Month: March 2021

Dalekmania (1995)

Dalekmania (1995)
Article 5513 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-11-2017
Directed by Kevin Davies
Featuring Yvonne Antrobus, Steve Arnott, Toby Aspin
Country: UK
What it is: “Making Of” documentary

The making of the two Dr. Who movies of the sixties is discussed.

Back when I reviewed one of the two sixties Dr. Who movies, I suggested that they be seen in the light of being “Dalek” movies rather than “Dr. Who” movies, owing to the fact that they seemed to cater to fans of the metallic monsters over those of the human characters. The fact that the attached “making of” disc for the two movies is called DALEKMANIA rather than WHOMANIA bears this out. I’d hoped that the documentary would be more about the popularity of the monsters during that era (with lots of footage from the TV show), but no such luck; it’s squarely focused on the movies. Still, there are some moments that slip through; I love the scene where they show various examples of Dalek toys from the era, quoting their initial prices as well as how much they pull nowadays (by which I mean, the year when the documentary was made) in the collectible market. There are other memorable moments; I like seeing footage from the Italian dub of the movie, if for no other reason than to hear a Dalek speaking in Italian I also like the observation made by several actors from the first movie saying they never actually saw any actors getting out of and into the Dalek bodies, which must have contributed a bit to the illusion for them. It is, of course, mostly a hodgepodge, so it’s uneven, but most documentaries of this sort usually are.

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Devil Woman (1970)

Devil Woman (1970)
aka She yao jing
Article 5512 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-8-2017
Directed by Felix Villar and Chi-Lien Yu
Featuring Alex Tzi-Fie Lung, Rosemarie Gil, Yukio Someno
Country: Hong Kong / Philippines
What it is: Kung Fu horror

A woman is born with snakes for hair and the ability to control snakes. Ostracized for her differences as a child, she grows up to control a gang of thugs to do her bidding. Can a Martial arts master defeat her and her minions?

There are two movies with this title from about the same period that are often conflated into one movie; many of my sources list the credits for the Philippines only version but feature the plot of the Hong Kong kung fu movie, making it a little difficult for me to decide which one to use for the listing. However, as far as finding the movie, the one version is unfindable, and my attempts to locate it generally resulted in me finding the other version. So maybe it’s about time I went ahead and reviewed that one.

Because the premise is on the unusual side, the movie gets some points for that alone. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to sustain this one. It starts off well enough; the scenes of the snake-headed woman as a girl make you feel sympathetic for her plight, and you can understand her bitterness and anger. Nonetheless, once she reaches adulthood, the movie starts emphasizing the Martial Arts aspect of its story and we’re mostly treated to a bunch of kung fu fight scenes, and since our hero has none of the presence or charisma of Bruce Lee, they become rather tedious. Still, at least the movie does get around to showing us the Gorgon hair of the woman, though you have to wait till the very end of the movie for that. Beyond that, it’s always disappointing to have the hero prevail not due to his skill but to another character’s clumsiness; the ending is pretty disappointing. It’s a bit of a curiosity piece, but there are other Kung Fu / horror movies that are a lot more fun.

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L’igiene di Tombolino (1932)

L’igiene di Tombolino (1932)
aka Tombolino’s Hygiene
Article 5511 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-3-2017
Directed by Luigi Pensuti
No cast
Country: Italy
What it is: Cautionary public service animation

On a trip to the zoo, Tombolino encounters a doctor whose magnifying glass shows germs underneath his fingernails. Running to get away from the doctor, Tombolino trips and injures his knee, and then touches the wound with his unclean fingers. And then…

I remember once having had a nightmarish children’s book in which misbehaving children would have horrible things happen to them tied to their misbehavior; the one that sticks most in the memory for me was a thumb-sucking boy who had his thumbs cut off by a skinny fiend with a giant pair of scissors. I got roughly the same impression from this Italian animated short, in which a boy dreams he is dragged to hell by devils who release bacteria that enter his wounded knee, and the final scene involving the doctor is certainly ominous if you consider what instruments he’s pulling out of his doctor’s bag. There’s no listing on IMDB for this one, which I suspect may have been a public service film, as the end of the movie shows the boy giving his hands a thorough scrubbing. The print I saw had Italian subtitles which I can’t say I totally understood, but the story isn’t really that difficult to follow. This one was rather interesting.

