Month: July 2020

A Message from Mars (1913)

A MESSAGE FROM MARS (1913)
Article 4739 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-18-2015
Directed by Wallett Waller
Featuring Charles Hawtrey, E. Holman Clark, Crissie Bell
Country: UK
What it is: The reformation of a scoundrel

A Martian is sentenced to exile on Earth until he reforms a resident there of his selfish ways.

This is no doubt one of the earliest full-length science fiction movies ever made, and therefore it has a certain amount of historical and novelty value. It is also, however, little more than a variation on A CHRISTMAS CAROL with the substitution of a Martian for the various ghosts of that story; in this movie, the Martian is little more than a variety of supernatural creature. It is also, sadly, a very slow-moving movie. It was based on a stage play, but it appears that the makers weren’t quite sure how to find a good visual substitute for the missing dialogue, and the end result is that a bare-bones plot is stretched out to a full length movie by padding out everything; each scene feels as if it runs three times longer than it needs to in order to make its point. There are a couple of nice moments, though; my favorite is a comic bit where the selfish-man-to-be-reformed thinks that he can back track on the Martian’s command to go a certain direction, but when he does, he discovers he can only walk backwards. Most of the rest is obvious and overlong; despite being one of the first full-length SF features, it would have worked better as a short.

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The Visitor (1979)

THE VISITOR (1979)
aka Stridulum
Article 4738 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-17-2015
Directed by Giulio Paradisi
Featuring Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen
Country: USA / Italy
What it is: Contortionistic tale of good vs. evil

An eight year old girl embodies an evil alien force, and evil men want her mother (who carries the genetic code) to become pregnant and give birth to a brother for the child. However, a cosmic savior from another world seeks to prevent the evil from taking hold on the Earth.

If you can somehow imagine an amalgamation of THE OMEN, THE BIRDS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND filtered through a fever dream that encompasses such elements as an exploding basketball, a creepy mechanical talking bird, a strangely choreographed fight scene in a skating rink, and lots of broken glass (especially during a house of mirrors sequence), you might have a chance of preparing yourself for this outlandish American/Italian co-production. The fact that it’s peopled with quite a few name stars (on top of those listed above, we also have John Huston, Shelley Winters and Sam Peckinpah) just makes it weirder. Still, I don’t find it quite as incoherent as some people claim; if you’re playing close attention, you have something of an idea of what’s going on. It is stylishly directed, and some of the scenes look wonderful. On the down side, some of the scenes look pretty cheesy, and given the choice, I would redo the musical score, which is sometimes way too bombastic for its own good. I don’t know how I feel about the movie yet; I’m not quite sure that I can call it a good movie, though it is a fascinating one to watch. I do, however, think that it deserves better than it’s current 4.6 rating on IMDB, and there’s enough here to make me think that it is worth a second viewing.

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The Wednesday Children (1973)

THE WEDNESDAY CHILDREN (1973)
Article 4737 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-16-2015
Directed by Robert D. West
Featuring Carol Cary, Marji Dodril, Tom Kelly
Country: USA
What it is: An end… and a beginning.

Children in a small country town live an unhappy existence with their parents who don’t understand them. This makes them ripe for temptation by a man named Fenton…

This movie is so obscure that at the time it entered my hunt list, there wasn’t even a listing for it on IMDB. So actually, I’m quite amazed that not only did a listing appear recently, but so did the movie itself. Part of the reason for its obscurity is no doubt its extreme low budget; it was written and directed by a preacher in a small Ohio town. I’ve heard it described as a Christian version of CHILDREN OF THE CORN, and to some extent, that’s an apt description. The first half is rather dreary; we spend a lot of time sharing the unhappy lives of unhappy people, and it’s not until the children in question are made aware of a power they can be given that will transform their lives (by a diabolic character known as Fenton) that the movie starts to take shape. Even at that point, the film feels pretty obvious, but there’s an unexpected last minute twist that seems to redefine what the movie is about, especially if we understand that the Fenton character is supposed to represent the devil. The last minute twist is the best part of the movie for me, though I do think the whole thing would have worked better as a half hour short; as it is, it goes on way too long. Still, for such a low-budget obscure indie movie, it has its moments.

