Month: June 2020

Hare Remover (1946)

HARE REMOVER (1946)
Article 4691 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-24-2014
Directed by Frank Tashlin
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan
Country: USA
What it it: Bugs Bunny cartoon

Elmer Fudd has been working on a formula to turn a man into a savage beast. When he runs out of experimental animal test subjects, he decides to trap a rabbit.

The Bugs Bunny cartoons qualify for fantastic content on the strength of Bugs Bunny being a talking rabbit, but this one has some extra fantastic value in that it also serves as a parody of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE; Bugs even makes a reference to Spencer Tracy during the proceedings. Granted, Elmer Fudd’s formula never works; the worst it does is to cause his test subjects to eat grass. The cartoon then gets some mileage over having both Bugs and Elmer mistake a passing bear as the end product of the experiment. All in all, this is good-but-not-great Bugs Bunny cartoon, but it does have some memorable moments; my favorite is a gag in which Bugs pulls out a set of pictures illustrating various derogatory terms during Elmer’s “transformation” scene.

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A Grandmother’s Story (1908)

A GRANDMOTHER’S STORY (1908)
aka Conte de la grand-mere et reve de l’enfant
Articler 4690 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-23-2014
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Andre Melies
Country: France
What it is: Whimsy

A child is told a bed-time story by his grandmother. He then goes to sleep and dreams of the fantasy places in the story.

This is basically a whimsical mood piece; there’s no story. It’s one of those shorts where you’re most likely to notice Melies’s creative scene design, and on that level it’s entertaining enough. Nevertheless, the lack of any story makes it a little dull, and there’s nothing particularly new or novel in the special effects in this one. In short, this one is pretty to look at, but there’s not much beyond that.

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The Bibulous Clothier (1899)

THE BIBULOUS CLOTHIER (1899)
Article 4689 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-22-2014
Directed by James H. White
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Comic trick short

A tailor with a taste for the bottle discovers that his customer’s dimensions change every time he (the tailor) takes a drink.

Here’s another one of those shorts that spent some time on my “ones that got away” before a copy finally became available to me, and in cases like those, I find myself not wanting to complain about the quality of the copy when it may be the only chance I have to see it. However, it has to be said that the muddiness of the print I found compounded with an intrusive logo splashed across the middle of the screen made it difficult to me to figure out what was going on; I had to watch it twice and consult a plot description of the movie. I have to admit the central idea is rather cute, but I wasn’t impressed with the execution, though the fact that I found it hard to see may have been a big factor there. At any rate, this isn’t one of the more impressive silent shorts I’ve seen.

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Buster in the Jungle (1954)

BUSTER IN THE JUNGLE (1954)
aka The Gorilla Story
Article 4688 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-21-2014
Directed by Arthur Hilton
Featuring Buster Keaton and Fritz Feld
Country: USA
What it is: Episode of “The Buster Keaton Show”

Buster dreams that he goes to Africa to find the missing link.

Usually, I don’t cover episodes of TV shows, but the story behind this one is this. Walt Lee’s “Reference Guide to Fantastic Films” lists a Buster Keaton short from 1954 called THE GORILLA STORY which was released in England, and he mentions that it was probably an episode from a TV show. The TV show in question was most probably “The Buster Keaton Show”, and the details on the short match those of the episode called “Buster in the Jungle”, and amazingly enough, I had a copy of that episode. As for the episode itself, it’s a mixed bag. One of the things I liked best about Buster Keaton during his classic silent period was the precision of his gags. In comparison, much of the comedy in this episode is sloppy and messy, with only occasional hints of Keaton’s comic genius; a sequence where he is trying to straighten a tent is the best moment here. However, once the talking gorilla shows up, the episode takes a turn into deadpan absurdity that I find rather likable, though you will find yourself wondering why Buster decided to bring a ping-pong table into the jungle with him. It’s certainly not Keaton at his best here, but there is a certain charm to the proceedings.

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The Gloves of Ptames (1914)

THE GLOVES OF PTAMES (1914)
Article 4687 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-20-2014
Directed by David Aylott
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Comic trick short

A family receives a gift of ancient Egyptian gloves with strange properties; in short, anything they touch while wearing the gloves vanishes. They throw the gloves away, but the gloves are picked up by a succession of passers-by, until one of them figures a way to turn them to his own profit.

At first it looked like the gloves would give the wearer the ability to make Melies-style trick shorts, but it soon became apparent that only one trick was used – that of making things disappear. At first I thought the short would do nothing but repeat that effect, but once somebody figures out how to use them for constructively (for himself, that is to say), the short takes on a story of some sort. Unfortunately, the copy I saw is missing its ending, in which the man profiting from the gloves gets his comeuppance, but there is enough there to give you an idea of what probably happened. All in all, this is a fairly amusing short.

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Good Glue Sticks (1907)

GOOD GLUE STICKS (1907)
aka La colle universelle
Article 4686 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-19-2014
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Comic short

A street vendor selling a super form of glue is closed down by two policemen. The street vendor seeks revenge, and you can do some mischief with super glue.

The fantastic content is the super-glue. That being said, this seems to be one of Melies’s shorts that is more interested in comic mischief than special effects; there’s a couple of minor trick moments in this one, but that’s about all. The comic content is pretty obvious; we get scenes of people getting stuck to things due to the super-glue, which is mildly amusing but hardly inspired. This is not essential Melies.

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Als het verstand zegeviert (1918)

ALS HET VERSTAND ZEGEVIERT (1918)
aka The Craving
Article 4685 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-18-2014
Directed by Francis Ford
Featuring Francis Ford, Mae Gaston, Peter Gerald
Country: USA
What it is: Spy intrigue crossed with anti-drinking story

A recovering alcoholic invents a formula for a new super-explosive, but a villain from India is seeking his secret.

