Month: January 2021

A Florida Enchantment (1914)

A FLORIDA ENCHANTMENT (1914)
Article 5382 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-28-2017
Directed by Sidney Drew
Featuring Sidney Drew, Edith Storey, Charles Kent
Country: USA
What it is: Gender bending comedy

A woman comes to Florida to visit friends and visit her fiance. She discovers a casket with four seeds that can change the sex of the people who consume them. When she feels neglected by her fiance, she decides to take one herself…

What most impresses me about this unusual silent fantasy is that it often goes for the subtle rather than the obvious, and its greatest strength is the performance of Edith Storey. After her character takes one of the seeds, she may never quite end up looking convincing as a man, but she sells the transformation through the use of body language, gesture and acting. I also like the fact that it mostly avoids the slapstick route; instead the main character realizes the problems the sex change would cause, and to that end, sets up a situation where she fakes her own death and takes on a new identity. The slapstick antics are largely confined to the black characters; she changes her black maid to a black valet, and that character goes wild. Because of the gender-bending, it flirts with homosexuality and lesbianism in a way that is pretty rare for films of this era, which makes it pretty sophisticated in some ways. However, it’s not so sophisticated that it allows the black characters to be played by blacks; they’re all white actors in blackface. And I’m also not surprised by the cop-out ending; I would have liked to see the situations resolved in a way that doesn’t happen here. All in all, this is one of those movies that is very interesting, but not entirely effective.

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The Woods are Full of Cuckoos (1937)

THE WOODS ARE FULL OF CUCKOOS (1937)
Articler 5381 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-27-2017
Directed by Frank Tashlin
Featuring the voices of Sara Berner, Mel Blanc, Peter Lind Hayes
Country: USA
What it is: Looney Toons Cartoon

Welcome to the Woodlands Community Swing. Be entertained by the bird celebrities.

I have a collection of Dilbert comics with the title “It’s Not Funny If I Have to Explain It”, and the title is a good description of why certain types of jokes fall flat. I found the title quite relevant as I watched this cartoon; the basic format is that of a radio program in which all of the stars are famous celebrities caricatured as birds. Now, usually I quite like these celebrity based cartoons from Warners, but I found this one a bit of a chore for one simple reason; it throws a big array of celebrity caricatures your way, and with the passage of time, most of them have become rather obscure. My guess is that unless you’re a big fan of thirties radio shows, you’re going to be scratching your head a lot more than you’ll be laughing. In other words, to today’s audience, most of the jokes would need to be explained. Even some of the ones I did recognize took me awhile to identify, and what humor there is in the cartoon requires instant identification. Even at that, I didn’t laugh much even when I could instantly recognize them; about the only thing that amused me was that they included a caricature of Andy Devine. It must have played much better in its time, but I’m afraid now this one is largely a curio. The fantastic content is, of course, the talking animals and little else.

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Zvenigora (1928)

ZVENIGORA (1928)
Article 5380 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-25-2017
Directed by Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Featuring Georgi Astafyev, Nikolai Nademsky, Vladimir Uralsky
Country: Soviet Union
What it is: Avant-garde folk fantasy

A centuries-old man guards the hidden treasure of Ukraine in the steppes of Zvenigora.

There are some movies you can go into without knowing anything about them in advance and have no problem appreciating them. There are others where it’s helpful if you know what you’re getting into. I went into this one cold and about thirty-five minutes into it, I found myself scrambling over to IMDB to see if there was some plot thread I had forgotten to pick up. It was only then that I discovered that the movie was a non-linear avant-garde movie. I wish I had known that at the outset; I think I would have gone into it with a different frame of mind, and I wouldn’t have gotten frustrated. I’ve encountered Dovzhenko before with ARSENAL, and I remember that one being a little difficult as well, and if I’d remembered that before I started this movie, that would have helped as well. At any rate, once I overcome my frustration and adjusted my expectations, I found some of this fascinating; the two scenes which involve attempted self-executions (one by firing squad, another by post-lecture suicide) are quite fascinating. There’s a lot of war footage as well as footage of industry in action. Does it all make sense? I’m not sure; I may have to give it another viewing. However, when I do, I hope it’s with a better copy of the movie than the one I have; I hear tell cinematography is excellent, but that’s a bit hard to appreciate with the copy I found. There are magical scenes involving the treasure, so there is genre content. For the moment, I think I need to refrain from any judgment about the movie.

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Ziegfeld Follies (1945)

ZIEGFELD FOLLIES (1945)
Article 5379 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-24-2017
Directed by Vincente Minnelli, George Sidney, and five others
Featuring William Powell, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland
Country: USA
What it is: Revue style musical

Ziegfeld in heaven ruminates on when he was alive and produced his Follies, and decides he would like to do one more, which he plans, and we see.

