Month: June 2020

Rabbit Test (1978)

RABBIT TEST (1978)
Article 4651 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-10-2014
Directed by Joan Rivers
Featuring Billy Crystal, Alex Rocco, Joan Prather
Country: USA
What it is: Pregnant man comedy

After a one night stand, a man discovers he is pregnant. He tries to cope with his condition but becomes an international celebrity.

Ideally, I feel that I should give every movie I see a fair shake, but sometimes you can’t help but feel trepidation about certain movies. This one had three strikes against it going in. First, I’ve never been a fan of Joan Rivers, and I can’t think of a single joke she ever made that even made me smile, much less laugh, though I am willing to believe this may simply be due to the fact that I’m not part of the audience she was trying to reach. Secondly, if I were to make a list of the fantastically-themed subjects that would least draw me into seeing a movie, I’m pretty sure that the concept of the pregnant man would make that list, somewhere just above the antics of the Smurfs and just below the adventures of Care Bears. Thirdly, I noticed the rating on IMDB for the movie was 2.9, which is shockingly low. As a result, I didn’t go into this movie with a positive frame of mind. Having seen it, I’m afraid I have to say that it is as bad as I feared it would be. What I didn’t anticipate was just how weirdly bad it would turn out to be; not only do the vast majority of the jokes miss the mark, but with quite a few of them, I had no idea what or where the mark was. I think the movie’s main problem was Joan River’s direction; it’s her sole directorial effort, and she just doesn’t seem to have a knack for it. I suspect a more skilled, experienced comedy director would have made a number of the gags work. The movie is so weird at times that it exudes a certain fascination, but that wears off rather quickly, and after awhile, the most fun is had by spotting the guest stars; there’s Paul Lynde, George Gobel, Roddy McDowell, Billy Barty, Jimmie Walker, Alice Ghostley, Rosey Grier and a few others as well. The movie tries to be energetic, but feels distant and detached; it’s alternately crude, politically incorrect and impenetrable. It’s just not funny.

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The Phantom City (1928)

THE PHANTOM CITY (1928)
Article 4650 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-19-2014
Directed by Albert S. Rogell
Featuring Ken Maynard, Eugenia Gilbert, Jim Mason
Country: USA
What it is: Weird Western

Several owners of a gold mine are drawn to a ghost town by a mysterious letter. There, a struggle for the gold in the mine takes place, with a phantom taking part in the proceedings.

The original negative for this silent weird western was destroyed in 1932 when it was cannibalized for stock footage to be used in a scene-by-scene remake called HAUNTED GOLD. All that remains is about ten minutes of fragmentary footage that by itself wouldn’t tell a coherent story. However, a friend of mine who possessed the footage managed to construct a digest version of the movie using the remaining footage, the footage borrowed by HAUNTED GOLD, and, by incorporating stock music, sound fragments, and title cards; the result is coherent and quite enjoyable. Granted, I still can’t really judge the quality of the original movie, but it does look like some of the most striking footage from HAUNTED GOLD (namely, a fight scene in an aerial cable car and some wonderful acting from Ken Maynard’s horse Tarzan) came from the original silent movie. Still, a good deal of the surviving footage involves one of the most problematic things about the movie, which is Blue Washington’s stereotyped turn as the scared black man; he appeared in the same role in both versions of the movie. For the most part, the plots between the two movies are the same. I consider myself quite fortunate to have had a chance to see this version of a movie which otherwise would have ended up on my “ones that got away” list.

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The Would-Be Conjuror (1899)

THE WOULD-BE CONJUROR (1899)
Article 4649 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-8-2014
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Comic magic short

A yokel helps a magician perform a magic trick. The magician sets the yokel’s hat on the ground and holds the yokel’s nose above it, and then pours coins from the hat. The yokel goes home and tries the same trick on his wife, but….