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Superman’s Peril (1954)

SUPERMAN’S PERIL (1954)
Article 4736 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-13-2015
Directed by George Blair and Thomas Carr
Featuring George Reeves, Noel Neill, Jack Larson
Country: USA
What it is: Episodes of a superhero TV show edited into a feature

Superman has three adventures. In the first, he deals with smuggling ship disguised as a salvage ship with a mad captain. In the second, he gets caught up in a private detective’s investigation of a blackmailer. In the third, he must contend with a gangster who has hired a scientist who discovers Superman’s vulnerability to kryptonite.

Those of you who have been following this series for some time know what I’m going to say next, but it must be said. Like the other feature films culled from the second season of “Adventures of Superman”, I have not, in fact, seen this film, as none of them are available. I have, however, seen the three episodes used for the film, since the TV series itself is available. There’s a nice variety this time out. The first story is taken from the episode “The Golden Vulture”, and it’s a fairly straightforward action piece. The second (“The Semi-Private Eye”) is one of the more overtly comic episodes, and it gives Jack Larson (as Jimmy Olsen) a chance to have fun as he takes on a private detective persona as he sets out on his own to rescue Lois Lane and a detective named Homer Garrity (played by Elisha Cook Jr.) from kidnappers. The third (“The Defeat of Superman”) delves into the mythology of Superman by bringing kryptonite onto the scene; the scientist who develops artificial kryptonite is played by Maurice Cass, who I mostly remember for having played Professor Newton in the Rocky Jones series. All the episodes are enjoyable, and my favorite moments include the discovery that Superman can reassemble torn up messages with his mind alone, and a scene where Lois Lane tries to trap Clark Kent into revealing his identity as Superman by using a heavily weighted phone book.

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Night Child (1972)

NIGHT CHILD (1972)
aka Diabolica malicia, What the Peeper Saw
Article 4735 by Dave Sindelar
1-12-2015
Directed by James Kelley and Andrea Bianchi
Featuring Mark Lester, Britt Ekland, Hardy Kruger
Country: Spain / UK / Italy / West Germany

A woman marries a man whose previous wife died two years before. Upon meeting the man’s son, she becomes convinced that there is something disturbing going on in the household… or is she the one who is disturbed?

My DVD gave me the option of watching either the U.S. theatrical version of the movie (which runs 72 minutes) or the uncut original version (which runs 95 minutes). I opted for the latter, of course, but I would like to point out that the shortened version of the movie is missing nearly a quarter of the footage. Though I don’t care for censorship, I do understand why it happens, and when your movie has unambiguously as its central plot element the sexual relationship between a precocious 12 year old boy and his 22-year old stepmother, you know someone’s going to take some scissors to it somewhere. I also wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the shorter version is a confusing mess, though I can’t say so for sure at this time. Overall, the movie is a variation on THE BAD SEED, though it does attempt to be more psychologically penetrating than that one was; the boy is indeed disturbed, but neither the father nor the stepmother are well-adjusted either, and the stepmother takes so many questionable actions during the course of the movie that she hardly ends up coming across as the heroine. Fortunately, the movie is more interesting than exploitative, though I did get a little worried towards the end of the movie when it starts trotting out surreal fantasy sequences reflecting one character’s thoughts; fortunately, it gets back on track. Still, this is pretty edgy subject matter, and the passage of time has probably only made it moreso.

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48 Hours to Live (1959)

48 HOURS TO LIVE (1959)
aka Med fara for livet
Article 4734 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-11-2015
Directed by Peter Bourne
Featuring Anthony Steel, Birger Malmsten, Lewis Charles
Country: Sweden / UK
What it is: Spy…uh…thriller

A reporter takes a ship to the island of Gotland to do an interview with a nuclear scientist. When the daughter of the scientist tells him she’s being held hostage by a pair of spies in order for them to get the scientist to divulge his secrets, he becomes embroiled in espionage.

