Month: July 2020

Hypnotized (1932)

HYPNOTIZED (1932)
Article 4779 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-11-2015
Directed by Mack Sennett
Featuring George Moran, Charles Mack, Ernest Torrence
Country: USA
What it is: Beyond the pale

A circus employee is in love with a famous gypsy violinist, but he’s too embarrassed to propose because she makes more money than he does. When he wins a sweepstakes, he proposes, but then vanishes on the day of the wedding. The violinist gets on a ship to return to her homeland, but so is the circus employee, and he’s under the spell of hypnotist who is using him for his performances.

Ten thoughts on HYPNOTIZED.

1) Mack Sennett had trouble adjusting to the advent of sound, and from what I gather, this feature is really what did him in; it went way over budget, had twelve writers, and though I don’t know for sure, I suspect it bombed. It’s hard to imagine a movie this bad making money.

2) The putative stars are George Moran and Charles Mack, a vaudeville team that performed in blackface as “The Two Black Crows”. In this movie, as a team they appear only in a brief scene near the beginning; shortly after that, Moran disappears from the story, while Mack appears again and again, usually working with Wallace Ford.

3) Oddly enough, the performers in blackface are not the most offensive aspect of the movie. Some of the ways the animals are treated look very questionable. Sure, they’re probably faking the elephant getting drunk, but the scene where Mack and his girlfriend (or their stand-ins, as the case may be) are pulling on the tail of a lion doesn’t look faked.

4) Apparently, Sennett wanted W.C. Fields for the movie; I’m assuming he would have been either in the role Charles Murray or as the hypnotist. I don’t know whether it was wisdom or luck, but he was fortunate to have nothing to do with it.

5) The movie was distributed by World Wide pictures, who had an infamous movie logo consisting of a woman holding two huge globes in front of her chest. Usually it’s rendered as a drawing, but every once in a while it’s done with a live model. My copy of this features the live model both at the beginning and the end. This logo is classier than the rest of the movie.

6) For some reason, the movie has some short bits of animation of dancing mice during one scene. The scene also has Mack pulling on a dog’s tail to add to the animal cruelty of the film.

7) Every once in a while I encounter a movie where I feel that a “making of” feature about the movie would be more fascinating and effective than the movie itself. This is one of those. I’d especially love to find out why the movie is such a mess and why Moran disappears from the cast.

8) There are only two moments in the movie that even mildly amused me. One has Ford and Mack sitting down without chairs. The other has Mack pulling out the clumsiest looking jackknife I’ve ever seen.

9) On top of “The Two Black Crows”, one other character is also in blackface; this is the woman playing Mack’s girlfriend. I suspect the reason for this is that some audience members would have been offended by a white man (even in blackface) romancing a black woman. As far as I can tell, there’s only one real black in the cast; Hattie McDaniel shows up as a powder room attendant and promptly outacts everyone else on the screen.

10) Finally, this is one of those truly, desperately, painfully unfunny comedies. It’s energetic and it’s trying its best, but it falls flat at every turn. The only people who I would recommend it to are those who really want to see that World Wide Pictures logo.

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Kaidan ‘Chidori-ga-fuchi’ (1956)

KAIDAN ‘CHIDORI-GA-FUCHI’ (1956)
aka The Ghost of Chidori-ga-fuchi
Article 4778 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-10-2015
Directed by Elichi Koishi
Featuring Harue Akagi, Ushio Akashi, Ryutaro Aoyagi
Country: Japan
What it is: Ghost story

A man’s wife dies in a swamp. Her ghost returns to haunt him.

This is another movie that was rescued from my “ones that got away” list when I discovered I could order a used VHS of the film; unfortunately, the tape was from Japan, so of course there’s no English dubbing or subtitles. As a result, I can’t really give a comprehensive review of it. However, I have heard that it’s not really very good, and based on what I did see, it seems slow, talky and uneventful. The ghost doesn’t really come into play until near the end of the movie, and even then, not a whole lot happens. It’s a fairly short film (66 minutes), but the draggy pace makes it feel a lot longer. Unless there’s some really interesting dialogue, there’s not much to recommend here.

