BEYOND THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE (1975)
TV-Movie
Article 4452 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-16-2014
Directed by William A. Graham
Featuring Fred MacMurray, Sam Groom, Donna Mills
Country: USA
What it is: Supernatural… uh, thriller

When some friends disappear inside the Bermuda Triangle, a retired businessman investigates.

Fred MacMurray projects such an amiable warmth that you can’t help but like him, and that comes through even when he’s saddled with poor dialogue and a dull story as he is here. In short, he’s the only real reason to bother to tune in to this lethargic exploitation of the Bermuda Triangle legend; everything else here feels like made-for-TV cliches and filler. And don’t expect much in the way of special effects; the theory put forth this time around is only talked about and never shown, and I greeted the end of the movie with a kind of glum dejection at the realization that that was all I was going to get. In short, this one is talky and dull, with only MacMurray’s performance to lift it out of the doldrums.

BENVENUTO CELLINI; OR, THE CURIOUS EVASION (1904)
aka Benvenut Celiini ou Une curieuse evasion
Article 4428 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-23-2014
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Minor trick short

The king’s sculptor is imprisoned until he produces a work that the king likes. While in the dungeon, the sculptor sees a vision of a beautiful woman and uses that for his subject.

I had thought that the two Flicker Alley collections had captured all of the extant Melies, but either I was wrong or some new ones have cropped up. This one is actually pretty minor in terms of its fantastic content; the appearance of the beautiful woman is about the only element, though the speed with which the sculptor puts the statue together might also come under consideration. My copy is missing both the beginning of the story and the very end, which is a little unfortunate, as most of what plot there is is covered in the missing footage. Given how elaborate many of Melies’s other movies are, this one can’t help but be a bit disappointing, but I’m glad I had the opportunity to see it.

BROTHER JOHN (1971)
Article 4413 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-5-2014
Directed by James Goldstone
Featuring Sidney Poitier, Will Geer, Bradford Dillman
Country: USA
What it is: The unfolding of destiny.
A man, gone for years and impossible to contact, comes to a small southern town to be on hand for the death of his sister. The police believe he’s an agitator sent to cause trouble with a local strike. However, the local doctor who brought the man into this world has a different belief, as he’s noticed that the man only shows up when someone is about to die…

Here’s another one of those movies where most of the plot descriptions give away key discoveries that only happen near the end of the movie, and I went into the movie knowing them. Yet, I have to say that I don’t feel knowing these things ahead of time necessarily ruined the movie for me; in fact, if anything, I found myself perhaps more on the edge of my seat waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop. It’s not really the revelations that make the movie work for me, anyway; in this case, it’s the authority of the acting, in particular from both Sidney Poitier and Will Geer. They do through acting what many other movies do through special effects; when Poitier’s character delivers a soliloquy that opens with the phrase “There is now no time left… for anything.”, I felt a real chill run down my spine, and quite frankly, I found watching a jailer closing and latching storm windows as the wind rises to be tenser than a stock footage shot of an atom bomb going off. Don’t be fooled by the obvious themes of racism and labor problems; these are only the convenient examples of events from a much greater canvas, and the movie isn’t really about these specifically. If I’ve been a bit vague about the fantastic content, let me just say without giving away too much that Poitier’s character is not strictly human. All in all, I found this one very effective, though it works more in the mode of a straight drama than a genre piece.

BRAINSTORM (1983)
Article 4412 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-4-2014
Directed by Douglas Trumbull
Featuring Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction drama

A team of scientists develops the technology to record human experiences and play them back to others. It’s only after a while they begin to see the darker sides of this creation. Then, one of the scientists does a recording of her own death…

I will say this much; I like this movie a lot more than I do Trumbull’s first feature film directorial effort, SILENT RUNNING. I admire that it seeks to really explore the possibilities of this technological development, and some of the imagery is quite breathtaking. The movie had a troubled history, though; Natalie Wood died before the movie had been completed, and the studio wanted to dump the project, but Trumbull insisted on continuing, and though he did get the movie completed, he was not allowed to make another feature film for a major studio. These problems might explain why, despite the movie’s ambitions, it feels curiously incomplete, jagged and not quite satisfying. Also, I’m not quite sure I like the way the movie veers into the metaphysical; the ending looks like it was trying to outdo the star gate sequence in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in terms of visual pizzazz, and though it’s quite slick and pretty to look at, it’s also rather empty. The movie tries so hard at times to be a visual feast that the characters get lost in the mix. Still, I am impressed at the ambition on display here.

