THE ANGELS WASH THEIR FACES (1939)
Article 4792 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-4-2015
Directed by Ray Enright
Featuring Ann Sheridan, Billy Halop, Bernard Punsly
Country: USA
What it is: “Dead End Kids” drama

When a reform school inmate is released on parole, he is targeted as a fall guy by conspirators involved in an arson/insurance scam. Friends of the framed boy are convinced of his innocence, and come up with a plan to free him; one of their members enters a civic contest to become mayor of the city for a week, and he intends to use the authority to get the boy released.

I’ve covered so many Bowery Boys/East Side Kids movies over the years that it’s sometimes easy to forget that the roots of the group can be found in the Broadway production of a Sidney Kingsley play about street urchins called “Dead End”. The kids who played the urchins became sensations, and were brought to Hollywood to star in the movie version, where they became known as “The Dead End Kids”. Over the years, they aged, splintered into different groups, grew more overtly comic, and became for all practical reasons, parodies of their original selves. Given the propensity for the later versions of the group to visit spooky old houses and dabble in fantastic themes, it’s no surprise I’ve seen so many of their movies for this series. This is probably the only movie I’ll see of theirs in their original incarnation for this series, and that’s only because it has a single nod to the realm of the fantastic, and that’s when the character played by Billy Halop dreams that miniature members of the rest of the gang are climbing over him and reciting civics lessons to him.

The movie itself is a partial sequel to ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, and even though the movie is more drama than comedy, we can see the transition from a primarily dramatic group to the more comic take of the later versions. The emphasis isn’t on Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall (though both are present), but on Billy Halop and Frankie Thomas (the latter was not really a regular member of the group). The movie does capture how charismatic they were; this movie really only comes alive when the kids are on the screen. The story is fun, sometimes clever, but it’s all pretty far-fetched as well. Nevertheless, as a street melodrama, it’s entertaining enough. Still, the most amusing detail in the movie was something that definitely could not be appreciated at the time. Once Billy wins the contest to become mayor for a week and is stymied in his initial attempts to get the boy released, he tries to think of which adult he can contact for aid, and decides that the President of the United States is too busy to be of help. In the end, the adult that does help him is the son of the district attorney, played by a young Ronald Reagan.

ALLEGRETTO (1936)
Article 4762 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-18-2015
Directed by Oskar Fischinger
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Abstract animation

Circles and diamonds cavort to Ralph Rainger’s “Radio Dynamics”.

I’ve encountered Oskar Fischinger’s abstract animated shorts before in this series. This one is more of the same; abstract shapes move to the rhythms of a musical piece. It ends up being a virtual fantasy by dint of its simply not being realistic. It’s entertaining in that soothing, abstract way, and I can admire the effort it must have taken to make this, but, as usual for this type of thing, it doesn’t really lend itself to much in the way of verbal discussion.

ALADDIN’S LAMP (1947)
Article 4759 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-14-2015
Directed by Eddie Donnelly
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Mighty Mouse cartoon

An evil cat kidnaps Aladdin’s daughter and steals his lamp. Can Mighty Mouse save the day?

One of these days it might be interesting to watch the Mighty Mouse cartoons in chronological order in order to find out how the whole operetta approach evolved. I mention this because this short feels transitional; all of the dialogue is sung, and there’s a sense of the operetta style, but it doesn’t have the serial parody elements of the other shorts in this style, and neither Pearl Pureheart nor Oil-Can Harry appear. Unfortunately, the sense of humor of those shorts is missing as well; the few half-hearted gags that show up here fall flat. As a result, this one is largely as dull as Mighty Mouse’s non-operetta shorts. The best moment for me was the appearance of a dragon for a short segment of the cartoon; it’s a sequence that shows more ambition than what I’m used to finding from Terrytoons. Yet, because of its transitional nature, it might be a crucial step in the evolution of the series.

ALS HET VERSTAND ZEGEVIERT (1918)
aka The Craving
Article 4685 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-18-2014
Directed by Francis Ford
Featuring Francis Ford, Mae Gaston, Peter Gerald
Country: USA
What it is: Spy intrigue crossed with anti-drinking story

A recovering alcoholic invents a formula for a new super-explosive, but a villain from India is seeking his secret.

This movie had ended up on my “ones that got away” list under the belief it was lost, but it apparently popped up in a private collection. I’m glad I’ve got sources I can consult on the plot; since the intertitles of the print I saw are in Dutch, I would have been really lost in trying to sort this one out. For one thing, I didn’t see any clear demonstration of the explosive itself (unless a war-time sequence and a thrown beaker of liquid are meant to demonstrate it), and I would never have figured out the rather vague “battle of wills” sequence (for that matter, I’m not sure I still do). However, there is some easily spotted fantastic content to this one; when our hero is drinking, he hallucinates, and there are two sequences in the movie – one in which he deals with a series of little people who come out of a bottle and another where he has a strange out-of-body experience – with very marked fantasy content. Nevertheless, I sense this is a rather odd movie that never really finds its focus; I’m not really sure the movie knows what it wants to be. It does have some interesting moments, though.

THE AUTOMATIC MOTORIST (1911)
Article 4674 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-7-2014
Directed by Walter R. Booth
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Science fantasy trick film

A robot takes a pair of newlyweds for a spin, and the car ends up going to outer space as well as to the bottom of the ocean.

This movie has a lot in common with the one I saw yesterday. For one thing, it too was a title that had been consigned to my “ones that got away” list until BFI put it on their website. It’s also by the same director, Walter R. Booth. It’s something of an expanded remake of the same director’s earlier movie, THE “?” MOTORIST, and repeats that movie’s most memorable sequence in which the car drives on the rings of Saturn; however, it doesn’t stop there, and it breaks into the planet so we get a somewhat Meliesian scene where a policeman who was being dragged behind the car finds himself surrounded by space aliens and ends up romancing a woman from the stars. Some of the special effects look like Gilliam animations. It’s actually a lot of fun, and may be more entertaining than the original version.