This short runs less than a minute long, and moves along so swiftly that it’s almost a bit hard to follow. A synopsis I found merely says that the magician “holds the nose” of the yokel, but it certainly looks like he’s making the drippings from the yokel’s nose fall into the hat, which makes this a rather crude trick of sorts. You can probably guess how the yokel’s wife reacts when her husband unsuccessfully tries to pull the same trick on her; it’s amusing and quite logical. No, there’s not much to this one, and the fantastic content really only consists of the trick in question, but it was entertaining enough for its length.

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The Amateur William Tell (1909)

THE AMATEUR WILLIAM TELL (1909)
Article 4648 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-7-2013
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Comic short

A young boy, enamored with the story of William Tell, makes a bow and arrow and practices using it on the people he meets. Much destruction ensues.

Certain movies are so rare that you have to settle for whatever quality you can in finding a copy. Though I was finally able to find a copy of this, the print is quite bad and much of the detail is lost. It’s rather difficult to evaluate a movie in those circumstances; you’re so busy trying to make out what’s going on that there’s not much room left in the experience to really enjoy it. It does look fitfully amusing, though; a better copy (if one ever manifests itself) might make a lot of difference.

As for the fantastic content, that probably belongs to a sequence near the end of the movie where the boy gets his comeuppance; in short, he has a nightmare where he is tried by a group of hooded figures which turn out to be the people he tormented earlier. He is punished in a fitting way, though, to be truthful, I can only attest to the fact that this happened because I received a plot description explaining what was happening; it was particularly difficult to make out the action in this sequence. The hooded figures certainly give it a touch of horror, though the touch is slight; I’d say this short is fairly marginal in that regard.

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The Sorcerer’s Scissors (1907)

THE SORCERER’S SCISSORS (1907)
Article 4647 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-6-2014
Directed by Walter R. Booth
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Trick film

The hands of a sorcerer use scissors to cut out of paper the figure of a woman, which takes form as a real woman and performs a dance. Other similar tricks follow.

There’s no real plot here; it’s more of an illustration of a trick technique where hand-manipulated inanimate objects transform themselves into real people and back again. In some ways, it’s similar to the Melies technique of statues coming to life, but the rapid-fire linking segments give a very distinct look to this one that owes nothing to Melies. I do rather wish the woman who is constantly recreated would do something more than perform dances, but that’s par for the course of early silent cinema. Though I can’t list any examples of the top of my head, I get the impression that the techniques in question were mostly used in later years during TV and Movie opening credits sequences. It’s an interesting work in pioneer cinema.

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Dreams of Toyland (1908)

DREAMS OF TOYLAND (1908)
Article 4646 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-5-2014
Directed by Arthur Melbourne Cooper
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Early stop-motion animation

A mother takes her little boy to a toy store, where he picks out an assortment of toys. That night he dreams the toys come to life.

This short is half real-life and half stop-motion animation; it is the dream that is fully animated. At heart, it seems like a pretty standard trick short with no real plot; once you get to the dream, you expect nothing more than whimsical, happy scenes of toys moving of their own accord. Then you start to notice things; the little toy who is running from a bus that is trying to chase him down, the bear attacking passers-by, various animals attacking the toys and vehicles running them down…no, this short is anything but whimsical and happy, and the word “dreams” can be taken rather ironically here. The stop motion is fun, if primitive, and I did like how the dark turn added some variety to the action at hand. I managed to find this on YouTube.

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Un drame chez les fantoches (1908)

UN DRAME CHEZ LES FANTOCHES (1908)
aka Drama Among the Puppets
Article 4645 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-4-2014
Directed by Emile Cohl
No cast
Country: France
What it is: Animated story

A woman finds herself beset upon by suitors, but a helpful cop comes to her rescue.

This animated short by pioneer animator Emile Cohl is a bit of a rarity in that it actually seems to tell a story rather than to merely set forth an array of shifting images. Granted, the plot isn’t particularly strong, and I had to read another description of the short to figure the motives for the characters that were bothering the woman. There is a bit of abstract animation, such as a scene where the cop mutates into the bars in the window of a prison cell, but these transitions are kept to a minimum. Though it’s interesting to see Cohl stretching himself a little here, I didn’t find it as intriguing as his more abstract shorts.

