THE BAT (1926)
Article #1308 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-13-2004
Posting Date: 3-12-2005
Directed by Roland West
Featuring Jack Pickford, Louise Fazenda, Eddie Gribbon

A murderous bank robber known as “The Bat” is loose in a country estate, and the residents believe he may be hiding in a hidden room in the mansion.

THE BAT is one of the cornerstones of the whole “Old Dark House” genre, but oddly enough, I had a little trouble warming up to it. I’d seen its remake THE BAT WHISPERS (with the same director) twice, and though I seemed to like it well enough the first time I saw it, I was very bored the second time. This boredom almost repeated itself on my first viewing of the original here, but I ended up warming up to it as it progressed, and I believe this might be due to the fact that I didn’t find myself struggling with the creakiness of an early talkie. Visually, this is one of the finest looking of the “Old Dark House” movies; the excellent Art Design by William Cameron Menzies is very effective, and even though the miniatures do look like miniatures, they are still evocative and moody. The movie starts out very well indeed, with an audacious robbery-murder; my problems usually start when the action moves to the country estate. Two problems I had with the movie are that I don’t think it does a good job introducing its various characters (it takes longer to sort out who’s who than it should), and that it puts too much emphasis on the comic-relief maid, who spends all of her time either looking scared or accusing people of being “The Bat”. However, the confusing middle section eventually gives way to the more focused final third of the movie, which is quite fun. The soundtrack is marvelously moody, but this in itself is a bit problematic; since the movie is at least partially a comedy, it should have a lightness of touch at times that it doesn’t have.

THE BOY AND THE PIRATES (1960)
Article #1263 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-29-2004
Posting Date: 1-26-2005
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Featuring Charles Herbert, Susan Gordon, Murvyn Vye

A boy who dreams of the days of pirates finds himself spirited there as a result of his finding a genie in a bottle. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Unless he returns the bottle to the place where he found it in three days, the genie will go free and the boy will be forced to take his place in the bottle.

There are some nice things about this movie. The special effects are quite good, and the movie manages to achieve the right balance between cuteness (the pirates dealing with bubblegum having gotten in their stew; Blackbeard discovers safety matches) and brutality (the boy is threatened with a red-hot metal rod at one point; Blackbeard has the habit of spontaneously offing those who defy him). It also has a fun sense of irony that could have been played up; the boy doesn’t care much for having to mop the floor at home or having to eat vegetables (which pirates never eat, he believes), but once on the pirate ship his first job is swabbing the deck, and he also has to serve in the galley by peeling vegetables.

Unfortunately, the movie suffers because of a rather glum air over the proceedings. The reason for this is Charles Herbert’s performance as the boy; his main reaction to his situation is one of dour grumpiness, and it saps a great deal of fun from the proceedings. The adults fare somewhat better, particularly Murvyn Vye as the rather unpredictable Blackbeard, and Paul Guilfoyle as Snipe, the pirate most sympathetic to the plight of the children. All in all, it’s not bad, but it never quite acquires the sense of fun that it should have.

BLUEBEARD’S TEN HONEYMOONS (1960)
Article #1251 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-17-2004
Posting Date: 1-14-2005
Directed by W. Lee Wilder
Featuring George Sanders, Corinne Calvet, Jean Kent

A Parisian antique dealer falls for a singer, but her expensive tastes causes him to turn to murdering rich widows for their money.

Actually, the title is a bit misleading; as far as I can tell, Landru never gets around to marrying any of these women, preferring to do away with them before the ceremony. It’s a good role for George Sanders, and between his performance and some of the witty touches of the script (in particular, Landru’s obsession of keeping track of his expenses) contribute quite a bit to making this far and away the best W. Lee Wilder movie I’ve seen to date. Its biggest drawback is its sluggish pace, but it does show an improvement for Wilder, and the ending is nicely edited. In terms of its fantastic content, it’s somewhat marginal, but the Landru story is generally considered to fall within the bounds of horror.

BETRAYED (1944)
(a.k.a. WHEN STRANGERS MARRY)
Article #1249 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-15-2004
Posting Date: 1-12-2005
Directed by William Castle
Featuring Dean Jagger, Kim Hunter, Robert Mitchum

A woman goes to New York to meet the salesman she married a month ago, but worries when he doesn’t appear. She does meet an old boyfriend, though, who helps her to find her husband.

The only fantastic content in this movie is a certain dark and scary atmosphere at points that gives it a slight horror feel. In other words, it’s pretty marginal. It’s so marginal, in fact, that I feel the need to reiterate at this point that this series of write-ups on fantastic (science fiction, fantasy and horror) movies compiles its watching lists from other sources that claim to cover the same genres; in this case, the movie is listed in John Stanley’s “Creature Features Strikes Again Movie Guide”. If I end up watching a movie that is this marginal, I cover it anyway, if for no other reason than to say that I don’t think it qualifies.