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Odor-able Kitty (1944)

ODOR-ABLE KITTY (1944)
Article 4777 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-9-2015
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Warner Brothers Cartoon

A put-upon cat hits upon a scheme to keep his nemeses from tormenting him; he disguises himself as a skunk to scare them off. However, complications arrive when he ends up attracting the amorous attentions of a real skunk…

This marks the cartoon debut Pepe Le Pew, and even though his name is Henry here and he’s given a backstory that would be abandoned in later entries (he’s already married with children), it’s pretty much the same character. He’s also a secondary character here; the main character is the cat who disguises himself as a skunk. Unlike the other Pepe Le Pew cartoons, the cat disguised as a skunk also emulates the smell of a skunk by rubbing himself with limburger cheese, and it is that smell that ends up attracting the skunk. Actually, the attraction by smell may explain one of the odder aspects of this cartoon; whereas the cats in the other cartoons of the series are clearly female, the protagonist in this one is definitely male, and it doesn’t say much for Pepe’s ability to discriminate that he mistakes him for a female, perhaps the smell threw him off. At any rate, it’s a pretty amusing cartoon, though I think some of the later cartoons in the series would nail down the routine better. Keep your eyes open for a fake cameo from Bugs Bunny in this one.

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Civilization (1916)

CIVILIZATION (1916)
Article 4776 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-8-2015
Directed by Reginald Barker, Thomas H. Ince, Raymond B. West, Walter Edwards, David Hartford, Jay Hunt, J. Parker Read Jr.
Featuring Howard C. Hickman, Enid Markey, Lola May
Country: USA
What it is: Anti-war allegory

The king of a mythical country declares war to further his ambitions. The war devastates the country until a Count, in limbo between life and death, meets Jesus Christ, who takes over the Count’s body to bring peace.

This movie was apparently inspired by the phrase that was crucial to Woodrow Wilson’s presidency campaign of 1916, “He kept us out of war.” It’s a message movie that wears its message on its sleeve, which is simply that we can’t really call ourselves civilized while we still wage war. It takes place in what is probably a mythical country, but given the costume designs, I suspect that it’s a stand-in for Germany; the subplot about the use of submarines to wage war further backs this up. Though the movie is technically well made, it is naive and rather threadbare in terms of character and plot; it’s too busy trying to preach to come up with either interesting characters or a compelling story. In fact, the movie is ultimately a variation on the Scrooge story, only it takes three-quarters of its running time before the King is finally visited by this movie’s version of that story’s ghosts. As a result, the movie gets rather dull and predictable. And, given what happened in history after the movie was made, it wasn’t particularly effectual in preaching its message.

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Nursery Favorites (1913)

NURSERY FAVORITES (1913)
Article 4775 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-7-2015
Directed by Allen Ramsey
Featuring Edna Flugrath
Country: USA
What it is: Early experiment with sound

Various characters from nursery rhymes and fairy tales appear, sing and dance.


THE JAZZ SINGER wasn’t really the first sound movie; it was the first one that used a technology that could be widely adapted. There were several early experiments with sound, but I think this is the only one that has anything in the way of fantastic content. There’s no plot to speak of; all that happens is several characters appear and sing songs tied to a variety of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. The giant from “Jack and the Beanstalk” appears (played by a really tall guy), as well as the Queen of the Fairies; there’s also a fairly large spider for the Little Miss Muffet song. The action is shot in one long single take with a static camera, and the stage gets rather crowded before it’s all over. It’s mostly interesting as a curio, and some of the sound is rather inaudible, but I rather expected that

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The Night Before Christmas (1941)

THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1941)
Article 4774 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-5-2015
Directed by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Tom and Jerry holiday cartoon

Jerry explores the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve, but crosses paths with Tom when he mistakes the latter for a stuffed animal.

Given that this is a Tom and Jerry cartoon, there is a certain amount of knockabout humor to the proceedings here. However, since it’s also a Christmas-themed cartoon, it gravitates more in the direction of whimsy, especially in the opening scene where Jerry does his exploration. Fans of the series like to point out that despite the violence, Tom and Jerry are friends; though that may not come through on certain individual cartoons. It does on this one, since the last part of the cartoon deals with Tom’s feelings of guilt when he locks Jerry out in the freezing storm, and the friendship drives the rest of the events in the cartoon. As a result, I end up liking this one somewhat more than the last Tom and Jerry cartoon I saw; it captures one of the more endearing aspects of the series, because that friendship offers a good counterpoint to the violence.

