Month: May 2021

The Fall of the House of Usher (1966)

The Fall of the House of Usher (1966)
Article 5819 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-26-2020
Directed by Kim Mills
Featuring David Buck, Susannah York, Denholm Elliott
Country: UK
What it is: British TV Poe adaptation

When a friend’s sister mysteriously appears and then disappears from his home, a student makes a visit to his friend to find out what is going on. But will he find madness and death?

This is an episode of a British TV series known as “Mystery and Imagination”, and since I’ve covered several individual episodes of this series before, I see no reason to skip this one. I’ve already seen several versions of this Poe story; it seems particularly attractive to directors on the arty side of the street, with the 1928 Epstein version the most striking. The story usually needs to be expanded somewhat to fill a feature-length running time, and to some extent, I do have to credit the writer of this adaptation in the way he manages to make it a much more conventional horror story; in fact, the first third of this adaptation all takes place before the events in the original tale, and sets up a romantic triangle situation that drives the rest of the story. However, there is a cost, and it’s not one I particularly like to see; in making it more conventional, it jettisons the hypersensitivity of Roderick Usher, the story element that usually adds the touch of hushed dread that imbues the story. Not that the story element is missing; it’s in the dialogue. It’s just that Denholm Elliott’s performance negates the quality; it’s hard to take his claims of hypersensitivity seriously when he’s declaiming to the rafters. Still, one thing that really does impress here is the set design; the interiors of Usher’s house are memorably grotesque, and they may be the best thing about this adaptation. Nevertheless, I can’t quite warm up to this adaptation; without that sense of hushed dread, it just doesn’t feel right to me.

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Pathfinders to Mars (1960)

Pathfinders to Mars (1960)
Article 5818 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-26-2020
Directed by Guy Verney
Featuring George Coulouris, Gerald Flood, Pamela Barney
Country: UK
What it is: Juvenile science fiction adventure

A spaceship en route to the moon runs into peril when an impostor aboard the ship hijacks it to Mars, where he believes intelligent life will be found.

This is the second of a trio of British teleseries which involve adventures in outer space, and I appear to be watching them in reverse order; I’ve already seen PATHFINDERS TO VENUS, and have yet to see the first. For the record, I prefer this one to the VENUS entry, as it feels more focused and keeps the suspense up a bit higher. The George Coulouris role is the de facto villain of the first two and a half episodes, and he is definitely not a man to be trusted throughout, though he does solve some of their dilemmas as well. There are a few interesting camera angles during the scenes inside the spaceship, though the backdrops in the Mars scenes are painfully obvious, especially when you can see the cast’s shadows on them. Overall, I found this one merely passable, though better than it might have been. I wonder what I’ll think of the first series when I see it…

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The Extraordinary Waiter (1902)

The Extraordinary Waiter (1902)
Article 5817 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-23-2020
Directed by Walter R. Booth
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Special effects comedy

An irate patron keeps attacking a black waiter who appears to be unkillable.

Since the waiter survives being beheaded, I’m going to say that this early silent short qualifies for me to include it in my review project. I’m pretty sure the short is intended to be comic. The fact that the action takes place between a white customer and a black waiter makes me wonder if there’s a racial message here, but frankly, it’s rather hard to tell. The waiter may be a white in blackface (and it probably is), but the camera doesn’t get close enough to the actors to say for sure. If the waiter was being incompetent, it doesn’t appear in his actions; in fact, he’s more of a special effect than a character (and in some of the scenes, he’s obviously played by a dummy). The customer is the one who behaves badly; he comes across as tyrannical, ill-mannered and cruel for very little reason. At heart, I think the short mostly exists for its chance to do a special effect of a man being decapitated, regaining his head, and coming back to life.

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The Explorer (1931)

The Explorer (1931)
Article 5816 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-22-2020
Directed by Frank Moser
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Early Terrytoon Talkie

Farmer Al Falfa goes to the North Pole in his autogyro.

Because Farmer Al Falfa has an autogyro (combination car and plane), this one gets by on having some science fiction content. Of course, the autogyro may be arbitrary; in fact, the whole cartoon feels arbitrary. For example, a flight of cats goes up in an airplane to attach a box of skunks to the autogyro. Why? No explanation is tendered. Pretty much anything that happens is punctuated by dancing. A cat dies, his nine lives dance. Al Falfa gets to the North Pole and dances with a (non-polar) bear. Two kissing walruses are revealed when their igloo is pulled away, so they dance. And once Al Falfa runs into the North Pole sign, the cartoon suddenly repeats a bunch of footage from the beginning of the cartoon. This cartoon sits with a lowly 3.0 rating on IMDB. It does little to merit any higher rating.

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Evil Dead II (1987)

Evil Dead II (1987)
Article 5815 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-20-2020
Directed by Sam Raimi
Featuring Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks
Country: USA
What it is: More of the same… only sillier…and a lot more

More people are in the cabin in the woods terrorized by evil undead beings. Who will survive?

So how do you follow up a movie as audacious as the original? Well, if you’re Sam Raimi, you basically do a remake, bring your star up front and center, use a bigger budget, and make what was an undertone in the first movie an overtone here; the first movie hinted at comedy, this one IS a comedy. Much of the violence has a knockabout Three Stooges vibe to it, it’s fully aware that it’s working as both remake and parody, it sends up the cliches rather than succumbing to them, and it does it all with a rollicking sense of fun. It’s the kind of a movie that when one character does something monumentally stupid, you smile because it’s part of the joke. No, it’s not scary; it doesn’t slow down enough to let fear creep in, but that’s all right with me. This is simply a fun ride from beginning to end.