With that out of the way, I do have to say that this one is pretty good. It also has some fine performances, especially from Robert Mitchum. It’s also, by coincidence, the second movie in a row directed by William Castle from his pre-horror period, and unless I’m mistaken, (and I don’t appear to be if IMDB is correct), he manages to get his own face into the movie in the form of a photograph that is mistakenly used to identify the killer. For fans of noirish crime films, this is highly recommended, with my main warning being that you shouldn’t think too much about the story, as the premise hinges on a coincidence that becomes more and more unbelievable the more you think about it.

THE BLACK WIDOW (1947)
(Serial)
Article #1242 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-8-2004
Posting Date: 1-5-2005
Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and Fred C. Brannon
Featuring Bruce Edwards, Virginia Lee, Carol Forman

A mystery writer is called on to investigate a series of deaths of noted scientists, and he attempts to track down a villainess known as the Black Widow.

Yes, it’s another Republic serial, and it’s another good one. Though I’m not keen on serials in particular, I do like how Republic handled them; they have a good sense of fun and well-staged fight scenes. By the late forties, they had also reduced the length of the episodes; except for the twenty-minute first episode, the lengths of the rest are in the thirteen to fourteen minute range. I felt this was the ideal length, since longer episodes feel more padded and my patience starts to waver. There is lots of scientific gadgetry in this one, including a teleportation machine, though I am left wondering how a culture with the scientific smarts to come up with that gizmo still needs to steal our secrets for an atomic missile. This one is thirteen episodes rather than the standard twelve, and I found myself wondering if the length of the serial was changed in mid-production, since one episode consists almost entirely of footage from other episodes. Still, this one is pretty good.

BATTLE BENEATH THE EARTH (1967)
Article #1232 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-29-2004
Posting Date: 12-26-2004
Directed by Montgomery Tully
Featuring Kerwin Mathews, Vivienne Ventura, Robert Ayres

The military discovers that a Chinese war lord is planning to destroy the United States via an invasion involving a vast network of underground tunnels.

“Yellow Peril” movies made a bit of comeback in the late sixties, what with the resurrection of the Fu Manchu series and movies like this one. Though I suspect that this movie aspired to be something more, it really is no more serious than your average James Bond movie, and despite the absence of spies, it plays off like a low-budget variation of one. In fact, the whole movie is pretty silly. The first person to realize the danger behaves so incoherently bizarre that it’s no wonder he was locked up, yet he somehow remains perfectly coherent once someone believes him and he is released. We also have a scene of people setting off an atomic bomb to explode in ten minutes, and then hoping that they can outrun the blast on foot. It’s also been a long time since I’ve seen a movie with so many Caucasians in oriental makeup. Still, despite all the silliness (or maybe even because of it), the movie does manage to be sporadically entertaining; it’s just not to be taken very seriously.

THE BAMBOO SAUCER (1968)
Article #1231 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-28-2004
Posting Date: 12-25-2004
Directed by Frank Telford
Featuring Dan Duryea, John Ericson, Lois Nettleton

A test pilot becomes a part of a scientific investigative team secretly sent to Red China to look into a report of a flying saucer hidden there. There they encounter a Russian investigative team that is there for the same reason.

Though it’s a fairly minor science fiction epic, I found myself enjoying this one much more than I had anticipated. One of the reasons for this is that it manages to avoid certain cynical expectations of mine. Once the action shifts to Red China, I feared that the movie would spend the rest of its running length as an espionage thriller, with the flying saucer only entering into the picture at the very end, where it is promptly destroyed or where it is discovered that the saucer is not extraterrestrial; in other words, I was thinking it would prove to be a rehash of THE FLYING SAUCER. Such is not the case, I am glad to say. Overall, the movie has a certain likable charm that makes up for any flaws, and it does have a message about international cooperation, though I can’t help but note that it does so by making sure the Americans and the Russians still have a common enemy. The movie also has an unexpectedly fun ending when the scientists finally get the flying saucer off the ground.

BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (1970)
Article #1220 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-17-2004
Posting Date: 12-14-2004
Directed by Andy Milligan
Featuring John Miranda, Annabella Wood, Berwick Kaler

A murderous barber kills customers for their jewelry and leaves the bodies to the woman next door who uses them for meat pies.

We all knew this was coming sooner or later; my initiation into the oeuvre of Andy Milligan. Having only seen one movie of his certainly doesn’t make me an expert on him, but I do feel the need to document my first impressions of Milligan’s work.

As a writer, Milligan is actually not too bad with dialogue; he even manages to come up with a good line or two here and there. At any rate, bad film fanatics won’t find the quotable dialogue of an Ed Wood movie in an Andy Milligan film. He is somewhat verbose; the characters do talk at length. But Milligan at least has enough of a sense of pace to have them talk and reply to each other quickly so we don’t get those deadly big gaps between cues. At any rate, I find a Milligan dialogue scene to be much easier to take than an equivalent scene from Jerry Warren.

