel like what it is – a speculative mental game often given to obvious contrivances (a feeling further reinforced by the fact that the movie is framed by sequences implying that the story is told to an arguing young couple by a passing stranger). That being said, there are times when the contrivances aren’t all that obvious; the final act of the story involves the revelations of who will stay in the city, who will go, and the reasons why they take these actions, and some of the revelations at this point are quite surprising. The comparison between this and OUTWARD BOUND is pretty strong, with certain characters being clear parallels to the characters in that one, even if the other elements are very different. I would imagine this is one of those movies that would be better liked by those who would wish to stay in the city; nevertheless, the movie is a bit of a slog and not as satisfying as it might have been.

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The Sky Bike (1967)

THE SKY BIKE (1967)
Article 3961 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-24-2012
Directed by Charles Frend
Featuring Liam Redmond, William Lucas, Ellen McIntosh
Country: UK
What it is: Children’s movie

A young boy who dreams of flying discovers an old man who is trying to build a flying sky bike to win a competition. He pitches in to help, but there are other people who also want to win the competition… and they won’t necessarily play fair.

Here’s another one from the Children’s Film Foundation, though this one looks like it was only distributed by them. The best part comes at the beginning, when the young boy has an out-of-body experience while sleeping and dreams that he flies through his room; it’s a neat, moody little sequence and well done. Thereafter, it’s the usual type of stuff I’ve come to expect from the CFF; it’s cute, but hardly compelling. The special effects during the flying sequences are particularly disappointing; the strings are shockingly visible. I’m getting the sense that the movies put out by the CFF are wildly uneven, because some of them are pretty good. This isn’t one of the better ones, however.

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Mickey’s Ape Man (1933)

MICKEY’S APE MAN (1933)
Article 3960 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-23-2012
Directed by Jesse Duffy
Featuring Mickey Rooney, Billy Barty, Kendall McComas
Country: USA
What it is: Comedy short

Mickey hopes to win a prize by doing the best imitation of an ape man as part of a movie promotion. But is one of the other members of his gang a better choice to be the ape man?

It looks like the McGuire’s Gang shorts (of which this is a member) were like The Little Rascals, albeit more in a slapstick mode; some of the gags are the type you’d expect in animated cartoons. Just on the surface, this seems pretty marginal in terms of its fantastic content; after all, Tarzan movies are generally on the marginal side, and a short about kids imitating the Tarzan movies seem even further away from the genre. However, since the kids are practicing near one of the least secure zoos in the country, they end up having to face off with an escaped gorilla, and since gorillas often substituted for monsters, I’ll give this one a pass. I wish I knew who played the gorilla; at times it looks like it might be Charley Gemora, but other times not. At any rate, Billy Barty steals the show here.

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Rapsodia Satanica (1920)

RAPSODIA SATANICA (1920)
aka Satanic Rhapsody
Article 3959 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-21-2012
Directed by Nino Oxilia
Featuring Lyda Borelli, Andrea Habay, Ugo Bazzini
Country: Italy
What it is: A deal with the devil

An old woman makes a pact with the devil to regain her youth; in return, she must not fall prey to the emotion of love. But that’s harder said than done…

I quite like this efficient little take on the deal with the devil story, at least partially because Ugo Bazzini gives a fun little performance as Mephisto, the devil who makes his offer to the old woman; I like the way he creeps around at the edges of scenes waiting for his opportunities to spread misery and unhappiness. Lyda Borelli also does a good job as the “Faust” character, though it does require quite a bit of sympathy with the silent (as in opposition to talkie) mode of acting, as she does come off as a bit too obvious at times. I like the prologue and the first act the best; the second act seems to be mostly about the main character being depressed, and that gets a bit old after a bit. Nonetheless, this is an interesting silent Italian film.

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Toomorrow (1970)

TOOMORROW (1970)
Article 3958 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-20-2012
Directed by Val Guest
Featuring Olivia Newton-John, Benny Thomas, Vic Cooper
Country: UK
What it is: Science fiction musical comedy

Space aliens plan to kidnap a pop group whose music has a healing effect on them, but the group wants to return to Earth. Can they go back, solve all their personal problems, and make it to the big concert on time?

If this movie has an audience out there, it’s probably mostly for die-hard Olivia Newton-John fans who are curious to see her from before she became famous. Outside of that, the most interesting credit is that of Val Guest, who directed the first two Quatermass movies, but I’ve seen enough of his work in other genres to know that his name in a movie is no guarantee of anything. As for the movie itself, it’s a harmless piece of fluff; the group plays mostly bland feel-good pop ditties that do little for me, the comedy is equally bland (for the most part, that is; it gets a little sexy on occasion and even has a touch of nudity), and, despite the space alien angle, the plot is mostly concerned the various romantic entanglements of the group members. Overall, the feel is like a watered-down beach party movie, only without the beach… or the fun. I did laugh once. As for Newton-John (of whom I’m not a fan), all I can say is that she does have the pipes, but it’s easy to see why she had to go solo before she made it big.

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In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro (1986)

IN THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO (1986)
Article 3957 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-19-2012
Directed by Raju Patel
Featuring John Rhys-Davies, Timothy Bottoms, Irene Miracle
Country: UK / Kenya
What it is: Nature runs amok

A drought causes large groups of baboons to go on a rampage of destruction and killing.

