ALL GUMMED UP (1947)
Article #1477 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-31-2005
Posting Date: 8-28-2005
Directed by Jules White
Featuring Shemp Howard, Larry Fine, Moe Howard

The Three Stooges try to get rich by concocting a drug that will restore youth to the elderly.

At their best, the Three Stooges would time their slapstick antics and sound effects so impeccably that the result was also musical. They were also able to pull them off so nimbly and swiftly that the gag was over almost before it began. This is one of those shorts where the timing was right on the money. It also has the added appeal of putting the stooges in a profession where you definitely wouldn’t want to encounter them in real life (in this case, as pharmacists). The mounting absurdity of the preparation of the drug is also a plus in this one. This short was made the year that Shemp replaced an ailing Curly.

THE AMAZING TRANSPLANT (1970)
Article #1461 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-15-2005
Posting Date: 8-12-2005
Directed by Doris Wishman
Featuring Juan Fernandez, Linda Southern, Janet Banzet

When a woman is murdered, an inspector hunts for his nephew, who he believes is responsible for the killing. He sees a pattern of violence and rape develop as he interviews people listed in the suspect’s address book.

Usually I don’t give away the last ten minutes of a movie when I do these write-ups, but I have no problem making an exception in this case. Why? Because a) every other plot description of the movie I’ve read gives it away, and b) this is one of those movies you aren’t watching for the plot anyway. Basically, the movie has the same gimmick as any version of THE HANDS OF ORLAC, only we’re not talking hands. If you want a further hint as to the organ in question, let me just say right here that the movie emphasizes one of two possible uses for that organ, and had that movie emphasized the other use of that organ, it would’ve had a lot of footage involving urinals.

In short, it’s a sex movie. Director Doris Wishman apparently made a lot of these. As for her directorial style, let me just make these observations. 1) You never know where the camera will point next, and 2) if you hear somebody talking, the camera will most likely be pointing at anything but that character’s mouth.

Incidentally, the movie also has a really big moose head.

ALIEN ZONE (1978)
(a.k.a. THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD)
Article #1458 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-12-2005
Posting Date: 8-9-2005
Directed by Sharron Miller
Featuring John Ericson, Ivor Francis, Charles Aidman

An adulterer finds himself lost in a rainstorm, but is taken in by a mortician who tells him the story of four of his “clients”.

Let’s get that title out of the way. My print of the movie has the title THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD, and it’s appropriate enough for a horror anthology in which the stories of four dead people (five, if you count the linking story) are told. However, whoever named it ALIEN ZONE was merely trying to find some way to tie it in with ALIEN. There are no aliens in this movie, nor is it even a science fiction movie. Don’t go in with the wrong idea.

As for the movie, it’s a low-budget regional stab at an Amicus-style horror anthology. Unfortunately, it pales badly next to its model; it’s chock full of bad acting, poor writing, and misconceived stories. The first story is obvious; a teacher who hates children gets her comeuppance when she finds trespassers in her home. Yes, there’s a twist to this one, but it’s really lame, and all the camera tricks in the world can’t make this one work. The second story (about a cameraman who films himself killing women) is disastrous; the worst thing about this one is not that it plays like a ten-minute version of PEEPING TOM minus that movie’s writing, acting , camerawork, tension, etc., but rather that there is no story. You see the guy being arrested at the beginning of the movie, and then they show footage of the murders. That’s IT! The almost complete lack of context or insight would have rendered this sequence deeply offensive had it been competently acted. As it is, It’s merely the low point of the entire horror anthology form.

The third story is easily the best of the bunch; even though one plot point of this tale of two great detectives facing off with each other is very predictable, it still manages to be passably entertaining and it has some of the better performances of the movie. The last tale is about an insensitive man getting his comeuppance, and given what happens, it would have been better if this particular sequence would have been played for comedy.

That’s pretty much it. The best performance comes from the man playing the mortician in the linking segments, and even he is saddled with a tiresome speech in which he explains how every character in each of the stories he’s told 1) had character flaws, and 2) received his or her comeuppance. I guess the scriptwriter thought we wouldn’t get it if he didn’t include this speech. I’d be insulted if it were worth it.

