Month: February 2021

Raiders of the Living Dead (1986)

RAIDERS OF THE LIVING DEAD (1986)
Article 5424 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-14-2017
Directed by Samuel M. Sherman
Featuring Scott Schwartz, Robert Deveau, Donna Asali
Country: USA
What it is: Dead is right.

A reporter encounters zombies while on a story. He teams up with a teenage boy who has built a laser gun from an old laser-disc player to defeat them.

Four things caught my attention while watching this movie. First, it was actually a bit nostalgic to watch a movie that opened with the old “Independent-International” logo; I didn’t know they were still around at this time. Second was seeing Sam Sherman’s name as the director. He’s mostly known as a producer; his only other directorial credits I’m aware of are a documentary on Chaplin and extra footage for CREATURE WITH THE BLUE HAND. I’m really surprised he didn’t come up with an alternate title for the movie with the word “blood” in it. Third was seeing Zita Johann’s name in the credits, returning to the silver screen after a fifty-year break; I can only imagine what lured her into this one. Finally, I was delighted to see the name of Robert Deveau in the credits; it’s his only screen credit before appearing in three Larry Blamire movies. For the record, he does the best that he can with the severely undernourished script he had to work with; in fact, the acting throughout the movie is acceptable. Unfortunately, that doesn’t save the movie from being what it is: a tedious, unfocused bore of a movie that just barely dredges up the effort to tie together the disjointed scenes during the first half. The zombies in this one seem to be old school zombies; at least, there are no scenes of them chowing down in the print I saw. And the movie should get an award for the worst title that uses the “—— of the Living Dead” format; despite the fact that the title seems designed to recall that of a certain Spielberg movie, you won’t be confusing the two. As a whole, the movie would have been better if Al Adamson had been alive and directed it, and that’s not a recommendation.

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Das Wunder des Malachias (1961)

DAS WUNDER DES MALACHIAS (1961)
aka The Miracle of Father Malachia
Article 5423 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-13-2017
Directed by Bernhard Wicki
Featuring Horst Bollmann, Richard Munch, Christiane Nielsen
Country: West Germany
What it is: Be careful what you pray for.

When a nightclub/brothel proves to be an embarrassment to the church next door, a lowly monk prays for God to take the nightclub away. The nightclub vanishes and appears on an island in the North Sea. However, this miracle may prove to cause more problems than it solves…

I had to import a copy of this from Germany, so I’m not surprised my copy didn’t have English subtitles. Therefore, I made the decision to read a plot description of the movie beforehand to help me negotiate the story, though I’m still hesitant to make any real evaluation of the movie. I’m glad I did; the central miracle of the film (and the fantastic content of it as well) doesn’t manifest itself visually, so I would have been at a loss had it not been for the plot descriptions. Furthermore, the first two-thirds of the movie mainly expresses its story verbally. However, I could tell this much; it’s well acted and directed, fast paced, and is interesting to look at. I especially liked Horst Bollmann’s performance as Father Malachias, the innocent monk who sees his miracle take an ugly turn as both the former site of the nightclub (which has now become a commercially-exploited pilgrimage site) and the new site of the nightclub (which is expanded to include a casino and has become a big tourist attraction) become the antithesis of all he believes. The last third of the movie makes good use of visuals to finish the story, and the final scenes of the movie made it worth the struggle of watching the first two-thirds of the movie. IMDB classifies it as a comedy, but it’s more of a sad, very bitter satire about the modern world.

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Le lac des morts vivant (1981)

LE LAC DES MORTS VIVANT (1981)
Article 5422 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-12-2017
Directed by Jean Rollin and Julian de Laserna
Featuring Howard Vernon, Pierre-Marie Escourrou, Anouchka
Country: France / Spain
What it is: Soggy

A village is terrorized by a horde of zombie Nazis that live in the local lake.

The last time I encountered Jean Rollin (Mr. Arty/Erotic/Gory, as I think of him), he was making concessions to coherence and commerciality with THE GRAPES OF DEATH, which wasn’t bad. I wish I could say the same thing here. The gore is pretty light this time around (especially for a zombie movie), the eroticism is replaced by having lots of nudity (which isn’t quite the same thing), and the artiness is nowhere to be found. That’s what’s so disappointing about this one; whatever I felt about his other movies, I always felt that he had an authentic, individual vision that added to their allure. This one feels like a crass throwaway. Rollin himself was embarrassed by the movie and refused for many years to say he directed it. I don’t know what the original French dialogue was like, but the English dubbing is laughably bad. The only interesting thing from a story perspective is that there’s a “good” zombie who becomes attached to the daughter he engendered when he was still alive, and this apparently doesn’t fit in with the zombie code, based on the fight he has with a fellow zombie. If there’s a lesson here, it’s this – if you ambush and kill a passel of wandering Nazis, don’t just dump their bodies in a lake or something like this will happen. My favorite moment – just before a naked woman takes a dip in zombie lake, she pulls a sign out of the ground and throws it away, and I kept wondering if the sign was the international symbol for “Zombies Present – No Swimming Allowed”.