This movie had ended up on my “ones that got away” list under the belief it was lost, but it apparently popped up in a private collection. I’m glad I’ve got sources I can consult on the plot; since the intertitles of the print I saw are in Dutch, I would have been really lost in trying to sort this one out. For one thing, I didn’t see any clear demonstration of the explosive itself (unless a war-time sequence and a thrown beaker of liquid are meant to demonstrate it), and I would never have figured out the rather vague “battle of wills” sequence (for that matter, I’m not sure I still do). However, there is some easily spotted fantastic content to this one; when our hero is drinking, he hallucinates, and there are two sequences in the movie – one in which he deals with a series of little people who come out of a bottle and another where he has a strange out-of-body experience – with very marked fantasy content. Nevertheless, I sense this is a rather odd movie that never really finds its focus; I’m not really sure the movie knows what it wants to be. It does have some interesting moments, though.

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The Return of the King (1980)

THE RETURN OF THE KING (1980)
Article 4684 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-17-2014
Directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr.
Featuring the voices of Orson Bean, John Huston, Theodore Bikel
Country: USA
What it is: Tolkien adaptation

Samwise must figure out a way to rescue Frodo from the tower of Cirith Ungol, while Minas Tirith must prepare for an invasion by the legions of Sauron.

When it became obvious that Ralph Bakshi had no intention of making a follow-up to THE LORD OF THE RINGS (which takes us a little less than halfway through the trilogy), Rankin-Bass (who had previously helmed an adaptation of THE HOBBIT) decided to mount their own adaptation of the third book in the series. Between these three movies, it could probably be said that roughly the whole series had been filmed before Peter Jackson tried it, and in fact, I saw the three movies all packaged together in a Best Buy recently. Still, I would imagine anyone watching the whole set as a single whole would be rather disconcerted by the change of voices in the movies as well as the stylistic differences between Bakshi and Rankin-Bass, not to mention that huge chunks of “The Two Towers” are missing from the story. However, taken as a stand-alone film, THE RETURN OF THE KING can’t help but be a clumsy affair; the story is so lopsided and rushed that it is anything but a satisfying experience. It doesn’t help that the movie comes to a screeching halt every five minutes for song after song after song. Granted, the songs have the proper epic atmosphere for the story, but there are just too many of them. Nevertheless, I’d definitely jettison that “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way” orc marching song for the title alone. Most of the voices are well chosen, but I’m afraid Casey Kasem’s as Merry has such a familiar voice in TV animation (he was Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo cartoons, among others) that it takes me out of the movie every time Merry opens his mouth. All that being said, the movie does manage to maintain the right tone, and the book is taken seriously enough, even though the dialogue is often stilted and melodramatic. Still, if you aren’t familiar with the book, you’ll probably have a hard time figuring out what’s going on in this one.

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Probe (1972)

PROBE (1972)
TV-Movie
Article 4683 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-16-2014
Directed by Russ Mayberry
Featuring Hugh O’Brian, Elke Sommer, Burgess Meredith
Country: USA
What it is: Superspy TV pilot

A high-tech spy organization embarks on a mission to locate a set of missing diamonds.

This pilot for a TV-Series did manage to yield one; it was called SEARCH and it lasted for one season. Still, that series is highly rated on IMDB, which makes me suspect that it’s fondly remembered. I’m not surprised by that however; though this TV-Movie has a few flaws, the central premise is strong enough that I could see how it would make for an interesting series; it’s basically a James Bond-style superspy variation with the central gimmick being that the spy remains in constant contact with headquarters through the use of implanted transmitters and seeing-eye gadgets that he carries on his person. I’ve not seen the series, but I do hope it jettisoned or downplayed the biggest running joke in the movie, which is that the woman who monitors the spy’s physiological reactions (as well as those of people nearby) makes jealous catty comments about the spy’s encounter with beautiful women; this joke grew old quickly. Nevertheless, the movie makes clever use of the premise. The series apparently rotated three actors as the lead spy in each episode, which almost by default made Burgess Meredith the main star of the series.

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Nuits rouges (1974)

NUITS ROUGES (1974)
aka Shadowman
Article 4682 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-15-2014
Directed by Georges Franju
Featuring Gayle Hunnicutt, Jacques Champreux, Josephine Chaplin
Country: France / Italy
What it is: Supervillain serial pastiche

The police match wits with a supervillain for possession of the secret to the treasure of the Templar Knights. However, there is a third party who is also interested in the treasure…

I have to admit that I brighten up when I see Georges Franju’s name in the credits of a movie; I share his love for Louis Feuillade’s French supervillain serials of the silent era, and I find them apt models for imitation. That’s why I quite enjoyed this movie, even if I’m aware that Franju is covering ground he’s visited before with his remake of JUDEX. Granted, this story is a little closer to FANTOMAS or LES VAMPIRES than it is to JUDEX, but the stylistic feel is the same. However, the problem with this one is that it feels like a retread, and not a particularly strong one. The characters remain somewhat one-dimensional; we aren’t as intrigued by the supervillain (who has no name but is referred to as The Man With No Face) or with police detective Sorbier (whose main appeal is that he’s played by Gert Frobe) as we were by the characters in the original Feuillade serials. Maybe that’s why things get a little tiresome towards the end of this one, and it starts to feel a little creaky. It does have some marked fantastic elements, particularly with the fact that the villain employs resurrected dead people as assassins. All in all, this one is entertaining enough, but suffers from being a little too familiar and uninspired.

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