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The Cavalier’s Dream (1898)

The Cavalier’s Dream (1898)
Article 5510 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-30-2017
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Special effects short

A cavalier dreams that he is surrounded by ghostly shape-changing figures.

Here’s another movie that has been rescued from the limbo of my “ones that got away” list, and the person who pointed me in its direction made the point that it may well have the claim to being the first American horror movie, and the argument is sound. There’s really not a whole lot to it (after all, it’s less than a minute long), but it does have the sense that it’s not being played for laughs and is to be taken more or less seriously. Granted, with silent movies, the general feel may be altered by the choice of musical soundtrack, so it’s possible a light-hearted soundtrack might make a difference, but in the state I saw it (which was without music), it doesn’t feel comic, nor do the phantoms or the cavalier play for laughs. As such, it has some genuine curiosity value and is well worth watching.

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Canards Parisiens (1903)

Canards Parisiens (1903)
Article 5509 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-24-2017
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: A little piece of strangeness

A little boy gets sick from eating a duck egg and turns into an egg-laying duck. Other events occur.

This short found on YouTube was directed to me by Doctor Kiss; it doesn’t have a listing on IMDB and I have very little information about it. However, it is one strange little short; it’s mostly a series of trick effects surrounding ducks, eggs, nests and various individuals. It’s quite unlike most of the other early surreal shorts, though I think it’s a little closer in style to Segundo De Chomon then Georges Melies. It will make you think twice about eating raw duck eggs, though.

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Maria, the Magic Weaver (1960)

Maria, the Magic Weaver (1960)
aka Mariya-iskusnitsa
Article 5508 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-27-2017
Directed by Aleksandr Rou
Featuring Mikhail Kuznetsov, Viktor Perevalov, Anatoli Kubatsky,
Country: Soviet Union
What it is: Fantasy

A wandering soldier with a magic drum helps a young boy whose mother has been abducted by a water wizard.

Over the years, I’ve grown to really enjoy watching children’s movies and fantasies from other countries; they have a way of capturing cultural differences while keeping the stories simple and fun. This one is extremely colorful, especially when we enter the underwater palace of the wizard and meet his bizarre minions, including a gaggle of pirates and a frog-turned-more-or-less-human. My favorite scene is truly surreal; while the heroes make their escape with the rescued mother, the villains are incapacitated by a psaltery whose music forces them all to dance. There’s a real sense of magic to this one, and it’s a joy to watch. I look forward to seeing more from Rou, whose oeuvre includes a movie that was featured on MST3K, JACK FROST.

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The Crater Lake Monster (1977)

The Crater Lake Monster (1977)
Article 5507 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-13-2017
Directed by William R. Stromberg
Featuring Richard Cardella, Glen Roberts, Mark Siegel
Country: USA
What it is: Dinosaur on the loose

A meteor causes a plesiosaur egg to hatch at the bottom of Crater Lake, and the monster begins chowing down on vacationers on the lake.

I found several odd touches in this one, the first of which was even before the movie started; on the DVD menu, I couldn’t help but notice that the music underlying the menu was muted and somber, hardly the usual choice for a “monster on the loose” movie. It certainly wasn’t what I would have expected for a low-budget movie with a poor reputation (3.1 on IMDB) and a (mostly) stop-motion dinosaur. And, for the most part, its reputation is earned; the script is slipshod and clumsy at times, the stop-motion animation is competent but uninspired, the acting is uneven, many of the plot points are way too familiar (it’s a rare scientific discovery that should be preserved, but it’s also a monster eating people), and it’s not the least bit scary. Furthermore, even though it does dovetail with the main story, the subplot about the liquor store killer feels like it’s in the wrong movie. The biggest question I had was why it was that the comic-relief characters (a pair of doofuses that run a boat rental business on the lake) took over the movie. Still, it struck me as curious that the comedy bits with these two characters were driven by character rather than slapstick, but there’s a reason for this; as unlikely as it seems, these two are the emotional center of the movie. And, for all its flaws, I have to admit that I was struck by the poignant end to the movie, a touch that is quite surprising and far more effective than I ever could have guessed. For this reason alone, I feel a great fondness for this one.

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Weltraumschiff 1 startet… (1937)

Weltraumschiff 1 startet… (1937)
Article 5506 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-10-2017
Directed by Anton Kutter
Featuring Fritz Reiff, Rolf Wernicke, Carl Wery
Country: Germany
What it is: A trip to the moon

A rocket is launched to circle the moon and return to Earth.

