Month: February 2021

The White Orchid (1954)

The White Orchid (1954)
Article 5474 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-23-2017
Directed by Reginald Le Borg
Featuring William Lundigan, Peggie Castle, Armando Silvestre
Country: Mexico / USA
What it is: Mexican jungle movie

An archaeologist tries to organize an expedition into the jungle to find a tribe of descendants from the ancient Toltecs, but is only able to get the services of the necessary guide through the help of a female photographer who he doesn’t want along on the expedition. A romantic triangle develops.

I stumbled across this movie on the Mill Creek Action Classics set, and though none of my sources list this as genre, I’m making a judgment call here. The movie’s concept that an ancient culture still lives on in a tribe of people in uncharted territory puts the movie at least a bit into the “lost civilization” fantasy subgenre, and since they do encounter the tribe in question, this comes closer to genre territory than a lot of other jungle movies I’ve seen. Granted, the main thrust of the plot here is the romantic triangle, and it’s as hackneyed as you might expect; you won’t be surprised at the fate of one of the men. Yet, for all that, I found this one at least a little more entertaining than I would have expected, and I attribute this to a few interesting touches in the script. Even the direction by the usually dull Reginald Le Borg is better than usual for him. Yes, it’s marginal, but it came close enough for me to get an actual review rather than be consigned to the “too marginal” list.

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Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016)

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016)
Article 5473 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-22-2017
Directed by Rick Morales
Featuring the voices of Adam West, Burt Ward, Julie Newmar
Country: USA
What it is: Animated retro Batman

Batman and Robin must contend with the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin and Catwoman, who have joined forces in a plot involving a duplicating gun.

Since I’m no longer restricted to a given hunt list, I’ve opened up my series to anything I see that qualifies as genre, so I’m covering this animated Batman movie that revives the campy style of the mid-sixties TV series, and even nets three of its original actors to do the voices. Those who never liked that TV series will find little of appeal here; me, I always prefer my superheroes with a humorous approach, and I quite liked this one. It does manage to capture the feel of the original series, and it even takes a couple of good-natured stabs at the “Dark Knight” portrayal of the character. The original actors featured are all in their seventies or eighties, but only Adam West sounded old; fortunately, his sense of humor was still intact, and he delivers his character’s “goody two-shoes” dialogue with the proper aplomb. No, it’s not a modern classic, but it’s not trying to be; it’s more of a laid-back nostalgia piece, and it hits the target close enough that it works on that level. At least one sequel is planned, though the recent death of Adam West may end the series after that one.

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When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong (1971)

When Men Carried Clubs and Women Played Ding-Dong (1971)
aka Quando gli uomini amarono la clava e… con le donne fecero din-don
Article 5472 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-18-2017
Directed by Bruno Corbucci
Featuring Antonio Sabato, Aldo Giuffre, Vittorio Caprioli
Country: Italy
What it is: Caveman bawdiness

When a caveman couple can’t consummate their marriage because the man keeps being called off to fight a war with the lake people, the cavewoman tries a plan of ending the war by organizing a sex strike among the women of both tribes.

What prompted me to cover this movie was a coincidence. I have recently finished reading an edition of the complete extant plays of Aristophanes, and those familiar with the work of that author will no doubt see a strong similarity between the plot above and that of Aristophanes’ play “Lysistrata”. This is not a coincidence; one of the characters in this comedy has the name of Listra, and the movie itself credits Aristophanes’ play (as well as his “Thesmophoriazusae”, from which the movie borrows the plot element of a man disguising himself as a woman to infiltrate a group of them). I might be tempted to complain how this movie makes hash of the work of a great Greek writer if it weren’t for two facts. First of all, ancient Greek comedy is dissimilar enough to cinematic comedy that I wouldn’t expect a faithful adaptation in the first place, and secondly, Aristophanes’ work was pretty bawdy in its own right, which makes it quite similar in tone with this movie. After all, this movie is a semi-sequel to WHEN WOMEN HAD TAILS and WHEN WOMEN LOST THEIR TAILS.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean this movie is really what I’d call “good”; it is, like its predecessors, primarily a nonstop compendium of caveman sex jokes with a lot of nudity. Like the second movie, it does have a bit of satiric intent as well; if I have any favorite aspect of this movie, it’s the way it plays with the concept of an arms race, as each side tries to develop a war-winning technology to defeat the others. Still, the movie’s a little too unfocused to make any real headway with its satiric sallies, and though I’d have to say it’s better than the first movie in the series, it’s a step down from the second. The fantastic content is that it takes place in prehistoric times, but it’s too focused on sex to have anything like dinosaurs showing up. My guess is that it would most likely be appreciated by those who think it sounds promising rather than those to whom it sounds stupid.