The fantastic content is right there in the plot description, so that’s taken care of. Of course, there is no overall plot to this one; it’s a compendium of song and dance numbers interspersed with comedy sections. The use of color and the set design is top-notch throughout; the movie is worth catching for this alone. It also helps that four of the sequences feature Fred Astaire, one of which even pairs him up with Gene Kelly. My favorite sequences include an early sequence in which puppets are used to re-create an original Follies production, an underwater ballet featuring Esther Williams, and an atmospheric, evocative and brilliant sequence that takes place in Chinatown called “Limehouse Blues”. Some of the sequences and moments are just weird; we have Lucille Ball taming dancing cat women with a whip, Judy Garland singing a jazzy song about the invention of the safety pin, and a big production number that uses colored soap suds. The movie’s weakest segments are generally the comic sections; with the exception of the one featuring Red Skelton, they seem stiff and forced and they fall flat. Still, when it works, it works very well, and though I’ve never been a big musical buff, it held my attention.

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Der Verlorene (1951)

DER VERLORENE (1951)
aka The Lost One
Article 5378 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-22-2017
Directed by Peter Lorre
Featuring Peter Lorre, Karl John, Helmuth Rudolph
Country: West Germany
What it is: Bleak drama

A doctor working as an immunologist for the Nazis is told that his fiancee has been leaking his secret work. He ends up strangling her and his murder is covered up. However, he has developed a homicidal instinct to kill women he’s attracted to…

I found this movie on YouTube, but it was in German without English subtitles; fortunately, it turns out that the listing for the movie in THE MOTION PICTURE GUIDE gives a fairly elaborate description of the plot, so I was able to more or less follow the story. Despite the above plot description, this isn’t a horror movie (though the serial killer aspect provides the movie’s genre content), but rather a depressing drama about the German post-war experience, and despite the fact that it is a little reminiscent of M, it goes in a different direction entirely. It is the sole directorial effort of Peter Lorre, and he shows a good eye for interesting visuals. Lorre’s performance is equally good; I really admired the way he would use his hands to express his mental state. The movie was not a hit in Germany, which at that point preferred escapist entertainment; if it had been a hit, I wonder if Lorre would have continued as a director. As it is, it’s a bleak and unsettling drama, and the final image is unforgettable. This is recommended especially to Peter Lorre fans.

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Sing, Baby, Sing (1936)

SING, BABY, SING (1936)
Article 5377 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-21-2017
Directed by Sidney Lanfield
Featuring Alice Faye, Adolphe Menjou, Gregory Ratoff
Country: USA
What it is: Musical comedy / Horror

Poor Joan Warren! Not only is her singing career on the skids because she’s not a trendy “blue blood”, but she also has to preview comedy acts by the Ritz Brothers. However, her agent attempts to resurrect her career by romantically linking her with a vacationing but hard-drinking Hollywood actor.

Where does the horror come in? Well, the movie does feature the Ritz Brothers… and that’s a cheap shot, I’ll admit. It’s not their fault I tend to associate them with the dismal THE GORILLA; in reality, they were out of their element in that movie and they knew it. That’s not the case in this movie; there performance consists of a series of vaudeville song-and-dance routines, and there’s something to admire in the deftness of their comic hoofing, However, as far as comedy goes, I feel they come across as a less-inspired Danny Kaye crossed with Huntz Hall at his muggiest, and that’s not a comfortable place to be. Nevertheless, they are responsible for the fantastic content of the movie; one of their routines takes on the Dr. Jekyll story and also features a version of the Frankenstein monster.

Most of the movie is your typical musical comedy of the time. The best thing about it is Adolphe Menjou’s performance as an actor somewhat inspired by John Barrymore; I’ve seen this actor in many movies, but I’ve never quite seen him cut loose in a comic style like this. The movie also features Ted Healy, and quite frankly, the Three Stooges were better off without him. Alice Faye and Gregory Ratoff do a fine job, and some of the songs are pretty decent. All in all, it’s pretty marginal from a genre perspective, but I’ve seen a lot worse.

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The Sign of the Cross (1932)

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932)
Article 5376 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-20-2017
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Featuring Fredric March, Claudette Colbert, Elissa Landi
Country: USA
What it is: Epic sword and sandal

After the burning of Rome, Nero places the blame on the rapidly growing sect of Christians and orders their destruction. However, his highest military official has fallen in love with a Christian woman…

The Walt Lee guide attributes the fantastic content of the movie to the tortures and sadism, and one has to admit they’re fairly shocking. We don’t see the torture of the young boy, but we hear it and we see the after-effects. And some of the spectacles in the arena are pretty gruesome; among other things, we see a violent battle between Amazons and pygmies, men crushed by rampaging elephants, and a bound woman menaced by several crocodiles. Though this doesn’t make it a horror film, it certainly makes it horrific. I was almost expecting some sort of miracle in the final moments of the movie, but the movie refuses, giving the whole thing a sort of integrity that I like. The coliseum/arena sequence is the centerpiece of the motion picture, and it takes up the final third of the movie. The rest is a hodgepodge of court intrigue and sword-and-sandal setpieces; unfortunately, there’s no super-powered Maciste character to come to the rescue. Fredric March and Elissa Landi do all right as the heroes, but it is the villains that steal the show; Claudette Colbert is memorable as the self-serving Empress Poppaea, but it’s Charles Laughton that really shines as the decadent Emperor Nero, a role that seems tailor made for him. There’s a number of other familiar names and faces; you’ll recognize the voice of John Carradine as several different characters, and Angelo Rossitto pops up as one of the pygmies. There’s also Joe Bonomo as a mute torturer and Charley Gemora as… well, you’ll know him.