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Camera Makes Whoopee (1935)

CAMERA MAKES WHOOPEE (1935)
Article 5421 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-11-2017
Directed by Norman McLaren
Cast unknown, but features a camera
Country: UK
What it is: Experimental film

A camera chronicles the preparations for the Glasgow Arts School Ball, and then attends the proceedings.

The first thing I noticed about this 24-minute experimental film is that there is no sound. This seemed odd for a film that is obviously steeped in music; we see instruments being played, dancing, and the presentation of two ballets. However, I began to realize that it’s the camera’s point of view, and the camera is an eye and not an ear, and we’re experiencing everything from the camera’s point of view. Still, it seems risky to go for an experimental film this long without the help of music, but oddly enough, I found myself quite engaged with the whole thing.

The film falls roughly into two parts; the first documents the preparation for the ball, and we see sets being built, posters being painted, musical instruments preparing themselves (via stop-motion animation), etc. McLaren makes extensive use of double exposure and other camera tricks to document this section. The second section features the ball itself, and we experience the music vicariously through watching the instruments being played and seeing the dancers in motion. Split screen comes into play during parts of this, and some of the dancing features ghostlike figures in abstract landscapes. We take a break for food and drink, and then once it’s all over, the instruments put themselves away and the camera retires for the night (literally).

I ended up finding this one quite fun. The cinematic tricks are entertaining, it achieves a certain visual music, and it even displays a sense of humor on occasion. Granted, you need to be in the mood for experimental film to enjoy this one to begin with, but I certainly found it more engrossing than most of the examples of abstract animation I’ve encountered. And though one could argue about whether something like this properly belongs in the realm of fantastic cinema, this short has an out – the machine ballet in the second half features dancing robots.

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Phantasm (1979)

PHANTASM (1979)
Article 5420 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-10-2017
Directed by Don Coscarelli
Featuring A. Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Banister
Country: USA
What it is: That’s a good question.

Two brothers find themselves contending with bizarre events at a mausoleum involving a sinister tall man, a gaggle of hooded dwarfs, and a murderous metal sphere.

I’ve actually been looking forward to seeing this one for years. What intrigued me about it was that I was mostly hearing about the various elements of the film, and rarely hearing anything that sounded like an explanation for them. So how did I react? Well, as the end credits rolled, I found myself…. laughing. IMDB classifies the movie as horror, science fiction and fantasy (and it falls within all three categories), but I would also add comedy as well. Why? Because there’s something here that gleefully makes hash of logic and expectations; like an Ed Wood movie, it breaks rules that you didn’t even know existed, and it seems to be doing it on purpose. The dialogue often engages in ridiculous-sounding overwrought cliches, and at other times it obsessively overlooks the elephant of the room. The plot seems to keep looping back on itself (how many times do people go back and investigate the mausoleum?) and even flatly contradicts the action you’ve seen up this point. The end result is a movie where almost everything in it feels unreal and outside the normal rules of the universe. To my mind, the movie is a joke on the audience and its expectations, but, to my mind, it’s a good and funny one. I’m not surprised the movie has an uneven reputation, but I’m also not surprised that it’s a cult film, and I think I’ve joined the cult.

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Wavelength (1983)

WAVELENGTH (1983)
Article 5419 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-9-2017
Directed by Mike Gray
Featuring Robert Carradine, Cherie Currie, Keenan Wynn
Country: USA
What it is: Aliens and governmental conspiracy

A rock singer and his girlfriend discover that the government is keeping several space aliens hostage in an underground military installation. Will this cost them their lives? Will the aliens break free?

Imagine, if you will, a version of E.T. that takes the “evil government conspiracy” subplot and places it front and center, and I think that basically captures the story here. It’s not a slavish imitation by any means; it’s somewhat more adult, there are more aliens to contend with, and because of its emphasis on the conspiracy, it’s certainly less joyful. There are also plot elements that give a different face to the proceedings; the very presence of the aliens has a possibly fatal effect on the lives of those around it. Nevertheless, the similarity to E.T. becomes rather noticeable, especially towards the end of the movie. The movie itself isn’t badly made, but there’s something about it that feels anticlimactic and uneventful, partially because several of the characters feel like plot conveniences rather than real people; we don’t really care about the rock singer or the girlfriend, though we do get attached to the prospector, largely because he’s played by Keenan Wynn (and it’s nice to see him in a larger role than he was usually given in movies at this time). The most interesting thing about the movie is the attention to the details surrounding the government conspiracy, and though I don’t know the specifics, I hear that it may be at least partially based on true events. Still, I can’t help but speculate how different this movie would have been if it had been made a decade earlier; compare the way conspiracy movies of the seventies end and the way this one ends to see what I mean.

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Voodoo Black Exorcist (1974)

VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST (1974)
aka Vudu sangriento
Article 5418 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-8-2017
Directed by Manuel Cano
Featuring Aldo Sambrell, Tanyeka Stadler, Alexander Abrahan
Country: Spain
What it is: Better than Sominex

A man is executed for adultery during a voodoo ceremony and his body is placed in a sarcophagus. A thousand years later he emerges from the sarcophagus to claim the reincarnation of the woman he loved.