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More Wild Wild West(1980)

MORE WILD WILD WEST (1980)
Article 4644 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-3-2014
Directed by Burt Kennedy
Featuring Robert Conrad, Ross Martin, Jonathan Winters
Country: USA
What it is: TV-Movie update of an older TV series

James West and Artemus Gordon are called out of retirement to hunt down a madman who has the ability to make himself invisible… and has created a devastating bomb that may help him take over the world.

This is the second TV-Movie revival of “The Wild, Wild West”, my favorite TV show as a child. For those interested in my reaction to the earlier TV-Movie (THE WILD, WILD WEST REVISITED), go check my review on it. This is cut from the same cloth, and it has roughly the same strengths (it captures some of the ambiance of the original series, Robert Conrad and Ross Martin work well together, etc.) and weaknesses (it replaces the slyly satirical spy story played straight with overt comedy). The odd thing for me about watching this one is that I found I was getting used to that shift; as jarring as it was with the first movie, I found myself settling in and growing to accept it with this one, even if I did sense that it left the show in a weird limbo where it was neither fish nor fowl. All I can say is this; if the TV series had been revived (it was discussed, but the death of Ross Martin the next year put an end to that plan), it would’ve needed much better scripts and funnier jokes than there is here; despite my acceptance of the shift, I still didn’t find much to laugh at here. The thing that I liked the best here was to see Victor Buono appear as a parody of Henry Kissinger; he pretty much steals what there is to steal. I do think it’s a shame that I’ll not be covering anything from the original series, as none of the episodes have been edited into movies.

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Pauvre mere (1906)

PAUVRE MERE (1906)
aka Poor Mother
Article 4643 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-2-2014
Directed by Albert Capellani
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Tear-jerker

When her daughter dies after falling from a window, a mother proves inconsolable and turns to drink.

If there’s anything you can really say about the early silent shorts, they were very good at condensing time. You wouldn’t think a mere six minutes would be enough to really put someone through the wringer, but that’s what this downright depressing short does. Granted, with that short a length, I can’t say it really transcends being anything more than a tear-jerker; there’s no real emotional purge here, because there isn’t enough time. Still, the short does have a certain power. The fantastic content involves the woman’s drunken hallucinations that her child is still there.

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Hilfe Ich bin Unsichtbar (1951)

HILFE ICH BIN UNSICHTBAR (1951)
aka Help, I’m Invisible
Article 4642 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-1-2014
Directed by E.W. Emo
Featuring Theo Lingen, Inge Landgut, Fita Benkhoff
Country: West Germany
What it is: Science fiction comedy

A businessman who dabbles in his own experiments finds his life falling apart when he accidentally becomes invisible.

For the second day in a row, I find myself covering a movie that had dropped off my hunt list into my “ones that got away” list, and the belief at that time was that the movie was indeed lost, as no archive had it listed in their holdings. Apparently, though, a collector must have had a copy, and it popped up on YouTube. Unfortunately, the copy has no English subtitles or dubbing, but then, I didn’t really expect it would. Still, that does mean I can’t really give a fair evaluation of the movie. I will say this much, though – the movie is nearly half over before the fantastic content comes into play. The additional comic twist to the invisibility is that the character can become visible again, but only when he is inebriated. To my sensibilities, this doesn’t bode well for the level of the humor. The humor is primarily verbal, and what visual humor there is didn’t impress me. There’s one impressive little special effects sequence where we get a close-up of the invisible man writing a note to someone; the rest of the special effects are standard fare for this sort of thing. Though I can’t really evaluate the movie, the impression I get from the few plot descriptions I’ve read is that it is painfully unfunny, so take that as a warning. Me, I’m still grateful it showed up.

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