However, in terms of story, Milligan is less successful. The problem is that there really isn’t a story. It’s largely a succession of scenes of characters talking to each other, usually followed by one of them killing the other. In fact, only one of the many murders actually occurs in the barber shop.

The acting is variable; it ranges from the competent to the annoying. All in all, the acting is somewhat better than you’ll find in your average Herschell Gordon Lewis film. Granted, that doesn’t take much…

The sound is horrible. It’s even worse than it is in a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie, and that’s saying a lot. And that ludicrous music that plays in the background throughout any given scene is fairly tiresome; fortunately, it tends to fade into the background.

The camerawork and lighting are both truly awful; indeed, it appears to be on a technical level that Milligan really stinks. In some scenes, it’s very difficult to figure out what’s going on, simply because it’s hard to see anything. As for the editing, it’s also pretty awful, though I am left wondering just how much of Milligan’s movies were left intact by distributors. The gore effects are certainly none too convincing.

So, those are my initial impressions of the work of Andy Milligan. He’s not quite as bad as my imagination led me to believe he would be, but there really isn’t anything I can truly recommend here. Between the unpleasant characters and the cheap, sleazy nature of the proceedings, I don’t see myself really looking forward to catching the rest of his stuff.

And one side note; I once heard that Milligan claimed that he made his movies period pieces so they could be replayed years later and no one would know when they were made. That would work if you had the budget to make a convincing period movie; as it is, all I see is a bizarre hodgepodge of costumes from various eras, and there’s no period sense to the settings at all. Based on the haircuts, it looks like it was made in the late sixties/early seventies. I don’t think his idea worked.

BEHIND THE MASK (1946)
(a.k.a. THE SHADOW BEHIND THE MASK)
Article #1166 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-24-2004
Posting Date: 10-21-2004
Directed by Phil Karlson
Featuring Kane Richmond, Barbara Read, George Chandler

The Shadow discovers that an imposter is committing murders disguised as him.

I must admit at the outset that I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing any of the radio shows that made the character of the Shadow famous. The persona is so well known, however, that I had a strong sense that I would be in for moody, almost supernatural (the Shadow’s ability to cloud men’s minds) crime melodrama. So I will admit to having gone into this movie with certain expectations.

It starts out well enough; the opening scenes are quite moody indeed. However, once Lamont Cranston enters the scene, the mood goes out the window and the movie loses steam. This happens because the Shadow never uses his much-vaunted ability to cloud men’s minds; rather, he uses the less-than-welcome ability to try men’s patience. He does this through the use of excessive comic relief. Now, I’ve complained about comic relief before, but quite frankly, I didn’t know how good I had it. It’s not that he has a comic relief butler; that I could handle. It’s that he has a comic relief butler, a comic relief girlfriend, a comic relief butler’s girlfriend, and two (count ’em, two) comic relief cops. In fact, I’d say ninety-five percent of this movie consists of various combinations of the comic relief characters; what this movie needs is some mystery relief.

Therefore, despite the fact that we have three people pretending to be the Shadow at one point in the proceedings, I’m afraid I’ve come to the conclusion that none of the characters is the real Shadow, not even the one named Lamont Cranston. I say they’re all imposters, and that you’re just wasting your time here. There’s also no fantastic elements to speak of; clouding men’s minds would have qualified, trying men’s patience does not. This one was a washout.

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)
Article #1109 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-28-2004
Posting Date: 8-25-2004
Directed by Terence Fisher
Featuring Peter Cushing, Martita Hunt, Yvonne Monlaur

A woman on her way to a situation as a schoolteacher finds herself staying in a strange castle with a lonely baroness, and discovers a man chained up in a separate part of the castle.

This entry in the Hammer Dracula series seems to split the fans. There are those that consider it one of the very best of the series, while others consider it one of the weakest. The non-presence of Christopher Lee may have something to do with it, and certainly David Peel doesn’t have Lee’s imposing presence, but since Peel isn’t supposed to be Dracula himself but a lesser vampire, I have no problem with this. Others dislike what they perceive as logic errors; why couldn’t Baron Meinster escape his silver shackles by transforming himself into a bat? This one also doesn’t bother me, as I’ve always felt that there was an implication that these shackles confined and restricted his powers, rendering him unable to make that transformation. Myself, I really enjoy this Hammer entry; I think it looks better than HORROR OF DRACULA, and I find it more interesting on a scene-by-scene basis than DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS. It’s the little touches I like; the vampire who is so embarassed by her transformation that her first impulse is to hide her fangs, the minion calling on the budding vampire to dig herself out of the grave, and Peter Cushing’s method of burning the vampire poison out of his system are all clever and powerful variations on the vampire theme, and this is what makes a movie like this interesting for me. It does have certain flaws; some of the acting is a little over-the-top at times, and Hammer had a way of overplaying its hand on occasions (I think people start acting too consistently scared too early in the movie for it to be really effective), but overall, I find this one of the more enjoyable Hammer outings.