Month: February 2020

The Mystery of Mr. X (1934)

THE MYSTERY OF MR. X (1934)
Article 4172 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-5-2013
Directed by Edgar Selwyn
Featuring Robert Montgomery, Elizabeth Allan, Lewis Stone
Country: USA
What it is: Crime thriller

A jewel thief becomes the prime suspect in a series of serial killings of police officers when his theft of a diamond coincides with the time and place of one of the murders. The thief, whose identity is not yet known to the police, decides to try to find the murderer himself, but can he do it before the police track him down?

I found this title listed in a book called “The A-Z of Horror Films”, and I may not have covered it otherwise; most of the other books (like the Willis and Walt Lee guides) reject it. And to an extent, those other books are right; it is primarily a crime drama, and much of the plot seems more concerned with the romantic triangle involving the jewel thief, the commissioner’s daughter, and her boyfriend. Still, the plot does involve a serial killer, and there is a certain amount of horror content to the scenes where he stalks the police officers and kills them with a sword hidden in a cane. Those interested in the horror content only might want to catch the first twenty minutes; those who hang through the whole thing will find it’s a not-bad little thriller, once you get past the romance.

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The King and the Jester (1907)

THE KING AND THE JESTER (1907)
aka Francois Ier et Triboulet
Article 4171 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-4-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Trick short

A jester tries to cheer up a depressed king.

There’s something a bit metaphorical about this short in terms of the decline of the popularity of Melies’s work. Melies plays the jester here, and he uses all of his old tricks to try and cheer up the depressed king, but to no avail. And given that Melies declined in popularity at least partially because his own cinematic tricks were becoming old hat and failing to amuse the viewers, there’s a sense of melancholy underlying this one. Eventually, the jester turns to magic (thus providing the fantastic content) and wins the king over, but that wouldn’t happen for Melies in real life, at least not until many years later when Melies was rediscovered. Sadly, the movie itself also fails to satisfy (though some of the blame may be the deterioration of the print), as the special effects are pretty ordinary in this one as well, and it ends up not being particularly fun.

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Kaibyo arima goten (1953)

KAIBYO ARIMA GOTEN (1953)
aka Ghost-Cat of Anima Palace
Article 4170 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-2-2013
Directed by Ryohei Arai
Featuring Takako Irie, Michiko Ai, Yoshitaro Sadato
Country: Japan
What it is: Ghost-cat woman

A murdered woman returns as a vengeance-driven ghost cat.

Many ghost-cat movies were made in Japan during the fifties. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were pretty similar, but I haven’t seen a lot of them yet. The plot is a little vague to me as my copy is in Japanese without English subtitles, but the general thrust of the action is straightforward enough; a woman (who seems to be part of a harem of sorts) is unpopular with the other women, and is murdered. She returns as a ghost-cat, and one of the most striking scenes in this one is watching the ghost, her hands folded in like a cat’s paws, forcing two of her victims to perform tumbling routines. There’s a few scenes of disembodied heads flying around as well. It’s entertaining enough, and some of the horror sequences are effective, but parts of it seem a bit silly as well.

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Jupiter’s Thunderballs (1903)

JUPITER’S THUNDERBALLS (1903)
aka Le tonnerre de Jupiter
Article 4169 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-1-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies

The fearsome god Jupiter prepares to wield his terrible thunderbolts… that is, if he can get them to work and not hurt himself in the process.

Quite frankly, this is one of Georges Melies’s stranger shorts, a circumstance that is only made even more prominent by the fact that the soundtrack on my copy substitutes sound effects for music. There seems to be a bit of a story involving him trying to recharge his thunderbolts and to try to get it to rain so he can use them, but the actions is more than a little confusing at times. Melies plays Jupiter as a rotund buffoon who is his own worst enemy. It’s interesting, but I don’t think he quite pulls this one off.

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Un drame au fond de la mer (1901)

UN DRAME AU FOND DE LA MER (1901)
aka Drama at the Bottom of the Sea
Article 4168 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-27-2013
Directed by Ferdinand Zecca
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: A drama at the bottom of the sea

Two deep sea-divers fight over a fortune in jewels.

