AUDREY ROSE (1977)
Article 5384 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-4-2017
Directed by Robert Wise
Featuring Anthony Hopkins, Marsha Mason, John Beck
Country: USA
What it is: Drama with mystical and horror overtones

A father and mother are alarmed when a strange man takes an interest in their daughter. When the stranger reveals to them that he believes their daughter to be the reincarnation of his own daughter who died many years ago in an automobile accident, they dismiss him as a kook. However, the daughter begins to have nightmares, and the only person who can calm her down is the stranger…

This movie is something of a cross between THE EXORCIST and THE SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY. It also has something of a lukewarm reputation, and I think this may be because the movie was marketed as a horror movie and whose similarities to THE EXORCIST lead one to expect something other than what is delivered. I think it works better as a drama with mystical overtones in which the mother is the central character; it is she who finds herself torn between the competing belief systems and it is her character who undergoes the greatest change during the length of the movie. Both Marsha Mason and Anthony Hopkins (as the stranger) do excellent jobs. My biggest problem with the movie was the performance of the child actor; she’s convincing in some scenes, less so in others. Granted, she does have a tough role, but it is a role that really needs to be on the mark for the movie to work completely. I like it better than most other people do, but it is one of those movies that requires a certain degree of patience.

AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983)
Article 5383 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-3-2017
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Featuring Tony Roberts, Tess Harper, Robert Joy
Country: USA
What it is: That spooky old house again

A professional debunker decides to buy the Amityville house so he has a quiet place to write his book. It’s not as quiet as he hoped…

For legal reasons this movie couldn’t be called a sequel to the original movies, but it amounts to a marketing decision; they just make no mention of the family from the original movie. Still, it’s a sequel in spirit, though I do notice that it borrows as much from POLTERGEIST as it does from the original movie (though we don’t have a regurgitating clergyman in this one). The spooky events seem to reach beyond the house as well; there’s an elevator sequence in an apartment building and a bizarre traffic accident that don’t happen anywhere near the house. The movie was one of the entries in the short-lived 3D revival of the early eighties; reportedly, the 3D effects were more headache-inducing than effective, and the movie tanked at the box office. I’m not a fan of the Amityville series at all, but at least the first two movies managed a scare or two; this one didn’t do a thing for me, and some of the moments (bad music cues, goofy fake scares) yielded laughs. This didn’t exactly kill the Amityville franchise, but it certainly slowed it down a bit. Despite what the trivia section of IMDB claims, this wasn’t the feature film debut of Meg Ryan (she appeared in a movie two years earlier), but it’s probably one of the very few movies I’ll be covering to feature her at all.

ADAMO ED EVA (1949)
aka Adam and Eve
Article 5366 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-7-2017
Directed by Mario Mattoli
Featuring Erminio Macario, Isa Barzizza, Gianni Agus
Country: Italy
What it is: Comedy

A romantically-entwined man and woman who work together at a salon have a discussion about the conflicts between the sexes after a man reads a book on the subject.

Given that there’s a fair amount of fantastic content in the Biblical “Adam and Eve” story, it’s no surprise that Walt Lee would include any movie so named in his Reference Guide to Fantastic Films. The trouble here is that, despite the title, this isn’t a version of that story, but rather, a musical comedy that mostly serves as a framing device for a series of comic vignettes from throughout history and legend. Still, we’re not short of fantastic content here; the movie does dabble in the original Adam and Eve story near the beginning of the movie, and there’s some definite fantastic content (including a magician) in the Arabian Nights section of the story. Furthermore, there’s the occasional anachronism (cigarettes during the Trojan war sequence, a flame-throwing machine gun during the wild west sequence) to add to the mix, and there’s an air of unreality about the whole exercise; at times, the couple seems to be watching the events unfold on a stage in front of them, and the saloon in which the wild west section takes place looks more like a setting you would find in a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical than anything else. As far as how funny the whole thing is, I can’t really say; I was only able to find a copy of the movie in Italian, and most of the humor is verbal (though the saloon fight has an ample amount of slapstick to it). The movie does come across as rather spirited, but its lukewarm rating on IMDB doesn’t bode well. Still, I have to reserve judgment at this point.