When I first heard about this movie, I thought the very idea of making baboons the menace to be pretty silly. I realize now that this was because I was reacting to the metaphorical use of the word “baboon” as a derogatory term; from what I gather, they can truly be very dangerous beasts. I think the movie does a decent job of establishing them as something to be feared, so the preconception doesn’t do a whole lot of damage. There are also some effective shots of hoards of baboons about to go on the attack, with the scene where a man is trying to change a tire while this happens being the most memorable. However, that doesn’t mean the movie is effective; a weak script, uninspired direction and bad editing all conspire to take the suspense and excitement out of movie; it ends up feeling awkward and clumsy rather than scary. Yet I think it’s biggest problems are ones brought on by failing to use the environment effectively. The areas of Kenya where the movie takes place could have been filmed to heighten the sense of fear and isolation, but the photography fails to catch any of that. And this is one of those movies that would have benefited from the use of silent and ambient sound to increase the tension; the use of a symphonic score throughout just makes the movie feel overbearing, especially when it tries to heighten the suspense in scenes where there is no reason to do so. In the final analysis, the movie fails to hit the mark.

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Rogues Gallery (1944)

ROGUES GALLERY (1944)
Article 3956 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-18-2012
Directed by Albert Herman
Featuring Frank Jenks, Robin Raymond, H.B. Warner
Country: USA
What it is: A wisecracking reporter mystery

A wisecracking reporter and her photographer attempt to get an interview with an inventor who has developed an amazing new eavesdropping device. However, they stumble upon murder and intrigue when it becomes obvious someone is trying to steal the plans for the device.

The fantastic content in this one is a Gizmo Maguffin, but there are two types of Gizmo Maguffins. There’s the pure Gizmo Maguffin, in which the device isn’t used at all but merely a pawn in the melodramatic turns of the story. And then there is the self-referencing Gizmo Maguffin, in which the device is used to solve the mystery of the attempts to steal it. Given the nature of this device, I wasn’t surprised it turned out to be the latter of the two. In fact, very little surprised me here; the characters are straight out of the reporter cliche playbook, the plot turns are by-the-numbers, and even the identity of the villain is mind-numbingly obvious. On a side note, you will note that I omitted any apostrophes in the title. So did the title card in the movie, though I do note that some of the promotional materials (the image on IMDB, for example) do use an apostrophe.

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The Ghost Train (1931)

THE GHOST TRAIN (1931)
Article 3955 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-17-2012
Directed by Walter Forde
Featuring Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Ann Todd
Country: UK
What it is: Another ghost train movie

Several people get stranded in a remote train station during a storm. The station seems to be haunted by a ghost train as well.

I’m stretching things a bit to include this one; this early talkie only partially exists, and most of the reels that still exist lack the soundtrack. Fortunately, since I’ve seen two other versions of this particular story, I wasn’t exactly baffled by what I saw, but I do suspect that anyone who wasn’t familiar with the story would have trouble sorting it out. Still, with what little sound I did have to go on, I’ve come to the conclusion that one definite flaw of the story itself is it makes a rather annoying comic character the center of the action; even if the actor playing him is decent, his actions make him more irritating than funny. Fortunately, the final reel is one of the surviving reels, and it’s also one of the only two that has sound, so the climax of the story (which is pretty good) is intact. Nonetheless, I don’t think it holds a candle to the 1927 version of the movie, which for me is the most impressive of the lot.

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The Eyes of Annie Jones (1964)

THE EYES OF ANNIE JONES (1964)
Article 3954 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-12-2012
Directed by Reginald Le Borg
Featuring Richard Conte, Francesca Annis, Joyce Carey
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Psychic thriller

When a woman disappears (though she has actually been murdered and her body hidden), her family enlist the help of a teenage psychic to find her whereabouts.

This movie has been on my “ones that got away” list for some time, but it’s one I expected would eventually turn up and it finally has. And though I’m always glad when a rarity manifests itself, I don’t necessarily expect it to be a hidden gem, and this one certainly isn’t. It’s one of those stories that really doesn’t have enough to it to sustain a feature length movie, even one that runs under seventy-five minutes. So, after the opening murder, the movie gets bogged down in tedious and uninteresting details, mostly emphasizing the teenage psychic girl’s attraction to the missing woman’s womanizing brother. The ending was particularly disappointing in the way it handles the fantastic elements; if it doesn’t go so far as to debunk them, it nonetheless relegates them to the realm of the inconsequential. In the end, I found the movie dull and ordinary.

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En Route (1910)

EN ROUTE (1910)
aka The World’s Progress from Stone Age to Airships
Article 3953 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-11-2012
Directed by Emile Cohl
No cast
Country: France
What it is: Animated meditation on progress

The development of various modes of transportation are explored.

The English title for this one promises quite a bit for what is in essence a five minute short, but once I realized it was directed by Emile Cohl, I figured it wouldn’t prove to be a hopeless task. It restricts itself largely to the development of transportation, and takes three trips through history – for transportation on land, transportation on water, and transportation in the air. Each trip begins with a caveman speculating on how to advance, which is what gives the movie its science fiction content. Oddly enough, the caveman never invents the wheel, which is what you’d think would be the first act; instead, it deals with his idea of catching and taming horses for transportation. The movie even dabbles in a little social satire, hinting that maybe all this progress isn’t necessarily a good thing. Not bad for a five-minute short.

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