Month: December 2019

The Good Shepherdess and the Evil Princess (1908)

THE GOOD SHEPHERDESS AND THE EVIL PRINCESS (1908)
aka La bonne bergere et la mouvaise princesse
Article 4050 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-5-2012
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Good and evil

A generous and lovely shepherdess is the target of an abusive princess, no doubt jealous of her beauty. Both are visited by a mystical angel who takes them to fantasy worlds, though their respective fates are very different.

I’ve been recently watching a lot of the early silents in another movie-viewing project I’m engaged in, and I watched quite a few of Melies’s shorts. I got the overall impression during this particular year that Melies was trying to get away from his usual approach somewhat and attempting to tell more straightforward and less special-effects laden stories. Unfortunately, because he never quite changed his directorial style to accommodate, this resulted in some of the dullest movies of his career. This one really isn’t an exception; it’s mostly dull and obvious, and it only gets fun when the evil princess is terrorized by hellish visions in the ruins of a castle (including the ever-present tumbling imps), and that’s largely because it’s the most typically Meliesian scene in the movie. One can see here why he fell out of favor.

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Bob Kick, the Mischievous Kid (1903)

BOB KICK, THE MISCHIEVOUS KID (1903)
aka Bob Kick, l’enfant terrible
Article 4049 by Dave Sindelar
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Trick short

Bob Kick drinks a bottle of booze and has hallucinations. He then jumps through a hoop and vanishes.

When you’re watching a silent three minute short, you don’t really expect much in the way of a plot. Still, this one seems rather random and pointless, with the first part setting up a situation that then plays no role in the second part of the movie. As a trick short, it all seems rather routine; Melies had already done the same tricks before, and this one adds nothing new. This isn’t one of the better examples of Melies’s oeuvre.

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Porky’s Movie Mystery (1939)

PORKY’S MOVIE MYSTERY (1939)
Article 4048 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-3-2012
Directed by Robert Clampett
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Billy Bletcher,
Country: USA
What it is: Cartoon

When the Phantom of Hollywood (as played by the Invisible man) is on the loose, the detective Mr. Motto (as played by Porky Pig) is called in to catch him.

Here is Warner Brother’s take on the B movie mystery Mr. Moto series, with Porky Pig doing his trademark stutter to a Chinese accent. This one is fun for fans of classic horror, as it not only features the Invisible Man (who’s on his rampage because they only used him in one movie) but the Frankenstein monster as well (being grilled by a diminutive detective). It’s not one of the best cartoons of the era, but it has a lot of fun with various cliches (including stock footage and a spate of newspaper headlines). And, if I’m not mistaken, the final caricature is of Hugh Herbert.

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Palle alene i verden (1949)

PALLE ALENE I VERDEN (1949)
aka Palle Alone in the World
Article 4047 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-2-2012
Directed by Astrid Henning-Jensen
Featuring Lars Henning-Jensen and Lily Broberg
Country: Denmark
What it is: Children’s fantasy

A small boy wakes up to discover that he’s all alone in the world, and he goes out to have adventures.

I found this one on YouTube. It’s in Danish, but nonetheless, it’s pretty easy to follow, since this involves mostly voice-overs in which we here the child’s thoughts. It’s pretty charming, with the child learning how different the world would be in these circumstances; for example, he originally goes to a bank to fill a bag with coins to buy things, but soon figures out with no one around, he doesn’t need the money. He goes to a movie theater, but with no one to run the movie, he doesn’t have much fun. He also drives a streetcar, a fire engine, and finally a plane that takes him to the moon. The ending is a cliche, but appropriate given the fanciful nature of the story, and in this context, it’s just part of the charm.

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Bury Me an Angel (1972)

BURY ME AN ANGEL (1972)
Article 4046 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-1-2012
Directed by Barbara Peeters
Featuring Dixie Peabody, Terry Mace, Clyde Ventura
Country: USA
What it is: Biker flick

A young woman vows vengeance when her brother is killed by an unknown gunman.