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Devil Monster (1946)

Devil Monster (1946)
Article 5471 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-11-2017
Directed by S. Edwin Graham
Featuring Barry Norton, Blanche Mehaffey, Jack Barty
Country: USA
What it is: A good reason to stay on a tropical island without movie theaters

A man embarks on a trip to the South Seas to learn the fate of a sailor whose schooner disappeared without a trace. Will he find the sailor, and will the sailor wish to return? And what about the devil fish that destroyed the schooner?

This was edited down from a 1936 film called THE SEA FIEND, which is now considered lost. I don’t know how much of the copious stock footage was from this original film or whether it was added for this edit, but it’s quite possible that greater than half the film consists of stock footage, either of undersea life, sea lions, South Seas natives (with topless nudity – this movie obviously was shown on the road show circuits) or tuna fishing. Much of the stock footage is from the silent era as well. The title monster is a manta ray, and I think it’s supposed to be huge, but since you never really get a good look at it or a comparison with it against any humans, it’s hard to say. The special effects are incompetent and unconvincing. It has its uses as a bad movie curiosity piece, but its entertainment value is negligible.

However, I do have an amusing story to tell about this one. I chose this as a selection to run for my bad movie group, and my wife (who had never seen the movie) chose an accompanying short called FISH FROM HELL (which I had never seen). One thing became very clear when the short and the movie were shown; they both used identical stock footage in their respective scenes. I still think everyone believes it was a joke on our part rather than coincidence.

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Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)
Article 5470 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-6-2017
Directed by Barry Mahon and R. Winer
Featuring Jay Ripley, Dorothy Brown Green, Charlie
Country: USA
What it is: Do your children really deserve this?

Santa is stranded with his sleigh on a shore of the Florida coastline. Kids try to help him. Will they succeed? And what story will Santa tell them?

After having made the blanket statement that MAGIC LAND OF MOTHER GOOSE was the worst movie ever made, I now find I have to contend with this little atrocity. I’ll stand by my statement for now, though I’ll cover a few salient points as to why I made this decision. GOOSE has far and away the better rating on IMDB (3.1 to this one’s 1.3), but I suspect some of that may be because Herschell Gordon Lewis has more of a cult following than either R. Winer or Barry Mahon (and they may be the same person, as far as I know). In this movie’s favor, there is at least some effort made to give us a variety of camera angles and locations. Furthermore, this movie at least makes a cursory attempt to tell some type of story (especially during the “movie within a movie”). On the downside, the acting and the singing is far worse in the framing part of this movie, both in comparison to GOOSE as well as in opposition to the “movie within a movie”, where the acting is a bit better and the singing is a LOT better. Still, I consider GOOSE to be the much lazier movie when all things are considered.

And now let’s discuss the movie’s dirty secret; only about a third of the movie is any way new. Basically, an earlier children’s movie was bracketed with new footage featuring Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny, twenty minutes at the beginning and about ten minutes at the end. So the lion’s share of this movie is the old movie, which is what I’ve been referring to as the “movie within a movie”. And, which old movie, you might ask? That depends on which version of the movie you see. Most prints appear to have THUMBELINA from 1970 as the old movie, but the print I saw today used JACK AND THE BEANSTALK from 1970. Neither movie is very good, but in terms of storytelling, they’re both relatively coherent. And I will give the JACK AND THE BEANSTALK section one piece of credit; they actually try to give us a real giant rather than just a really tall man. That’s not to say the special effects are convincing; I’m just glad they took the effort.

Still, let’s face facts. This movie, like GOOSE, is almost unwatchable. In fact, I don’t think most people will make it through the opening song by the elves; and I will gladly proclaim this moment to be the single worst musical moment in the history of cinema.

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The Stone Age (1922)

The Stone Age (1922)
aka Felix in the Bone Age, Felix in the Stone Age
Article 5469 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-4-2017
Directed by Otto Messmer
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Felix the Cat cartoon

A prehistoric Felix the Cat has to tussle with a caveman who wants to make his hide a gift for his girlfriend, and then he deals with an enraged monster gorilla.

I’ve decided to only include cartoons if they have some element of the fantastic beyond the two cartoon conventions – anthropomorphic animals and comic exaggeration. In this case, the cartoon takes place in prehistoric times. However, as far as I know I can’t say the cartoon makes much use of the concept, but then, I’m not sure the cartoon I saw is complete; it ends without resolution in the middle of the actions with the gorilla. As a Felix the Cat cartoon, it’s also a bit of a disappointment; we get only one Felix “twisting of reality” gag, but if the cartoon wasn’t complete, there may have been others. Who knows – maybe a dinosaur could have popped up in the missing footage as well. At any rate, as it is it’s not a shining example of Felix at his best.