LA BARCA SIN PESCADOR (1964)
aka The Boat Without a Fisherman
Article 4408 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-31-2013
Directed by Josep Maria Forn
Featuring Gerard Landy, Amparo Soler Leal, Mable Karr
Country: Spain
What it is: Deal with the devil

When a shipping magnate loses his fortune in the stock market, he is offered a deal by the devil to recoup his losses if he allows a poor fisherman to fall to his death. The businessman agrees, but he finds himself haunted by his action and ends up meeting with the fisherman’s family and friends.

Here’s another movie I was only able to find in Spanish without English subtitles. Fortunately, a user comment on IMDB provided me with the general basis of the story, so I wasn’t at a total loss. However, outside of the scene where he makes the agreement, the movie doesn’t give me much visually to work with in figuring out the story, and most of it consists of people talking to each other. There are some special effects involving the Mephistopheles character, but he is used sparingly, and the movie is primarily concerned with the interactions between the other characters. As such, I have to reserve judgment on this one, though I’ve heard there’s an English translation of the stage play on which this one is based, so someday I might be able to find out more of what’s going on. Still, I do have the general impression that the movie is really no better than average.

BRENDA STARR (1976)
Article 4402 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-25-2013
Directed by Mel Stuart
Featuring Jill St. John, Tabi Cooper, Sorrell Booke
Country: USA
What it is: Failed series pilot

Star reporter Brenda Starr investigates a voodoo cult that is extorting money from billionaires.

A series about a reporter looking into supernatural occurrences? Given the fact that I’m a big fan of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, I’m in no position to fault the basic premise here, and, truth be told, I don’t know if this series would have taken supernatural subjects on a regular basis or whether it was just the pilot that would have dealt with them. But one thing I will say – the Kolchak TV series and movies had sharp, crackling dialogue and interesting, well-defined characters. All this pilot really has going for it is the fact that Jill St. John is sexy as hell (which explains the gratuitous bath and bikini scenes) and that Victor Buono plays memorable characters with incredible ease; unfortunately, he wouldn’t have ended up a regular character in the series. The story does have an interesting twist or two (as well as some bad ones), there’s at least one memorable image in the series, but the direction is uninspired and the dialogue is weak and cliche-ridden. It’s seems pretty obvious to me why this wasn’t picked up as a series.

THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978)
Article 4401 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-24-2013
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Featuring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Nazi thriller

An elderly Nazi hunter is contacted by a younger one concerning a Nazi plot in Paraguay. The older man dismisses it as a joke until the younger man is killed trying to pass on details of the plot. The Nazi hunter swings into action, trying to figure out why Dr. Josef Mengele is plotting to have 64 middle-aged men from around the world assassinated.

Practically every guide that discusses this movie gives away the fantastic content, and I’m willing to bet that you already know what it is. Nevertheless, for the sake of those who don’t already know, I’m not going to discuss it here. Why? Because the movie is structured like a mystery, and the nature of the fantastic content is one of the crowning revelations of that mystery. The movie is probably a lot more enjoyable if that plot element takes you by surprise at the appropriate moment in the story; I know that my foreknowledge of the revelation made the movie somewhat less fun. Of course, it’s not the fault of the movie that I knew one of the spoilers from the beginning. However, it does have a few other problems as well. The more I think about, the more far-fetched the plot appears, and in some ways, the characters played by both Oliver and Peck come across as stereotypes. Still, I admire the way that Olivier manages to overcome that problem by finding ways to make his character’s humanity shine through; Peck unfortunately succumbs to the stereotype, and ends up chewing the scenery, but I feel that he was grossly miscast here. There are bits of dialogue that are quite bad, and the child actor who plays multiple roles here is never convincing. On the plus side, parts of the mystery still do seem quite intriguing, and certain individual scenes work very well indeed. The cast also features other well-known actors, including a cameo by Michael Gough as one of the targets of the plot. And I take my hat off to John Dehner; he’s one of those actors I can usually spot immediately, but here, I didn’t even know which character was him until the end credits.

BLUE THUNDER (1983)
Article 4400 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-23-2013
Directed by John Badham
Featuring Roy Scheider, Warren Oates, Candy Clark
Country: USA
What it is: Action thriller

A policeman who specializes in air surveillance is pegged to test a new experimental helicopter with the latest technology and capable of firing weapons. He stumbles across a conspiracy surrounding the helicopter, and finds he must stay alive long enough to provide proof of it.