You can thank “The Motion Picture Guide” for having steered me towards this biker flick; for some reason beyond my understanding, they misclassified it as horror. I fully expected there to be no fantastic content to it, as none of my other sources list it. However, there is some; at one point in the proceedings, the characters encounter a witch who does appear to have some mystical powers; she can hold her hand in a fire and not get burned. The movie itself is mostly notable for having been directed by a woman and featuring a strong central female character, which was definitely a rarity for a biker flick. It also tries to have some meaningful psychological underpinnings. Unfortunately, the movie is a misfire; it’s badly written, poorly acted, and more than a little bit silly, especially during the scenes where it’s supposed to be serious. Nevertheless, the movie does appear to have a certain cult following, at least partially for its colorful ad line, “A howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog on a roaring rampage of revenge!”, which is certainly an awesome arrangement of artful alliteration. Still, in terms of its fantastic content, it’s marginal.

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Roboman (1973)

ROBOMAN (1973)
aka Who?
Article 4045 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-30-2012
Directed by Jack Gold
Featuring Elliott Gould, Trevor Howard, Joseph Bova
Country: UK
What it is: Spy thriller

When a brilliant American scientist in charge of a top secret scientific project is horribly injured in an accident near the East German border, he is rescued by the Communists and repaired to the best of their abilities. When he is returned to the Americans, he is unrecognizable due to the replacement of most of his body with metallic parts. An FBI agent is given the task of trying to figure out whether this man is really the scientist in question, or a ringer.

Here’s another movie with an interesting premise that suffers from an uneven production and script. It attempts to work both as a mystery and an espionage thriller. As the latter, it is least interesting; it’s slow-moving and low-key, and when the movie decides to go for thrills (a car chase at about the middle of the movie), it feels less like it’s finally taking off and more like it’s slipped the tracks. As a mystery, it does have some interest value, thanks to a interesting cinematic technique where we see the present day juxtaposition of the grilling of the scientist by FBI agents beside flashback grillings of the scientist by a Communist general, leaving us fully aware that there is very little that the scientist says that couldn’t be taught to a ringer. Yet the mystery itself remains muted, largely because the most engaging thing about the story is the plight of the scientist, and if you make a certain assumption about the identity of the man in the metal mask, the mystery becomes irrelevant but the story becomes much more engaging. So it’s as a character study that it works best; it isn’t about not knowing who the man is, it’s about a man proving who he is, and the cost of doing so. And on that level, this movie has a certain amount of power.

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Skullduggery (1970)

SKULLDUGGERY (1970)
Article 4044 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-29-2012
Directed by Gordon Douglas
Featuring Burt Reynolds, Susan Clark, Roger C. Carmel
Country: USA
What it is: Meditation on humanity

A pair of fortune seekers finagle their way into an anthropological expedition in the hope of using it as a cover in their search for rare minerals. However, the situation becomes complicated when a race of missing links is discovered… and the possibility of their being exploited to serve the purpose of mining the minerals.

This movie has a fairly low rating on IMDB, and in some ways, it deserves it; the direction isn’t particularly strong, the script, as interesting as it in some ways, is muddled in others, and there’s something of a dull, hangdog feel to the proceedings. If it didn’t touch on what I consider a very interesting issue, I wouldn’t find much to recommend here. But the issue of the humanity of the missing links (which impacts on whether they would be considered employees or pack animals by their exploiters, as well as how they should be treated in other crucial ways) is fascinating, and the best part of the movie is in the final third, when one of the fortune seekers claims to have killed one of the missing links in order to force a court of law to decide on the humanity of the species. I’m not surprised that the movie ends as it does, though it is a little too abrupt about getting to the end credits; even though it was dramatically effective to leave certain issues unresolved, there are other issues that did need some sort of resolution. All in all, it’s a mediocre movie with a good idea.