ALONG THE MOONBEAM TRAIL (1920)
Article 5354 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-24-2017
Directed by Herbert M. Dawley and Willis H. O’Brien
Featuring Herbert M. Dawley, Alan Day, Chauncey Day
Country: USA
What it is: Dream fantasy

Two children and their uncle dream they encounter a fairy queen who grants them their wish for a magic aeroplane that will take them into outer space. They end up on a planet inhabited by dinosaurs.

I’ve been a bit lucky lately with movies on my “ones that got away” list; several have turned up in the last few weeks. This one may have been on the list the longest; it was considered lost until its rediscovery recently, and I’ve now had a chance to see the restored copy. The credits above are a combination of what is on IMDB and what I found on the movie itself. I believe the O’Brien credit above may be incorrect and the movie is entirely Dawley’s work. I knew the short involved dinosaurs (which is probably why it was originally attributed to O’Brien), but I always thought it had a curious title for a dinosaur movie. There’s actually a lot more fantastic content here than just the dinosaurs; fairies, magic aeroplanes, cosmic gods subbing as traffic directors, and human-faced moons all make appearances, and the first half is more like a Melies fantasy than a dinosaur movie. The dinosaurs show up for the second half; there’s a Stegosaurus, a Trachodon, a Pterodactyl and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The short isn’t quite complete; the ending is missing, for one thing, but the restoration has a summary of the ending, though the remaining footage was probably enough for you to figure out how it would end. This fantasy is a lot of fun, and I’m glad it’s become generally available.

ARCHANDEL GABRIEL A PANI HUSA (1965)
aka Archangel Gabriel and Mistress Goose
Article 5311 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-1-2016
Directed by Jiri Trnka
No cast
Country: Czechoslovakia
What it is: Animated Decameron tale

A monk seduces a woman by a disguising himself as the archangel Gabriel. However, when word gets around, her relatives lay in wait to seize the impostor.

Jiri Trnka was a master of animated puppet animation, and this adaptation of a bawdy tale from the Decameron shows him in top form. For me, one of the most interesting accomplishments in this short is that it takes a literary tale and makes it entirely visual; the only place where subtitles are needed are during the opening credits, and any conversation that takes place during the short is muttered gibberish. In this, Trnka combines puppet animation with cutout animation (similar to Terry Gilliam’s style), though the latter is used mostly during the opening credits and the first scene, in which the monk preaches about salvation and damnation using only gesture, music and visual cues. I particularly like the little character gestures Trnka gives his characters. The main fantastic content is the use of an angel, and though it’s a man in disguise, the real archangel Gabriel makes a fleeting appearance.

THE ASSIGNATION (1953)
Article 5269 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-12-2016
Directed by Curtis Harrington
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Avant-garde short

A masked figure in a black cape carrying a red rose travels on a gondola through the canals of Venice… but to what end?

Curtis Harrington began as a maker of avant-garde short films. This is the first one I’ve seen of those early movies. I actually found this one rather interesting. Not a lot happens during the first three-quarters of the movie, but the movie does a nice job of capturing a certain visual allure of the sights along the canal and it managed to hold my interest. What plot there is unfolds in the last couple of minutes, and it’s charming in the simplicity of its unfolding. In the end, I was quite taken with the movie; for one thing, it seems to be just the right length; had it gone on much longer, it would have gotten dull. As for the fantastic content… well, if you come to the same conclusion I did as to the identity of the masked figure, you’ll know why I feel it qualifies, but it is open to interpretation.

AU PAYS DE L’OR (1908)
aka In the Land of the Gold Mines
Article 5240 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-30-2016
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Special effects short

A woman spies a gang of dwarfs disappearing underground in a forest, and a fairy takes her into their abode where they forge gold.