And speaking of the latter, I did find one thing quite disappointing. If you’re like me, the movie mostly makes you think of a still showing a near-naked woman being threatened by a gorilla. Well, the scene is here… and it lasts about two seconds in total.

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Raskolnikow (1923)

RASKOLNIKOW (1923)
aka Raskolnikov, Crime and Punishment
Article 5375 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-19-2017
Directed by Robert Wiene
Featuring Grigori Chmara, Elisabeta Skulskaja, Alla Tarasova
Country: Germany
What it is: Crime drama

A student, under the belief of a philosophy that certain people are above the law, murders a stockbroker and her daughter with an axe. He manages to get away with the murder, but can he get away from his own conscience…?

When I was looking for this one, I discovered there were two different versions of the film on YouTube to choose from; one with Russian subtitles that ran almost two hours long, and one in English that was very badly framed and ran only seventy minutes. Despite the fact that there was a language comprehension issue, I chose the Russian version, for several reasons; it was more complete in every regard, I have a certain familiarity with the novel, and, seeing how the novel is very well known, it wasn’t too difficult to find a summary of the plot that helped me through.

Still, the movie was a bit difficult when it came to sorting out some of the subplots, but the main thrust of the story about a man who can’t quite escape his conscience comes through very well. It helps that both the actors who play the student and the detective who suspects him give excellent performances; the scenes between them are highlights. The movie was also directed by Robert Wiene, who uses some of the same expressionistic style he used in THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI; it’s not as pervasive as in that movie, but it’s noticeably there, especially in the scenes in the building where the murder takes place. Walt Lee states the fantastic content of the movie is Wiene’s style (it’s the only version of the story listed in his book), but there’s a handful of dream/hallucination sequences which do lapse into the fantastic as well, including one in which the pawnbroker appears as a grotesque giantess. The movie is perhaps too long. but it’s effective enough of the time that it makes for a decent adaptation of the novel.

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The Phantom Honeymoon (1919)

THE PHANTOM HONEYMOON (1919)
Article 5374 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-18-2017
Directed by J. Searle Dawley
Featuring Marguerite Marsh, Vernon Steele, Henry Guy Carleton
Country: USA
What it is: Ghost story

A man who specializes in debunking ghosts decides to visit a castle that is believed to be haunted. There he meets an Indian manservant who tells him the story of the ghosts that haunt the castle.

I can’t say how many “old dark house” movies I’ve seen, and I’m a little surprised to realize how much more common they are than movies like this – good old-fashioned ghost stories. I really liked this one. The story with the ghost debunker is a framing story. The main story is in three parts. The first part recounts the central incident in the story in which a strange duel to the death is fought. The second part gives the backstory to that duel. The third part finishes off the action in such a way that the framing story is incorporated into the tale as well. One of the most interesting things about this movie is that it doesn’t quite go in the direction you’d think it would go, largely due to the fact that the movie shifts gears in the final act from being a full-blooded horror movie into the realm of whimsical fantasy, and to the movie’s credit, the shift works very well. But then, I sensed a shift when I discovered that not only did the movie feature human ghosts, but the ghost of a car as well. My favorite moment in the film is when the debunker has a “close encounter” with a ghost. Hopefully, I haven’t given away too much; this is one of those movies that is appreciated if you don’t know too much about what’s going on. This is another title that has been rescued from my “one that got away” list, and I’m very glad it showed up.

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Willoughby’s Magic Hat (1943)

WILLOUGHBY’S MAGIC HAT (1943)
Article 5373 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-17-2017
Directed by Bob Wickersham
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Columbia cartoon

A magical hat knitted from Samson’s hair ends up in the possession of a tiny little man named Willoughby, who is given super-strength when he wears it. Will he be able to rescue a damsel in distress and manage to keep his hat on?

There are no anthropomorphic animals on hand in this cartoon, but that doesn’t mean there’s no fantastic content; we have a magic hat, Samson, Hercules, Atlas and a villain that looks like a robot version of the Frankenstein monster. Columbia didn’t really come into its own until UPA took over in the fifties, so I’ve learned not to expect too much from their pre-UPA material. Sure enough, there are problems here; some gags don’t work (there’s no reason for Nero or Napoleon to be wearing the hat, for example), and there’s at least one big glaring dead spot in the cartoon where nothing is happening. Nevertheless, the premise is unusual and interesting, and it manages to have some solid fun with the concept; for example, I like the sequence where our hero first gets the cap and has to contend with his own strength. Also, there are moments when the sketchy background illustrations are reminiscent of the work of UPA, which is interesting. No, it’s not a great cartoon, but it’s a good one, and it may be one of Columbia’s best from the period.

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