AGENT FOR H.A.R.M. (1966)
Article #1457 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-11-2005
Posting Date: 8-8-2005
Directed by Gerd Oswald
Featuring Peter Mark Richman, Carl Esmond, Barboura Bouchet

A secret agent investigates a scientist with a secret, and discovers that he is working on an antidote for a flesh-eating virus that is in the hands of a terrorist.

At first I was going to lump this one in with those all those low-budget Italian James Bond ripoffs I’ve seen, but then I noticed something. First of all, I noticed the absence of all the dubbing I usually find. Second, the credits seemed singularly short on Italian names. The answer to this was simple; it wasn’t an Italian movie at all, but an American one. In fact, despite the fact that it was given a theatrical release, it was actually a pilot for a TV series. This latter discovery doesn’t surprise me; there was something about the end of this movie that just screamed “Make sure to tune into AGENT FOR H.A.R.M. next week!”

Still, it does feel like one of those Italian rip-offs; it’s very cheesy and slow-moving, and my print was about as faded as those Italian movies usually are by the time I get to watching them. Despite that, I liked it well enough. The basic plot has to do with a virus that eats people up from the inside, and the villains actually use a gun that shoots the virus . Also, it was fun to see Martin Kosleck as the villain of his piece. My favorite moment, though, has to do with the Morgue attendant. Yes, I know that comic morgue attendants are a bit of a cliche, but this guy takes the cake; he treats the corpses like visitors at a hotel, and insists that proper protocol is respected when he shows the corpses to people. At least he doesn’t pull his lunch out of one of the drawers, but I figured they though there would be plenty of opportunities to pull that gag when they made the series.

ATTACK OF THE MAYAN MUMMY (1964)
Article #1436 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-18-2005
Posting Date: 7-18-2005
Directed by Rafael Portillo and Jerry Warren
Featuring George Mitchell, Rosa Arenas, Ramon Gay

A scientist discovers a woman who responds to his experiments with hypnosis and reincarnation, and this leads him to a Mayan temple.

Though both of its sequels made it more or less intact to this country through the courtesy of K. Gordon Murray, THE AZTEC MUMMY was not so lucky; it ended up in the hands of Jerry Warren, who used chunks of its footage for FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF as well as this little atrocity. For those of you not familiar with Warren’s technique for bringing foreign movies to us, here’s a brief description. From the original movie, he would only keep scenes that required minimal dubbing which he could then run along with voice-over narration. He would then write his own story around these scenes and shoot his own footage. This footage usually consisted of two characters sitting across from each other and engaging in long-winded and painfully boring conversations. He would shoot these scenes with a flat, static style that merely underlines the dullness of the conversation. It takes phenomenal willpower to actually sit through these scenes, much less pay attention to them. And as a writer, Warren is one of the worst; rather than have his characters quickly move us to the next plot point with an efficient exchange of information, he would have them engage in extended conversations in which they would talk about almost everything else in the world except the story.

This is probably his worst effort in this regard. There’s not much of the original left, and Warren’s footage takes over. It is, in fact, one of the most droningly dull movies ever made. The only scene of Warren’s that has a smidgen of interest is the one where a scientist visits a soda shop with dancing teens to meet a girl who is his connection to the boy in the footage from the original movie. It’s not really any better than his other scenes; the conversation tells us nothing. However, you won’t be listening to the conversation; the scene is full of girls in tight pants wiggling their butts for the benefit of the camera. Yes, it’s distracting, but it’s also the only thing of Warren’s in the movie that catches your attention.

The very last shot of this movie before THE END pops up is a closeup of a wastebasket. I think this speaks for itself.

P.S. Since this review was first written, the original version of THE AZTEC MUMMY has come to light. I will be covering that one at a later date.

ATTACK FROM SPACE (1964)
Article #1435 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-17-2005
Posting Date: 7-17-2005
Directed by Koreyoshi Akasaka, Teruo Ishii and Akira Mitsuwa
Featuring Ken Utsui, Sachihiro Ohsawa, Junko Ikeuchi

Starman must help the earth to defeat an invasion of an outer space race known as the Superions.

