Month: November 2020

Target… Earth? (1980)

TARGET… EARTH? (1980)
Article 5167 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-26-2016
Directed by Joost van Rees
Featuring Victor Buono, Rick Overton, Isaac Asimov
Country: USA
What it is: Documentary?

A researcher aboard a space ship is tasked with understanding the Tunguska Event from 1908, its cause, and the effect it had on humanity.

This is not to be confused with the 1954 alien invasion movie from 1954 (TARGET EARTH) nor the investigation of alien presence movie from 1974 (UFO: TARGET EARTH). No, this is another example of a movie subgenre I’ve already encountered several times in this series; it’s an “aliens from outer space have visited us” documentary. If you’re not familiar with the Tunguska Event of 1908, it involves a huge explosion supposedly caused by a meteorite impact, only, since there was no impact crater, it is believed that the meteorite exploded above the ground.

I will admit to a certain fondness for this one, though not necessarily because it’s so convincing. Rather, I’m fond of the way it was so eccentrically staged. Rather than an earnest authority figure of sorts narrating for us, we get a fictionalized framing device in which a man named Homer the Archivist (played by Victor Buono) living in a spaceship is tasked with researching the event by his computer-with-an-attitude (voiced by Rick Overton). Buono waxes philosophic about human nature, banters with his computer, and talks to frogs. These scenes alternate with documentary footage, interviews, and some strange footage involving alien women aboard another spaceship. I’m not sure if it really works, but I will admit that Buono is very entertaining and has some great lines. It’s this truly strange framing device that instills what fun there is in this documentary. At any rate, I will say that this movie does earn the question mark in its title.

On a side note, you will see Isaac Asimov’s name in the cast list above; according to IMDB, he was one of the people interviewed. In truth, I did not see him; either I did not recognize him (though those sideburns are hard to miss) or he was on so briefly I missed it when I was out of the room for a second…or, he wasn’t in it at all. However, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle both appear, as well as Carl Sagan.

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La marmite diabolique (1902)

LA MARMITE DIABOLIQUE (1902)
Article 5166 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-25-2016
Directed by Gaston Velle
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Early trick short

A cook throws a young boy into a boiling pot, thus incurring the wrath of a devil.

Adventures in movie-hunting: The Walt Lee guide from which I culled this title lists the movie as being a 1903 production directed by Gaston Velle and produced by Pathe Freres. The problem is that this listing mixes up things. There are two movies of the same title: one from 1902 directed by Velle for Lumiere, and a 1904 version with an unknown director for Pathe Freres. The first of these is extant, while the second one is lost, so I’m going to use this listing to both review the extant version and write the other one to my “ones that got away” list.

The IMDB listing is for the 1904 version, and the plot description there almost sounds like the 1902 version, except it has events out of order and events that don’t occur; it was obviously a remake of this one. It’s a fairly ordinary trick short, similar to the many Melies shorts of the time, though it lacks the energy of those shorts. This earlier version is available currently on YouTube for anyone who might be interested. It is, however, nothing particularly special.

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Stoogemania (1986)

STOOGEMANIA (1986)
Article 5165 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-23-2016
Directed by Chuck Workman
Featuring Josh Mostel, Melanie Chartoff, Sid Caesar
Country: USA
What it is: Recycling gone horribly wrong

A prospective bridegroom calls off his marriage when it becomes apparent that he suffers from an affliction called Stoogemania, in which he hallucinates Three Stooges footage and acts like an idiot.

The fantastic content of this movie is the title disease, and if you think that’s lame… well, yes, it is. Nor is it a promising premise for a movie, though I will acknowledge it as an affectionate nod to the comic team in question. The challenge with attempting a tribute of this sort is coming up with new comic business that is as inspired and funny as the Three Stooges at their best, and I’m afraid it doesn’t succeed; all too often, the movie just collapses into loud, messy undisciplined slapstick. To further underline this, a good thirty to forty percent of the movie consists of authentic Three Stooges footage (which allows you to compare the real thing with the new footage), and I suspect all of it is from the handful of shorts that fell into public domain. You can get those shorts for a song, and if you do, you have the best parts of the movie there. The rest is unnecessary and a waste of time. And, for the record, movie, it’s “nyuk nyuk nyuk”, not “nuk nuk nuk”.

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Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars (1981)

REVENGE OF THE MYSTERONS FROM MARS (1981)
Article 5164 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-22-2016
Directed by Brian Burgess, Robert Lynn and Ken Turner
Featuring the voices of Francis Matthews, Ed Bishop, Donald Gray
Country: UK
What it is: TV-Movie compilation of episodes from “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons”

Spectrum agent Captain Scarlet and his cohorts match wits with an alien race known as the Mysterons.