The opening message in the movie claims that the technology on display in the movie already exists, which made me wonder why this movie would qualify as genre. However, there are two factors to consider: 1) the technology may exist for each specific aspect of the helicopter, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have been combined in this form, and 2) movies don’t always tell the truth. So let’s assume the movie is indeed genre, and proceed from there.

I first encountered this movie via a trailer I saw in a movie theater. It showed the helicopter in question appearing over the horizon and then letting its weaponry loose on a bus filled with dummies, all of which are violently destroyed. I do have to admit that the trailer was quite effective, though it probably had for me the opposite effect that was intended; because I tend to dislike movies that so baldly exploit paranoid mind-sets, I had no desire to see the movie after seeing the trailer. Though I did eventually see the movie, I was surprised that the sequence from the trailer did not appear in the movie, though there is an equivalent sequence where the helicopter is demonstrated on a fake town full of cardboard people. Yet the thing that surprised me most from this watching was that within the movie, the helicopter is never used to threaten the general populace, as almost all the scenes involving it have it being flown by the hero of the story.

With this current viewing, I found myself once again thinking about this curious aspect of the story, and an interesting thought occurred to me. The story itself could have reduced the super-helicopter to a Gizmo Maguffin, as the main thrust of the plot involves a conspiracy surrounding the helicopter, and, with some shuffling of the plot elements, the whole movie could have been written without ever using the helicopter at all. Instead, the helicopter becomes the instrument by which the plot is uncovered and brought to light, which is certainly an unusual use for a Maguffin. This offbeat use of a Maguffin manages to alleviate a little some of my problems with the movie, which is sometimes slow, has some action sequences which are a little silly (especially having the hero’s girlfriend take a dangerous u-turn in traffic and going the wrong way down a one-way street for no better reason than she missed a turn-off), and has a story that makes use of an astonishing set of coincidences. Apparently, the original script had the hero flipping out and terrorizing people with the copter, and I suspect that the Vietnam subplot came from the original conception. All in all, I found the movie sporadically effective. The movie was dedicated to Warren Oates; this was his last movie.

BLOOD TIDE (1982)
Article 4394 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-17-2013
Directed by Richard Jefferies
Featuring James Earl Jones, Jose Ferrer, Lila Kedrova
Country: UK / Greece
What it is: Monster movie

A treasure hunter releases an ancient evil from an underground cavern on a Greek island.

This movie doesn’t have much of a reputation, yet I didn’t quite dislike it as much as some others do. The direction is indifferent, the script is rather muddled at times, and the level of monster action is low for its intended audience. However, I am partial to the Greek atmosphere of the movie, and there’s always something satisfying about hearing James Earl Jones’ voice in any context, even if having him quote from “Othello” constantly is too cute. I also like Jose Ferrer’s solid, underplayed performance as the mayor of the island. Still, there is something disappointing in a monster movie that can’t seem to find more than a fleeting glimpse of the monster, and it would have been better if they had saved the glimpse for the end of the movie rather than in the middle. The movie also has quite a few dead spots. Nevertheless, I did find a little to enjoy in the movie, and even though it does owe a little bit to JAWS, it’s hardly a clone of that movie.

BRAINSTORM (1965)
Article 4361 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-9-2013
Directed by William Conrad
Featuring Jeffrey Hunter, Anne Francis, Dana Andrews
Country: USA
What it is: Noirish thriller

A scientist has an affair with a woman who he has saved from suicide; she’s the wife of the man who owns the company for which the scientist works. He wants the woman to leave her husband, but if she does, she will lose custody of her child. The scientist comes up with a foolproof way to kill the husband…

This movie has an intriguing beginning involving a stopped car on the railroad tracks. It then settles down into a typical film noir situation, with one slight exception; the woman, rather than a controlling femme fatale, is actually something of a weak-willed character. It’s not until a ways into the movie when the scientist flips out in the office of a psychiatrist (a memorable scene) that the genre content appears; though not a horror movie, the theme of madness enters the picture, and it becomes more prominent as the movie progresses. The plot that is hatched to kill the husband and get away with it seems pretty novel at first, but as the movie progressed, it became clear to me that we were watching a variation of Samuel Fuller’s movie SHOCK CORRIDOR, so I’ve been here before. Nevertheless, this is an entertaining movie; despite the familiar elements, logic flaws, and some moments that are a bit pat, the acting is very good from all concerned. There’s a memorable cameo from Strother Martin as an inmate of an asylum, and a surprise cameo from Richard Kiel which ends up providing the sole funny moment in the movie. It’s a good, if not great, thriller.