Every once in a while I find myself thinking while I’m watching a movie, “I bet this is the director’s first movie… and probably his only one.” That started passing through my mind early on in this one, but I tried to cut the movie some slack by attributing some of the clumsiness and awkwardness to the substandard dubbing that no doubt took place to translate it from Swedish to English. However, that excuse went out the door when I discovered that it was filmed in English to begin with. The first half hour feels like a comedy with no sense of comic timing; the rest of it feels like a clumsily contrived spy thriller full of dead spaces. Even when it comes up with a fairly decent suspense sequence (involving two people in a deathtrap in a windmill), it fumbles it because it did such a clumsy job of setting up the method of their rescue earlier in the movie, so there’s no surprise. As for the fantastic content, there’s hardly any here; despite the spy trappings, there’s no gadgetry, and the secrets that the scientist is being forced to divulge are never discussed. That leaves only the rumor of the windmill being haunted to provide fantastic content. As far as I can tell, the English title means nothing. And, yes, this was Peter Bourne’s first and only directorial effort, though he kept busy enough as an actor.

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Equinozio (1971)

EQUINOZIO (1971)
aka Equinox
Article 4733 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-10-2015
Directed by Maurizio Ponzi
Featuring Claudine Augur, Paola Pitagora, Giancarlo Sbragia
Country: Italy
What it is: Strange psychic Sci-Fi

A virus causes men to have memories of past lives, but women are not affected. When it is concluded that from this that only men reincarnate, it has repercussions…

This movie was almost ready to go to my “ones that got away” list when a copy turned up. Unfortunately, my copy was in Italian with French subtitles, and though I’d dredged up a few clues to what was going on in the movie (a man’s ESP mistaken for mental illness, a rebellion of women against men), I was quite unable to piece together what was going on in the movie until I found a short description that connected the various pieces of the puzzle, which I’ve paraphrased in the plot description above. Still, even with that to help me, I don’t feel I can really pass any judgment on this one; too much of what’s going on is tied up in the dialogue for me to adequately follow the story. Unfortunately, there’s not much on a visual level to make the movie particularly appealing, so I didn’t get much pleasure out of that. Therefore, there’s little I can do on this one rather than cross it off my list and hope that someday an English translation will allow me to give it another chance.

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The Kid (1921)

THE KID (1921)
Article 4732 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-8-2015
Directed by Charles Chaplin
Featuring Charles Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Jackie Coogan
Country: USA
What it is: Heartwarming comedy

A single mother abandons her child in a limousine in a moment of desperation, but the limo is stolen by thieves and the baby is left out in the street. A wandering tramp discovers the child, and eventually decides to raise it as his own. However, later in life, the woman becomes a successful actress, and she begins to long for the child she abandoned…

No, this movie is in essence not a genre movie, but the Walt Lee guide includes the film for a single sequence; late in the movie, the tramp falls asleep in a doorway and dreams that he is in heaven, which is a wonderful place until some devils show up to make mischief. Though it’s a fun sequence, it feels a bit out of place with the rest of the movie, and its purpose is to serve as a transition scene that eventually leads to the final ending. Still, I’m really glad for the opportunity to cover one of Chaplin’s major early works, where he turned away from pure slapstick and started adding an emotional resonance to his work that made it a deeper cinematic experience. Yes, Chaplin does have some great comic moments in this one (I love how he can sometimes with a single look or action reveal what is going through his mind), but the core of the movie is his relationship with the child, who was played by a 7-year old Jackie Coogan, who gives an excellent performance as well. We end up caring for all of the major characters, and this includes the mother, who almost immediately regrets her abandonment of the child and returns to the place she left him, only to find the child gone. This is a wonderful movie, and it’s a good example of the maturity of Chaplin’s craft; it’s one of the reasons he became one of the most respected comedians of this era.