THE AERIAL SUBMARINE (1910)
Article 4673 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-6-2014
Directed by Walter R. Booth
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Science fiction action adventure

Two youngsters are kidnapped by pirates who have a submarine that can also fly.

Here’s another title that ended up on my “ones that got away” list, but finally a video of the silent short was posted online by BFI. It’s pretty straightforward action/adventure fare, and many of the special effects are created with animation. In some ways, it’s like a variation of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, and it’s interesting to note that the leader of the pirates is female. Still, if there’s a lesson to be learned from this short, it’s that good help is hard to find; the pirates are finally defeated as the result of gross incompetence on the part of the submarine’s own crew. This one is quite entertaining.

THE AMATEUR WILLIAM TELL (1909)
Article 4648 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-7-2013
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Comic short

A young boy, enamored with the story of William Tell, makes a bow and arrow and practices using it on the people he meets. Much destruction ensues.

Certain movies are so rare that you have to settle for whatever quality you can in finding a copy. Though I was finally able to find a copy of this, the print is quite bad and much of the detail is lost. It’s rather difficult to evaluate a movie in those circumstances; you’re so busy trying to make out what’s going on that there’s not much room left in the experience to really enjoy it. It does look fitfully amusing, though; a better copy (if one ever manifests itself) might make a lot of difference.

As for the fantastic content, that probably belongs to a sequence near the end of the movie where the boy gets his comeuppance; in short, he has a nightmare where he is tried by a group of hooded figures which turn out to be the people he tormented earlier. He is punished in a fitting way, though, to be truthful, I can only attest to the fact that this happened because I received a plot description explaining what was happening; it was particularly difficult to make out the action in this sequence. The hooded figures certainly give it a touch of horror, though the touch is slight; I’d say this short is fairly marginal in that regard.

ARTHUR THE KING (1985)
aka Merlin and the Sword
Article 4639 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-26-2014
Directed by Clive Donner
Featuring Malcolm McDowell, Candice Bergen, Edward Woodward
Country: USA / Yugoslavia
What it is: Arthurian epic

Arthur’s rule at Camelot is threatened by the plottings of Morgan Le Fay and his own illegitimate son Mordred, who hatch a plot to have Guinevere kidnapped by the king of the Picts and taken to an enchanted land.

I was given the choice of watching either the shortened version of this TV-Movie (which goes under the title MERLIN AND THE SWORD) or the full length version, which, according to IMDB, ran 180 minutes. I have to admit that I was somewhat reluctant to choose the latter (though I did), because I really didn’t want to spend three hours with what would no doubt be an overly familiar story. Fortunately, the longer version I found ran only two hours and twenty minutes (perhaps the time on IMDB included the commercials), and the story at least deals with certain aspects of the Arthurian legend that I wasn’t familiar with (though, truth be told, I suspect a lot of liberties were taken here with the story). Unfortunately, I found most of the movie pretty bad. There’s a jarring framing story involving a modern day visitor to Stonehenge falling down a hole and ending up in the cavern where Merlin and Niniane were prisoners; Dyan Cannon’s performance as the modern day visitor is so jarringly at odds with the rest of the movie that I winced every time the movie switched to these scenes. Malcolm McDowell is not really given much to do in the title role, and Candice Bergen’s campy take on Morgan Le Fay rubbed me the wrong way; fortunately, Edward Woodward hits the right notes as Merlin and gives the best performance here. I didn’t find Lancelot to be particularly valiant or charismatic, and Mordred is portrayed as an ineffectual fool. My favorite touch to the movie was the odd “Beauty and the Beast” subplot involving Gawaine and the Lady Ragnell; I don’t know if this was part of the original legends, but it made for an interesting distraction. The fight scenes are pretty weak, and much of the dialogue is hackneyed. Overall, I think it tries to be a light-hearted take on the legend, but it ends up lacking both grandeur and humor. All in all, this one was quite bad. The cast also features Liam Neeson and Michael Gough, the latter in a rather embarrassing cameo in which he utters the tackiest joke in the movie.

AN ARTIST’S DREAM (1900)
Article 4609 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-17-2014
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Early trick film

An artist dreams that the women in his portraits have come to life and stepped out of the frames.

It looks like I’m not finished with trick shorts from the very early days of cinema; here’s another one. It’s a standard Melies imitation, with a devil showing up and running the proceedings, though that plot element does raise the question as to whether the artist is just dreaming or if the devil is playing a trick on him. It’s passable, but nothing really sets it apart from the pack.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1915)
Article 4607 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-14-2014
Directed by W.W. Young
Featuring Viola Savoy, Herbert Rice
Country: USA
What it is: Lewis Carroll adaptation

Alice dreams she goes down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

This version of the Lewis Carroll classic is a serviceable if not particularly inspired series of highlights from the story; one of the more interesting aspects is it tries to be somewhat faithful visually to the Tenniel illustrations. Granted, one person’s highlights may not be the same as the next person’s, but that’s one of the oddities of the original story; as there’s no real plot to speak of, it’s open for the directors and writers to choose which scenes to include and which to exclude. This one includes scenes that most of the others skip (the animal convention and the recitation of “You are Old, Father William” come to mind) while omitting other scenes that I would consider essential (the mad tea party is conspicuously absent). Granted, the full movie was only about fifty minutes, and my print runs only forty minutes, so it could be in the missing footage. Granted, I don’t think there’s really a way for a silent version of this story to be truly effective; most of the charms of the book are verbal, and that requires the advent of sound. Still, it has a little curiosity value.