I find it almost perverse that a movie with a title like this one should turn out to be essentially a mummy movie, though this one probably owes more to the original Karloff THE MUMMY than any of the Kharis movies. It’s also one of those movies that just sits like a dead weight on your chest while daring you to find the needed energy to follow the threads of the plot; it feels like it can’t be bothered to pique the viewer’s interest. It’s a bit of shame; it adds a couple of interesting touches to the usual mummy plot such as having the monster be able to make himself look human for certain periods of time. It also has one rarity – a comic relief character that is actually funny; the police inspector’s deadpan observations on the events of the movie actually made me smile and laugh, and he’s about the only interesting character in the movie. Sadly, he’s not enough to compensate for the energy-sucking black hole of the rest of the movie. Not recommended.

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Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (1983)
Article 5417 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-7-2017
Directed by John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante and George Miller
Featuring Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow
Country: USA
What it is: Horror anthology

Four eerie tales are told. A bigot finds himself thrust back into time, a magical stranger offers youth to residents of an old folks home, a child has amazing mental powers, and a troubled man believes he sees a monster destroying the wing of a plane.

When it comes to watching movie versions of old TV series, I have a rule of thumb; if it doesn’t manage to catch that particular element that made the series memorable, then it hasn’t really succeeded. In this movie version of the Rod Serling anthology series, only the first and fourth stories manage to catch it, though the first suffers because it’s reminiscent of some of the weaker and more obvious episodes of the series (it’s basically the supernatural comeuppance of a jerk) and because it was never completed due to the accident that killed Vic Morrow. The fourth one manages to catch it largely because it’s a well-mounted cinematic version of a series episode that remains relatively faithful to the original. That leaves us the second and third episodes, both also based on episodes of the series but which make radical changes to the story. The second episode (directed by Spielberg) is overthought and overwritten; it tries a bit too much and becomes unfocused. The third story takes one of the most nightmarish episodes of the series and turns it into something of a cartoonish comedy; it feels nothing like the original series, but may be the most entertaining of the bunch because of Joe Dante’s love of fifties SF and cartoons. The cast of this segment features Dick Miller (as Walter Paisley), William Schallert, Kevin McCarthy, and Bill Mumy, who played the boy in the original episode. The cast of this segment also features Nancy Cartwright, and I find her role in the episode to be particularly prescient; she’s the sister who is condemned to spend her life in cartoonland, which is a fitting end for the woman who would become mostly famous as the voice of Bart Simpson. This segment also contains my favorite touch in the whole movie; when the TV is cracking up, I couldn’t help but notice that on the wall to the right there is one of those perfect, cartoon-style mouseholes.

In the end, this one was a real mixed bag. It could have been much better.

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Shivers (1975)

SHIVERS (1975)
aka They Came From Within
Article 5416 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-6-2017
Directed by David Cronenberg
Featuring Paul Hampton, Joe Silver, Lynn Lowry
Country: Canada
What it is: Horror, Cronenberg style

A parasite that is a cross between an aphrodisiac and a venereal disease is loose in an apartment complex. Those infected become violent sex maniacs.

This was Cronenberg’s first full dive into the horror genre, and even this early in the game, his obsession with the horror of bodily changes is on full display. Like many of his other movies, this is not for the faint of heart; it’s bloody, repellent, unnerving, but also fascinating, and in some ways it’s reminiscent of the various zombie movies, with sex in place of cannibalism. I found the first half more interesting than the second half; once it has developed its themes, the movie largely becomes a series of attack scenes, and since it’s one of those movies that doesn’t give you the sense that any of the characters will be spared, it becomes an exercise in waiting for the various shoes to drop. Still, it is an attention-grabbing entry into the genre and shows that Cronenberg would be a force to be reckoned with. His next horror movie, RABID, in some ways feels like an extension of the ideas he developed here. Barbara Steele is also part of the cast.

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Mardi Gras Massacre (1978)

MARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978)
Article 5415 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-5-2017
Directed by Jack Weis
Featuring Kurt Dawson, Gwen Arment, William Metzo
Country: USA
What it is: Waste of time

A psycho is sacrificing prostitutes to an Aztec god. Police investigate.

Unless you’re excited over the fact that this was shot in New Orleans, there are only two reasons I can think of that anyone might wish to see this; the nudity and the gore. It’s certainly not the perfunctory and uninspired acting, the barely-there plot, the dismal romance subplot, the lame-car-chase action finale, or the police investigation (which largely consists of policeman standing around and complaining that there are no clues). And of the nudity and gore fans, I think only the former will feel they got their money’s worth; there’s a lot of nudity here. The gore fans will feel ripped off; there are three gore sequences, but the second two are a virtual repeat of the first one. Other than that, the only point of interest is that there’s a plot twist near the end where none was expected, but that’s long after you’ve stopped caring. For my money, this movie is nearly worthless.

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