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Christus (1916)

CHRISTUS (1916)
Article 4773 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-4-2015
Directed by Giulio Antamoro
Featuring Alberto Pasquali, Amleto Novelli, Leda Gys
Country: Italy
What it is: Telling of the Christ story

The story of Jesus Christ is told from his birth to his ascension into heaven.

I was able to find this movie on YouTube, and though the title cards were in Italian, I didn’t foresee any problems with following it because of the familiarity of the story. And, for the most part, I was correct. As might be expected from a silent movie, it concentrates on the events that can be told visually rather than on Jesus’s preaching, and since the emphasis is on spectacle, we get lots of crowd scenes and plenty of special effects. Many of the latter are the expected ones (we get a scene of Jesus walking on the water) while others are not expected, as they seem to be elaborations of story elements that do not appear to be in the Bible; for example, there’s a scene where a large group of angels magically appear to set the table for the last supper and then disappear again. Some of the scenes are very well done, but others are a bit dull, though my inability to read the Italian titles may play into this. The movie also recreates some famous paintings, such as da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”.

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Le peintre neo-impressionniste (1910)

LE PEINTRE NEO-IMPRESSIONNISTE (1910)
aka The Neo-Impressionist Painter
Article 4772 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-3-2015
Directed by Emile Cohl
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Illustrated joke

An artist is interrupted in his work by a potential buyer for his paintings. The artist shows the buyer some of his work.

The above description doesn’t give any clue to the fantastic content of the short, so all I’m going to say is that Cohl illustrates each of the paintings with an animated sequence, one of which at least displays a supernatural creature. As for the short itself, it’s largely a set-up for several variations on the same joke, and if you know the significance of the phrase “a polar bear eating marshmallows in a blizzard”, you know the joke. In short, the artist shows up various pictures that, thanks to hand-coloring, are all of single hue, and then describes in the way the phrase above would be used to illustrate a totally white canvas. I couldn’t totally understand the title cards (as they’re in French), but Cohl then runs a short animation of each painting and you get the gist of what it’s claiming to portray. There’s also a two-tone painting that has a different description depending on whether it’s viewed right side up or upside down. It’s a fairly cute concept, but it’s hardly one of Cohl’s best, nor is it very representative of his work.

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Many a Slip (1927)

MANY A SLIP (1927)
aka The Inventor Bricolo
Article 4771 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-2-2015
Directed by Charles R. Bowers and Harold L. Muller
Featuring Charles R. Bowers, Corinne Powers, Ricca Allen
Country: USA
What it is: Partially animated comedy

An inventor attempts to create a formula that will make banana peels non-slippery.

Charles R. Bowers is one of the more obscure comedians of the silent era, but he’s one of the more interesting and offbeat ones. His most striking quality is that he dabbled in both slapstick comedy and stop-motion animation, sometimes in the same short. In this one, for example, Bowers studies a banana peel under a huge microscope and discovers a bizarre little stop-motion creature that makes the peel slippery. Part of the short involves the repetition of a single gag (there are a lot of people slipping on banana peels); the rest of the short concentrates on gags involving Bower’s bizarre laboratory. There’s something positively surreal about Bower’s work, and some of the gags quite weird. Still, I have a real weak spot for this type of thing, and I thoroughly enjoyed this little short, and I’m really glad to finally be able to cover one of his works.

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Brotherhood of Man (1945)

BROTHERHOOD OF MAN (1945)
Article 4770 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-28-2015
Directed by Robert Cannon
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Animation with a message

A man wakes up in the future to find his world has shrunk so much that he now lives right next to people from other cultures. The two sides of his personality then argue with each other whether to treat his new neighbors with friendliness or hostility.

In many ways, this is a rather striking short. It featured early animation by UPA and was financed by a union. It was quite prescient in recognizing that technological advances were making the world a smaller place and that we would increasingly find ourselves interacting on a regular basis with people from other cultures, and it was also ahead of its time in advocating racial tolerance and understanding. It does so by emphasizing the similarities between the various races instead of dwelling on the differences between them. The message was considered quite controversial, and several people connected with the film were investigated during the McCarthy era. Though in some ways the short is overly optimistic and rather simplistic, the message is still quite relevant, and anyone who keeps track of current events knows that the world still has a long way to go. This one is a piece of history.

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