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Eternal Evil (1985)

Eternal Evil (1985)
aka The Blue Man
Article 5814 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-19-2020
Directed by George Mihalka
Featuring Winston Rekert, Karen Black, John Novak
Country: Canada / USA
What it is: Ghosts? Vampires? Possession?

A failed-filmmaker-turned-commercial-director takes an interest in astral projection, but then some of the people in his life begin dying in horrible ways…

This movie has a pretty dismal rating on IMDB, and I can understand why; it’s slow-moving, sometimes very cheesy (especially the score), not particularly well-mounted, and lacking in the gore that was pretty common for the genre of horror at that time. It does, however, have some novel ideas at its core, and those ideas did sustain my interest enough that I never found the movie intolerable. It also had a few plot surprises up its sleeve, which also helps. The big name in the cast is Karen Black as the girlfriend to the main character, and her performance is a little on the weird side, though given some of the plot developments, it makes a certain amount of sense. All in all, I liked it enough that I was able to set aside it’s dodgier aspects, but your mileage may vary; its 3.6 rating means quite a few people found little of interest here.

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Escape from Galaxy 3 (1981)

Escape From Galaxy 3 (1981)
aka Giochi erotici nella terza galassia
Article 5813 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-18-2020
Directed by Bitto Albertini and Luigi Cozzi
Featuring Sherry Buchanan, Fausto Di Bella, Don Powell
Country: Italy
What it is: Uhhhhh….

Two survivors from a destroyed planet try to escape Oroclon, king of the night. They land on planet Earth after the apocalypse, meet natives, and learn about love…

The first third of the movie is a STAR WARS clone. The second third of the movie becomes an after-the-apocalypse coming of age story in which the child-like immortal aliens learn about the joys of love, a plot element which causes the already idiotic story to descend to even lower levels of dumbness. The third third of the movie returns to being a STAR WARS clone, only dragging it’s new-found dumbness with it. Many of the special effects were lifted from STAR CRASH; in fact, in some places, this movie was known as STAR CRASH 2. Incidentally, STAR CRASH was better, and you can’t say that about many STAR WARS clones. I heard a rumor that despite the nudity and sexual themes, this movie got a G rating, but I have been unable to confirm that and find it highly unlikely; if it is true, it would be proof positive that those giving the ratings didn’t watch the movie. This is perhaps the dumbest movie I’ve seen in a long time. If there’s one dumber out there, I hope it waits until I recover.

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Escalofrio diabolico (1972)

Escalofrio diabolico (1972)
aka Diabolical Shudder
Article 5812 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-18-2020
Directed by George Martin
Featuring George Martin, Patty Shepard, Mariano Vidal Molina
Country: Spain
What it is: Unhealthy people with secrets in an old castle… you know the routine

Mysterious and unhealthy things go on in a sinister castle; there’s a cult and imprisoned people.

I just watched a copy of this movie that I had lying around for years, and of course, it’s in Spanish without English subtitles. As such, I can’t really give this movie a meaningful review (not knowing Spanish), but I also have to admit that I didn’t see anything happening that wasn’t really out of the ordinary for this sort of movie. You know the women are in peril and the men can’t be trusted and that the plot will mostly meander around until the climax when everyone shows their true colors. The first two-thirds is a lot of talk, so it’s not surprising that the only story arc you can follow is that of the mute man-servant, whose secrets are revealed visually. Maybe it will be a little better if I find a subtitled version, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be a considerable improvement. At any rate, I can check this one off.

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Quatermass II (1955)

Quatermass II (1955)
TV Miniseries
Article 5811 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-18-2020
Directed by Rudolph Cartier
Featuring John Robinson, Monica Grey, Hugh Griffith
Country: UK
What it is: Science fiction thriller

Professor Quatermass investigates a series of meteorite landings in a specific area, which leads to an investigation of a secret government installation and a conspiracy covering up… what?

I must confess that ENEMY FROM SPACE remains my least favorite of the movie adaptations based on the British Quatermass teleserials, but it took watching the original TV version here to articulate why. In ENEMY FROM SPACE, I don’t find Bernard Quatermass an interesting character, but rather just a standard issue scientist/hero of the era; the other two movies make him a more complex character. In the original teleseries, he is indeed an interesting character, but for the sake of keeping things to a reasonable length, the movie jettisoned most of the plot elements that brought out the character’s more complex nature, and instead focused on the events in the government compound. So perhaps it should be no surprise that I like the original teleseries a lot better than the movie version; not only is it more complex and with more interesting characters, it keeps the suspense fairly high throughout the whole story. The performances are fine, though I was surprised to see certain names on the cast list until I matched them up to their characters; both Hugh Griffith and Roger Delgado are actors who I recognize by their beards, and both are clean-shaven here.

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Enoken no Tobisuke boken ryoko (1949)

Enoken no Tobisuke boken ryoko (1949)
Article 5810 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-15-2020
Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa
Featuring Ken’ichi Enomoto, Yuki Daigo, Kiyoko Hanashima
Country: Japan
What it is: Comic fantasy

A puppeteer is injured when he tries to rescue a little girl from a kidnapper. The little girl takes the puppeteer on a quest to a place where he will be healed, but the path is filled with perils.

My copy of this obscure movie has no English subtitles, so I can’t really go into more plot details than I have above. It is, however, a very visual movie, and it held my attention as the travelers encounter any number of strange people, places and creatures. The set design is also highly non-realistic, and that adds to the appeal. Let’s hope this one is released with English subtitles in the future.

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