This TV-Movie has four episodes from “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons” stitched together to create a feature; they are “Shadow of Fear”, “Lunarville 7”, “Crater 101” and “Dangerous Rendezvous”; the last three episodes do seem to be semi-sequels to each other, though they weren’t originally shown in direct succession. It was another one of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s Supermarionation series. I suspect the Andersons took these shows quite seriously; a lot of effort went into making the marionettes as lifelike as possible, and sometimes when you squint they almost look and act human. However, they never found an effective way to show them walking, so the shows were framed so you never saw their legs moving. That’s why so many of the action sequences were more likely to involve hardware and vehicles. I don’t know if there was any resolution to the central conflict between Spectrum and the Mysterons in the original series, but if there was, it would have come in the last episode, which is not among the bunch in this compilation, so the movie never really resolves itself. It’s mildly entertaining, but the series is better experienced in thirty-minute segments; it gets rather dull stretched out to a feature. Nowadays, this feature version is probably best remembered as one of the first features to have gotten the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment back in its KTMA days, though the episode hasn’t been in circulation in years and probably will never be.

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Arsenal (1929)

ARSENAL (1929)
Article 5163 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-21-2016
Directed by Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Featuring Semyon Svashenko, Amvrosi Buchma, Georgi Khorkov
Country: Soviet Union
What it is: Revolutionary drama

After surviving a brutal war and a train wreck, a soldier/worker returns to his home in the Ukraine to organize a worker’s revolution that will center at the town’s arsenal.

The movie is based on an incident during the Russian Civil War in 1918 when workers in Kiev aided the Bolshevik army against the ruling class in the city. Given the time and place where this was made, there’s little doubt as to what the ideological content will be here. Still, ideology can sometimes tap into a creative energy that can imbue a movie with a spirit that can be appreciated, even if you choose to reject the propagandistic message. There is definitely a kinetic energy to this movie (especially during a memorable train wreck sequence in which an accordion serves as a visual counterpoint to the proceedings), and I can even admire the way it symbolically argues its points; in short, it’s an effective movie. The Walt Lee guide lists the fantastic content as being a scene where a dead soldier continues to walk, but I was unable to spot a particular moment in question. However, there are a few other incidents that push it into the fantastic. There’s a scene where a painting briefly comes to life. Also, certain title cards seem to imply that the words being spoken are by animals. Also, the final scene has a man refusing to fall after being shot, implying that he is invincible, another symbolic touch.

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Das Geheimnis der Chinesischen Nelke (1964)

DAS GEHEIMNIS DER CHINESISCHEN NELKE (1964)
aka Secret of the Chinese Carnation
Article 5162 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-20-2016
Directed by Rudolf Zehetgruber
Featuring Paul Dahlke, Olga Schoberova, Dietmar Schonherr
Country: West Germany / Italy / France
What it is: Alternative krimi

Several parties try to get their hands on a microfilm that contains the secret of a new source of energy.

Though it’s not part of the series of Edgar Wallace movies that make up most of krimis of the time, this is part of that basic genre. Krimis are a bit hard to follow in the first place, and knowing that I was going into this one without the help of English dubbing or subtitles, I didn’t exactly anticipate having much luck following the story as is. Therefore, I just tried to enjoy what I could. This one is a bit on the talky side, but there is an amusing fight in a Chinese bar, a novel way to stop a ticking bomb, and a truly interesting place to hide a piece of microfilm. The fantastic content is the formula on the microfilm (a Gizmo Maguffin if ever there was one) and a bit of spy-oriented gadgetry. The cast also includes Brad Harris and Klaus Kinski to add to the star power. All in all, this one looks pretty ordinary. The director would go on to the Superbug movies.

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Angel Puss (1944)

ANGEL PUSS (1944)
Article 5161 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-19-2016
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Animated cartoon

A black boy undertakes to drown a cat in the lake, but the cat escapes and disguises himself as a ghost to scare the boy.