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The Time Crystal (1981)

THE TIME CRYSTAL (1981)
aka Through the Magic Pyramid
TV-Movie
Article 4731 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-7-2015
Directed by Ron Howard
Featuring Chris Barnes, Hans Conried, Vic Tayback
Country: USA
What it is: Children’s time-travel sword and sandal movie

A boy with a fascination for all things Egyptian is given a pyramid-shaped crystal that propels him back in time to ancient Egypt. There he becomes embroiled in a plot to kill the Pharaoh Akhenaten and to prevent the rightful heir, Prince Tutankhamen from ascending to the throne.

After sitting through about twenty minutes of this movie, I popped into IMDB out of curiosity to see what its rating would be, and I was initially astonished to see a rating of 7.2. Then I had to remind myself that this was, after all, a children’s movie that had fallen into obscurity, and sure enough, when I read the user comments on the movie, it told a familiar story; most of them come from people who remember seeing it as a child, it had a big impact on them, but they hadn’t seen it in many years. Actually, I can see why it might have a big impact; the main character is an awkward boy who feels bad over having made an embarrassing mistake at a football game, and who redeems himself by going into the past and rescuing the Prince from kidnappers, proving himself heroic and competent and defeating many evil adults along the way. This is the sort of story that hits home for kids of a certain age. Well, I won’t begrudge them their memories, but I think they’d be better off if they didn’t try to dredge up a copy to watch again. To these eyes, it looks like a silly juvenile low-budget sword and sandal movie with time travel thrown into the mix, and I didn’t find it remotely convincing. I hope I’m not the only one who finds it hard to swallow Vic Tayback as an ancient Egyptian, but at least I managed to get my mind around that after a bit; seeing Jo Anne Worley as one was really beyond the pale. Well, at least it has Hans Conried, who I always enjoy. And, to the movie’s credit, it gets better as it goes along. It even has one really good scene when we reach the death of Akhenaten. Beyond that, I can’t really recommend this one.

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Ten Little Indians (1974)

TEN LITTLE INDIANS (1974)
aka Ein Unbekannter rechnet ab
Article 4730 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-6-2015
Directed by Peter Collinson
Featuring Charles Aznavour, Maria Rohm, Adolfo Celi
Country: Italy / West Germany / France / Spain / UK
What it is: Agatha Christie mystery

Eight guests are invited to a party at a mansion in the middle of a desert by a host named U.N. Owen, but the host is not present; only two servants are found on the premises. Then a recording is played where the host accuses all ten people of having committed murder. Then the guests and the help begin dying one by one…

For the record, I’ve seen the Rene Clair movie AND THEN THERE WERE NONE twice, and I’ve also read the stage play version of the story twice, once within the last few months. In short, I’m very familiar with the story, and seeing how it’s one of Christie’s most popular works, I’m sure it’s familiar to a lot of other people are as well. And therein lies one of the pitfalls of filming an extremely well known mystery story; the only way you’re really going to surprise a viewer already familiar with the work is by being unfaithful to the story. For the record, this version changes some of the details; for example, the setting is a mansion in the middle of a desert rather than on an island (in either case, there’s no way for the people to leave), and the methods of several of the murders are different, but in essence, it remains faithful to the traditional versions of the story. Still, there are two things that I really like about this one. First of all, I find it hard to dislike any movie that features Oliver Reed, Elke Sommer, Herbert Lom, Richard Attenborough, Gert Frobe, Maria Rohm and Adolfo Celi all at once (all these names together can’t help my make me smile), and the interior sets are stunning; no wonder there are so many long shots in the movie placing all the actors against these sets. Some of the scenes work quite nicely, and there are a couple of clumsy moments, but overall, I rather liked this version of the movie. It just didn’t have a lot in the way of surprises.

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