Yes, folks, it’s Starman again, and those of you might remember EVIL BRAIN FROM OUTER SPACE will find this one either more or less satisfying than that one. It’s certainly more coherent, but that’s due to the fact that it pillages only two episodes of the Super Giant featurettes rather than the three that went into EBFOS. Certain things haven’t changed; Starman still has a tricky way of changing costumes, his gender is still completely unquestionable (apparently this is due to padding, since one of the producers felt that Starman would appeal more to female viewers if his manhood was more impressive), and the fight scenes still leave you with the sense that no one really got hurt. The down side is that the movie lacks the wild creatures of the other movie; the Superions all look very human, and other than a short segment showing the residents of the planet that sends Starman out on his missions, there’s not an atomic mime to be seen. Still, it’s kind of fun, and Starman seems to really enjoy fighting; he engages in gymnastics, throws people around as if they’re big rag dolls (which they probably are), grabs the enemies guns for his own use and engages in a little western-style gunslinging, warps back and forth from one area of the fight to another, and when he gets tired of this, he’ll stand somewhere laughing with his hands on his hips and let the enemies shoot bullets at him. Let’s face it; there’s something charming and fun about Starman that makes him a lot more interesting than a lot of other Japanese superheros. I just want to see more of the atomic mime.

ATOMIC ROCKETSHIP (1936)
(a.k.a. ROCKETSHIP, FLASH GORDON)
Article #1434 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-16-2005
Posting Date: 7-16-2005
Directed by Frederick Stephani and Ray Taylor
Featuring Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton

Flash Gordon flies to the planet Mongo to keep it from colliding with the earth.

Yes, it’s another feature-length version of the FLASH GORDON serial, compressed to a length of about seventy minutes while trying to keep the whole plot intact. I’ve gone on about feature versions of serials before, and little has changed my mind. To my mind, they’re like Cliff Notes versions of serials. The trouble is, Cliff Notes largely exist to help students to get familiar with novels they’re supposed to read in their literature classes without going through with the trouble of actually reading them. You don’t read Cliff Notes for fun; you read them in order to pass a test, and I don’t think anybody’s going to be testing you on FLASH GORDON in the near future. Still, watching this story for what amounts to me as the fourth time, I can’t help but admit that I’ve become attached to the character of King Vultan, the hefty winged ruler of the Hawkmen who laughs at his own bizarre jokes and fights by bumping into people with his stomach. This guy is just too strange for words.

ADAM AND EVE (1956)
(a.k.a. ADAN Y EVA)
Article #1433 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-15-2005
Posting Date: 7-15-2005
Directed by Alberto Gout
Featuring Christiane Martel, Carlos Baena, Carlos Martinez Baena

Adam and Eve are created and placed in Eden, where they are tempted by the serpent to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.

Biblical epics do fall under the category of fantastic cinema, since miracles are indeed fantastical happenings. In fact, the story of Adam and Eve is probably the best known in the Bible. It is so well known, in fact, that despite the fact that this movie was in Spanish without subtitles, I didn’t have the slightest problem following it. Of course, it helps that there is very little dialogue to begin with; except for some opening and closing narration, and a couple of comments from God, there is no dialogue to this movie. It is also one of the best looking Mexican movies I’ve seen to date, and it has a wonderful soundtrack to it. There are some definite pleasures here.

However, there’s a cinematic problem with telling the story of Adam and Eve that I’ve barely touched on so far, so let me give you the naked truth: it’s very difficult to tell this story visually and keep the viewer in the properly reverent state of mind. To phrase this another way (while remaining annoyingly coy in the process) let me just say that you will most likely get caught up in the fact that an accurate telling of this story puts very little strain on the clothing designer, and that in order to compensate for the relative easiness of this crewperson’s task, we must give extra work to the casting director (“We need a woman with long hair!”), the hairdresser (“These strands go down the back, but these need to hang down in front.”), the cameraman (“Yes, we need to shoot it from THIS angle!”), the choreographer (“Make sure when you’re walking from point A to point B that you hand is positioned just so!), and finally, the foliage wrangler (‘So how much waist-high foliage do you need in this scene?”) Actually, the clothing designer isn’t completely idle, but it’s still a fairly easy job; for the first half of the movie, you just need certain garments of small size and specific color, and for the second half of the movie, you can consult with the foliage wrangler.