There’s no director listed for this on IMDB, but it looks somewhat like the work of Gaston Velle or Segundo de Chomon to me. There’s no plot; it’s more like a series of fantastically derived set pieces with the theme of gold tying them together, and it feels something like a factory tour; the woman even gets free samples at the end. The neatest effect is watching the gold being forged to coins, which is basically achieved by creating filming several fake pieces of gold being melted in a pan, and then running that footage backwards. There’s a giant face that spits out gold coins as well as a series of woman being offered the gold of their respective nations. The whole thing is nicely hand-tinted as well.

AFTER SIX DAYS (1920)
aka La Sacra Bibbia
Article 5215 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-26-2016
Directed by Pier Antonio Gariazzo and Armando Vey
Featuring Umberto Semprebene, Ada Marucelli, Bruto Castellani
Country: Italy
What it is: Biblical epic

The story of the Bible is told from the creation of the world to the reign of Solomon.

Reportedly, this movie had a budget of around three million dollars, and the original print consisted of eleven reels. That version is lost. The version that is extant was a re-release made in 1929 which reduced the length to 62 minutes, destroyed some of the framing, and added ponderous and tiresome narration. This was distributed by the Weiss Brothers on a states rights basis. It rushes through most of the early stories (the creation of the world, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, etc.) and only slows down for the stories of Joseph, Moses and Solomon. Some of the spectacle is amazing; the scenes involving the Ark and the Tower of Babel are pretty impressive. The story (for this version of the movie) is less so, largely because the narration is so annoying; the original version certainly must have been much better. As is usual in epics of this sort, the miracles are the main fantastic content; there’s even an early attempt at the parting of the Red Sea. In it’s present state, the movie is more interesting to look at than to listen to, and the stories are better told in the Bible itself.

AND THE VILLAIN STILL PURSUED HER; OR, THE AUTHOR’S DREAM (1906)
Article 5194 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-27-2016l
Directed by J. Stuart Blackton
Featuring Paul Panzer
Country: USA
What it is: Bizarre comedy

A rather down-on-his-luck author falls asleep and dreams he is the unlikely hero in a mellerdrammer.

This is a title that had been consigned to me “ones that got away”, list, but it turns out that it was one of a series of unidentified shorts at the Library of Congress, and I was able to acquire a copy of it. I’m glad I did; though there are plenty of special effects to the short, they are there to serve the weird comic vibe of the short rather than for their own purposes. There’s a duel sequence that wouldn’t be out of place in a Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin short, a makeshift operation to remove a bullet lodged in someone’s head, an “escape by dumbwaiter” sequence involving an absurdly stretched leg… this one left my mouth hanging open a couple of times. It’s also one of those special effects shorts that doesn’t feel like an attempt to imitate Melies. Now that this short has been identified, it should become generally available in the next couple of years, and I’m glad; it’s one that is worth catching.

ARSENAL (1929)
Article 5163 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-21-2016
Directed by Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Featuring Semyon Svashenko, Amvrosi Buchma, Georgi Khorkov
Country: Soviet Union
What it is: Revolutionary drama

After surviving a brutal war and a train wreck, a soldier/worker returns to his home in the Ukraine to organize a worker’s revolution that will center at the town’s arsenal.

The movie is based on an incident during the Russian Civil War in 1918 when workers in Kiev aided the Bolshevik army against the ruling class in the city. Given the time and place where this was made, there’s little doubt as to what the ideological content will be here. Still, ideology can sometimes tap into a creative energy that can imbue a movie with a spirit that can be appreciated, even if you choose to reject the propagandistic message. There is definitely a kinetic energy to this movie (especially during a memorable train wreck sequence in which an accordion serves as a visual counterpoint to the proceedings), and I can even admire the way it symbolically argues its points; in short, it’s an effective movie. The Walt Lee guide lists the fantastic content as being a scene where a dead soldier continues to walk, but I was unable to spot a particular moment in question. However, there are a few other incidents that push it into the fantastic. There’s a scene where a painting briefly comes to life. Also, certain title cards seem to imply that the words being spoken are by animals. Also, the final scene has a man refusing to fall after being shot, implying that he is invincible, another symbolic touch.