The copy I found of this odd little German science fiction movie was in German without English subtitles, and seeing as to how half of the movie is primarily talk, that is certainly an obstacle to following it. However, the general thrust of the action seems simple enough; the first half of the movie consists of a scientist explaining to the press the nature of the trip to the moon, whereas the the second half of the movie is the journey itself. However, since the movie is only 23 minutes long, it’s never really too elaborate to follow, and since the voyage itself almost entirely consists of special effects footage peppered with narration, and since nothing from a plot perspective happens other than the trip to the moon (there is virtually no human interaction in the second half of the movie), it’s devoid of long sections of film where you can’t tell what’s going on. The special effects themselves are the highlight of the film, and they’re pretty good and quite entertaining; in fact, I found myself wondering why they would put this much work into a short. The answer is simple; the short was edited down from footage from two incomplete feature films that were abandoned when Germany went to war, so this was no doubt intended to keep the films from going to waste. As it is, the movie serves as an interesting little stepping stone between some of the space travel films of the silent era and the coming science fiction boom of the fifties; in fact, I found myself thinking of ROCKETSHIP X-M, DESTINATION MOON, and WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (especially when you see the launch ramp) while watching this. All in all, it’s an interesting and useful curiosity, and worth seeing even if you can’t understand the language.

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Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)

Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
aka Gojira vs. Biorante
Article 5505 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-8-2017
Directed by Kazuki Ohmori
Featuring Kunihiko Mitamura, Yoshiko Tanaka, Masanobu Takashima
Country: Japan
What it is: Kaiju

When Godzilla reappears, the leaders of Japan must contend with finding a way to destroy it, but the situation is complicated by the appearance of a giant plant monster.

Whatever else you can say about this sequel to GODZILLA 1985, it does manage to accomplish three things. The movie has an adult air that sets it apart from the juvenile approach that generally took over the original series. It also comes up with an interesting and bizarre new monster in Biollante. It also works towards being a part of a whole series rather than just a stand-alone movie; it follows up plot developments from the earlier movie and sets up new ones for later movies to pursue. Godzilla himself also feels less mechanical this time out. On the down side, the story is cluttered with too many characters and subplots; at times, you’re not sure which characters are important and which story lines to follow, though you’ll probably be most successful if you concentrate on Dr. Shiragama and the development of Biollante. Certainly, I’d trade the three-way battle among various espionage agents for the Godzilla cells for some more development of the idea that we have a monster that is developed through a combination of plant, human and monster cells. The movie would also feature the first appearance of the Miki Saegusa character (a young woman with ESP) who would appear throughout this series. The movie certainly has a lot going on, but it’s one of those movies that, by the end of it, you’re not sure just how much of what has happened really matters. It’s an interesting and ambitious entry into the series, but it could have benefited from a little streamlining and trimming.

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Nebo zovyot (1959)

Nebo zovyot (1959)
Article 5504 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-4-2017
Directed by Mikhail Karzhukov and Aleksandr Kozyr
Featuring Ivan Pereverzev, Aleksandr Shvorin, Konstantin Bartashevich
Country: Soviet Union
What it is: Space drama

Two rockets are in a race to be the first to reach Mars. When one of them runs into problems, the other must change its course to rescue the astronauts.

I’ve already covered this movie in my review of the Americanized version known as BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN, and usually I won’t re-review a movie unless it has more than one listing on IMDB. However, my friend Andrew Kidd rightfully suggested that it would be worthwhile to give the original Russian print a look, as the American version changed the movie by grafting on some truly ridiculous monster footage (among other things). This type of modification changes the tone of the movie completely, and it really is unfair to judge the original film by that version.

This is not to say that the original version is a neglected classic; it really doesn’t have much of a story, and it’s stodgily directed. It is, however, sincere and modest, and sometimes it even manages to achieve a bit of lyricism. Somehow, this meshes well with the movie’s interest in exploring the issue of sensationalism; one of the rockets is making a big media splash, while the other is quietly trying to accomplish its mission before announcing itself. Given this is a Russian movie, it’s no surprise that it’s the American rocket that needs to be rescued, and that’s another aspect of the movie the American version downplayed. All in all, this movie is only so-so, but it does deserve to be judged on its own merits rather than those of the American version.

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