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Rollerbabies (1976)

ROLLERBABIES (1976)
Article 4043 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-28-2012
Directed by Carter Stevens
Featuring Susan McBain, Alan Marlow, Terri Hall
Country: USA
What it is: Adults only

In the future, sex is prohibited to all but licensed exhibitionists who perform on television. A TV show producer must find a new gimmick if he wants to stay in the business.

Once again my cinematic journeys take me into the realm of the adult film, and probably not for the last time. Like a lot of movies in the adult realm, its title is a take on a well-known popular movie of the time, in this case, ROLLERBALL. It has two things in common with that movie – it takes place in the future, and something is done on roller-skates (and it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out what). When it’s not engaging in the type of spectacle that is de riguer for the form, the movie appears to be a comedy, and like most adult comedies I’ve seen, it’s atrocious on that level. As for the level on which the movie is intended to be enjoyed…. well, this is neither the time or place for that. Suffice it to say that I’ve seen it and can now cross it off my list.

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The Possessed! (1976)

THE POSSESSED! (1976)
aka Help Me… I’m Possessed
Article 4042 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-27-2012
Directed by Charles Nizet
Featuring Bill Greer, Deedy Peters, Lynne Marta
Country: USA
What it is: A big question mark

A mad psychiatrist deals out cruel punishment to the patients in his sanitarium while a hideous monster runs loose and horribly mutilates people. Could these events be connected?

Well, whaddayaknow… it’s a good old-fashioned piece of bad seventies schlock horror. I haven’t tried too hard to think about this one; I suspect it would only make my head hurt to try. Let’s just say that with all of the gore and sadism on display, the movie nonetheless projects a certain amount of innocence that renders it pretty harmless. What can you say about a movie whose monster looks like a bunch of cherry licorice whips… at least, what you can see of it? Or about a movie whose title conjures up visions of THE EXORCIST while having nothing whatsoever to do with that movie? Don’t sit through the movie hoping to get a really good view of the monster – you’ll just be disappointed. When you get right down to it, the movie does have a little dumb campy charm to it, but when you’re not scratching your head, you’ll be shaking it. It’s just one of those movies.

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The Blasphemer (1921)

THE BLASPHEMER (1921)
Article 4041 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-26-2012
Directed by O.E. Goebel
Featuring George Howard, Augusta Anderson, Irving Cummings
Country: USA
What it is: Christian morality tale

A stock market tycoon, intoxicated by his financial success, rejects God and claims that he himself is the agent of his own fate. However, he soon finds out that he is not quite as much the master of his fate as he thought…

I went into this Christian movie (produced by the Catholic Art Association) under the assumption that the fantastic content would involve some overt Christian miracles, but, as it turns out, the hand of God here mostly seems to work in the realm of melodramatic and unlikely plot twists; it would have been possible to tell the same basic story with all of overt Christianity removed, and it would have fit just fine into the “fall and reformation of a scoundrel” genre. The movie might have moved along quicker as well; the copy on Amazon Instant Video runs an hour and 48 minutes, and at least part of the reason it gets boring on occasion is that it will bring the action to a screeching halt so that it can deliver some messages. Hardly anything happens during the first half of the movie, and the flat, dull direction does little to hold the interest. However, the worst problem I had with the copy I saw wasn’t the fault of the original filmmakers at all; the musical soundtrack is one of those that feels as if it was carelessly slapped on without care or appropriateness, so you end up (for example) with sprightly happy music during a scene where a woman is being kidnapped by an Oriental white slavery racket. Even a weak silent movie deserves better care than that.

Still, since the movie lacks the overt miracles I was expecting, the question becomes whether it really qualifies for this project in terms of its fantastic content. It depends somewhat on how you interpret one scene; the tycoon-turned-derelict sees the martyrdom of a saint reenacted in a painting that comes to life. Is he imagining it or actually seeing it? The movie isn’t quite clear in that regard, so I suspect that this movie is at best only marginally fantastic. It’s probably best classified as a drama.

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