There’s a group of Warner Brothers cartoons known as the “Censored 11”. These were cartoons that were removed from syndication due to the fact that the racial stereotypes were deemed far too offensive for modern audiences. This group includes at least one cartoon that over the years has gained the reputation of an animated classic (COAL BLACK AND DE SEBBEN DWARFS), and it also includes this one, which, as far as I know, is on no one’s list of great animated cartoons. In fact, it may be one of the weakest Warner Brothers cartoons of the era, and it’s not even because of the racial stereotype (which involves a black boy named Sambo who is easily scared and hypnotized by rattling dice); it’s mainly because there’s something lazy and routine about the way it puts forth it gags. It was directed by Chuck Jones, who is usually better with these things, but he wasn’t working with his usual writers, either. There are other cartoons with similar premises that do a much better job; this one is only really worth seeking out if you’re a Warner Brothers completist.

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Sumpah Pontianak (1958)

SUMPAH PONTIANAK (1958)
aka The Vampire’s Curse
Article 5160 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-18-2016
Directed by B. Narayan Rao
Featuring Maria Menado, Mustapha Maarof, Salmah Ahmad
Country: Singapore
What it is: Exotic strangeness

The residents of a small village have to deal with a series of monsters, including a pontianak, a shape-shifting female vampire.

One of the most interesting aspects of this project of mine is having the chance to visit the cinema of countries that are off the beaten path. This returns me to Singapore; the last movie I saw from there was CURSE OF THE OILY MAN. This one was apparently the third of a trilogy about a pontianak, a shape-shifting flying female vampire. We also encounter an ugly forest zombie and a strange lizard creature before it’s all over. Since the dialogue was in Malay, I can’t claim I that I was able to follow the plot, and the fact that it was the third movie in a trilogy in which I haven’t seen the first two movies further complicates things. Still, it’s fun when the monsters show up, but that really doesn’t happen until the middle of the movie. Until then you get a lot of dull talk broken up by some entertaining musical numbers; the movie is as much a musical as it is a horror movie. The special effects are pretty weak, but for this one, it’s part of the charm. Perhaps the most striking moment for me in the movie had nothing to do with the monsters; it was the final musical number that blew me away, as the musicians tell a song acted out by three dancers who move in such a stiff, jerky fashion that they look like poorly stop-motion animated marionettes, and it was indescribably fascinating. I love taking cinematic adventures like this.

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Ztracena tvar (1965)

ZTRACENA TVAR (1965)
aka The Lost Face
Article 5159 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-16-2016
Directed by Pavel Habl
Featuring Jana Brejchova, Jana Brezkova, Vlastimil Brodsky
Country: Czechoslovakia
What it is: Comic medical science fiction

A doctor researching face transplants can’t get funding for his research, so he agrees to transplant a gangster’s face with that of one of his victims for a lot of money. However, complications arise and the doctor discovers he’s going to have to change his own face as well.

I was able to find a copy of this, but not one with English subtitles. This is a pity, as I’m quite fond of Czech science fiction, and though the existence of a few plot descriptions did help me have some idea of what was going on in this movie, the subtleties escaped me. Therefore, I can’t really give an adequate review of the movie as such, but it does seem quite amusing and appears to be very well acted. One element that does come through is that after the doctor’s own change of face, he finds himself reliving various elements of his life in the previous face, only with noticeable changes in the way the action pans out. This one looks quite interesting, though I’m told it gets a bit preachy before all is through. Nevertheless, I’m glad for the chance to see it.

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The Todd Killings (1971)

THE TODD KILLINGS (1971)
Article 5158 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-15-2016
Directed by Barry Shear
Featuring Robert F. Lyons, Richard Thomas, Belinda Montgomery
Country: USA
What it is: Cinematic take on a true story

A charismatic and hedonistic sociopath, very popular with the kids in town, dismisses society and its values. However, he’s murdered one girl and buried her body with the help of a few friends. How long can the secret be kept?

‘The Motion Picture Guide’ classifies this adaptation of a true story of a series of murders in Tucson in 1965 as a horror movie, but the tag really doesn’t fit; it’s definitely played more as a drama, and though the killer eventually is responsible for deaths of three people, I’m not sure he really qualifies as a “serial killer”. Therefore, this movie is extremely marginal. On its own terms, it’s a moderately interesting drama with a very good cast. However, it occasionally finds itself flirting with cliches, and (after a strong opening) the first two-thirds of the movie gets a bit dull in its painting a portrait of the main character; Robert F. Lyons is a good actor giving a solid performance, but he can’t quite make his character as charismatic and fascinating as the movie needs him to be. It does pick up towards the end, and there are some interesting scenes involving the circus-like nature of the hunt for the bodies and the teens being less concerned about the murders than they are about losing their charismatic leader. The movie is helped by what amounts to a series of cameos by name actors, included Barbara Bel Geddes, Gloria Grahame and Edward Asner. The movie has its moments, but one senses this could have been much better.

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