IMDB classifies the movie as a fantasy, and it is included in the Walt Lee guide, hence its inclusion in my hunt list. It is, however, a false alarm. Basically, two deep sea divers descend into a scene where several dead people lie around. They find a treasure, fight over it, and one of them prevails. That’s about it, and unless the deep sea diver technology was too advanced for this period of time, there’s no fantastic content, though there are special effects. Still, I can understand how it got misclassified, with the possibility of submarines or mermaids popping into the story. Though I wouldn’t call the special effects strictly realistic (they don’t really look like they’re underwater, for one thing), they are pretty creative. No, there’s not really much of a story, but it’s only about one minute long, so what do you expect?

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La bruja negra (1907)

LA BRUJA NEGRA (1907)
aka La sorciere noire, The Black Witch
Article 4167 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-26-2013
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Trick short

An Arabian couple invite a black witch up into their palace to perform tricks for them.

I’m not sure who’s responsible for this trick film (though the style looks roughly Segundo De Chomonish), but I was impressed by two things about it. One was the excellent quality of the hand-painted color, which not only brightens the scenes but also contributes to changes in mood; a magical change of location will result in a change of tint, which is a technique that I’ve seen in later silent movies, but rarely this early. The other is that the special effects are also fast moving and very smoothly done. There’s no real plot, but these other qualities hold the attention during this four minute short. I’ve seen so many of these silent shorts that they rarely impress me anymore, but this one does.

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Dai-sanji sekia taisen: Yonju-ichi jikan no kyofu (1960)

DAI-SANJI SEKIA TAISEN: YONJU-ICHI JIKAN NO KYOFU (1960)
aka The Final War
Article 4166 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-25-2013
Directed by Shigeaki Hidaka
Featuring Tatsuo Umemiya, Yoshiko Mita, Yayoi Furusato
Country: Japan
What it is: End of the world drama

When an American nuclear bomb is accidentally detonated over Korea, the resulting tensions between the US and the Communist countries escalates into a hot war, with Japan caught in the middle. The story is told from the point of view of a reporter, his girlfriend nurse and their friends and families.

I’m glad to have finally gotten a chance to see this elusive movie (which eventually ended up on my “ones that got away” list), though I’m not surprised that I could only find a copy with no English subtitles or dubbing. Sadly, this is one of those movies that heavily relies on dialogue to tell its story rather than visuals, and if I hadn’t had some handy plot descriptions, I would have been mostly lost, and would have had to rely on the visuals of the final ten minutes (where almost all of the special effects can be found), and a short sequence in which announcements are made in English. Even the plot descriptions are a bit contradictory, with some saying the bomb exploded over South Korea and others saying over North Korea. Still, most of the action is not shown, but announced to the various characters as they listen to the radio. The scenes of panicking people on the run are interesting, and part of the plot seems to hinge on those who are trampled and hurt during the panics. It seems well-directed and well-acted, and, given the subject matter, it’s no surprise that it’s a little depressing. Still, I must hold off on any serious evaluation of this one.

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Joan of Arc (1900)

JOAN OF ARC (1900)
aka Jeanne d’Arc
Article 4165 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-24-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Bleuette Barnon, Georges Melies, Jeanne d’Alcy
Country: France
What it is: Biography of a saint

Joan of Arc is called on by visions of saints to help France defeat their English conquerors.

It might be interesting some time to make a list of real-life people whose life stories have qualified in one way or another for this series. This adds another one to the list, as the appearances of the saints to Joan does qualify as fantastic content, and the movie does include that scene, as well as a sequence at the end where we see Joan in heaven. This appears to have been a very ambitious project for its time; it runs over ten minutes. The movie is also hand-tinted, and has a narrator. One of the more interesting things about the latter is his tendency to go off on tangents about the movie itself, commenting on the appearance of Georges Melies in several different roles, as well as pointing out how the parade sequence used the same extras again and again (having them run around the back of the scenery to reappear), and even pointing out the Melies logo in the corner in one scene for copyright reasons. It’s more historically interesting than it is fun to watch, but it has its moments.

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