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Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
Article 5468 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-3-2017
Directed by Peter Hewitt
Featuring Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, William Sadler
Country: USA
What it is: Multi-genre comedy

A would-be dictator of the future sends a pair of robots into the past to kill off Bill and Ted and take their places at the Battle of the Bands. Can Bill and Ted return from the afterlife and set the path to the future on its correct course?

I never saw the first movie of the series until after I saw this one; there was something about the vibe of this one that drew me into the movie theater several times. They had a bigger budget this time out, and they upped the ante considerably by concocting a dizzy and bizarre plot that spans all three fantastic genres – science fiction (a future society, several robots, time travel, and an alien that can split into two beings), fantasy (the character of Death, a visit to heaven, and the Easter Bunny) and horror (part of the story takes place in hell, and there’s a seance as well). The supporting characters are a lot of fun this time as well; William Sadler is wonderful as Death, who desperately tries to hold on to his dignity while dealing with Bill and Ted but is eventually won over by them. Joss Ackland is also memorable as the villain of the piece, a gym teacher turned revolutionary named De Nomolos (spell each name backwards and compare to the list of writers). My favorite scene has Bill and Ted challenging Death to a game to win their right to return to the land of the living. This one is a personal favorite.

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Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
Article 5467 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-1-2017
Directed by Stephen Herek
Featuring Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves, George Carlin
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction comedy

Bill and Ted want to form a rock group, but if they fail history, the group will be split up when one of them is sent to military school. However, an envoy from the future gives them the use of a time-traveling phone booth that will allow them to go back in history and bring back historical figures for a final project.

I have a soft spot in my heart for movies about dimwitted innocents; though I’ve heard Bill and Ted described as stoners, there is no evidence in the movies they take drugs – they’re just naturally the way they are. I also have a soft spot for movies with comically absurd premises; the reason the envoy from the future is seeking to help them is that the entire future society of the world is built on the popularity and the message of Bill and Ted’s rock group. The movie sat on the shelf for a couple of years when the original backers went bankrupt, and it was almost dumped into cable TV, but fortunately, it got a theatrical release and became a cult classic. Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves have a great rapport, and much of their interaction is inexplicably hilarious. Overall, the movie is inconsistent, but for every moment that falls flat there are a couple that work, and the colorful array of historical characters chosen (Billy the Kid, Napoleon, Socrates, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, etc.) adds to the fun.

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Big Fish (2003)

Big Fish (2003)
Article 5466 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-31-2017
Directed by Tim Burton
Featuring Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup
Country: USA
What it is: Drama…sort of

The son of a man dying from cancer tries to rebuild his relationship with him. He wishes to know the true story of his father’s life, but his father had a penchant for exaggeration and wild story-telling.

In some ways, this movie was a bit of a departure for Tim Burton, but in other ways, it is not. It is primarily a drama about a father/son relationship (though there is plenty of humor in the story as well), which is a novelty coming from Burton. However, since the story is laced with the father’s elaborate exaggerations, it gives Burton a chance to incorporate many fantastic elements; before it’s all over, you’ll encounter witches, giants, mermaids, Siamese twins and werewolves. The best performances come from Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney (both in the same role as the father, younger and older versions). The movie is packed with other familiar faces and names; I especially like Steve Buscemi as a poet turned bankrobber turned tycoon and Matthew McGrory as the giant. It’s an engaging and unusual film in which the central question becomes just how extensive the father’s exaggerations are; there’s a great scene near the end of the movie where we find that perhaps there was more truth in the father’s stories than you might have expected. I’ve not seen all of Burton’s oeuvre yet, but this ranks near the top of the ones I’ve seen.

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I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You (1932)

I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You (1932)
Article 5465 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-29-2017
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Featuring Louis Armstrong, and the voices of Ann Little and Billy Murray
Country: USA
What it is: Betty Boop cartoon

When Betty Boop is kidnapped by cannibals while on safari, her friends Koko and Bimbo must rescue her.

I’ve seen enough marginally fantastic jungle movies that I’m within my rights to classify this jungle movie cartoon as fantastically themed as well; furthermore, cannibalism seems to be a fit subject for horror. Still, I think in terms of fantastic content, the big selling point of this one is that one of the cannibals transforms himself into the flying disembodied head of Louis Armstrong, which is sufficient to thrust this cartoon into the world of fantasy. The presence of Armstrong makes this cartoon similar to the three that featured Cab Calloway, but in comparison to those, this one is a pretty tepid affair. The main reason for this is that Louis Armstrong, as great and important an entertainer as he is, doesn’t have the dance moves of Calloway that inspired the rotoscoped dances of his cartoons; in short, Calloway’s style lent itself to a visual treat that just can’t be equaled by a mere flying head. Betty herself doesn’t appear much; after her kidnapping, we’re mostly treated to the antics of Koko and Bimbo. The title song is certainly entertaining, and the cartoon is probably more memorable for that than any gags this one has to offer.

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