The movie does start wandering a bit at the fifty minute mark; that’s when Adam and Eve are evicted. Let’s face it, there’s just not a whole lot of story left, but there’s twenty minutes of movie to go. So we get a lot of wandering in the desert. And here’s a game for Biblical scholars; spot the Biblical error that occurs shortly after Adam invents shade. (Hint: Adam and Eve see something that hasn’t been created yet.)

AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (1927)
(a.k.a. AM RANDE DER WELT)
Article #1426 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-8-2005
Posting Date: 7-8-2005
Directed by Karl Grune
Featuring Jean Bradin, William Dieterle, Edwin Faber

A mill situated on the border between two unnamed countries and the residents therein become pawns in a future war.

This summary is at least partially based on plot descriptions, though for once my inability to grasp the details of a movie is not due to its having been seen only in its native language. No, the titles of this German movie are indeed in English; the trouble is that the print is in such poor condition that not only are some of the titles illegible, but it’s even hard to identify faces from one scene to the next. This is a bit of a shame; there are some scenes I’d really like to get a good look at, particularly those which feature shots of the windmill and those that take place during a festival. I’d also like to see some of the cast members clearly, which include future director William Dieterle, famous silent actress Brigitte Helm, and Nosferatu himself, Max Schreck. The plot may be partially fantasy in the sense that the movie may be an allegory of sorts, though the future war description puts it in the category of marginal science fiction; whichever it is, it’s very hard to discern when you can’t make out any details. Chalk this one up as another one that deserves some sort of restoration.

AROUND THE WORLD UNDER THE SEA (1966)
Article #1408 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-21-2005
Posting Date: 6-20-2005
Directed by Andrew Marton
Featuring Lloyd Bridges, Brian Kelly, Shirley Eaton

A gang of adventurers embarks on a submarine voyage to plant sensors at the bottom of the ocean that can be used to track underwater earthquakes.

You know, there’s a certain type of adventure movie that has distinct qualities about it. Some of these qualities are –

– that you know you will be treated to lots and lots of ‘environmental’ footage. In this case, you’ll have more underwater footage than you can shake a stick at.

– that you’ll have a somewhat varied assortment of characters who will be your companions on the adventure.

– that each of this somewhat varied assortment of characters will be developed only enough so they can have their requisite number of character moments during the adventure. For example, the gruff cynic will develop a heart and save the beleagered guinea pigs.

– that the presence of one woman on the adventure combined with the presence of one man who doesn’t think a woman should be along on the adventure only adds up to one thing – romance.

– that the above romance will provide the entire character developments of both characters involved.

– that there will be plenty of incident (though I hesitate to call it action) during the voyage. Yet, despite all the incident, everything occurs at exactly the same level of excitement (or tedium), because there is no attempt made to build any real drama or suspense.

– that there will be a lot of talk.

– that you can safely ignore almost 95 percent of the talk.

– that, despite the fact that there will be a certain degree of character conflict among the adventurers, none of it will develop into anything really big because that would destroy the atmosphere of complacent cameraderie that defines the movie’s emotional center.

– that you can safely raid the refrigerator at any time during the length of the movie without the fear of missing something really important because nothing that happens ever feels more important than anything else.

– that you have no idea how long a time the voyage took because the movie fails to give you any indication of the passage of time.

– and finally, that you somehow knew that the movie was going to be like this after watching the first five minutes.

No, the movie is not awful. It is merely predictable and without any surprises. Even the presence of Keenan Wynn doesn’t really spice things up. It goes through the system easily and leaves nothing behind to remind you of its presence.

I’m ready to move on to the next movie now.