THE BAT WHISPERS (1930)
Article #320 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-29-2002
Posting date: 6-15-2002

A supercriminal known as the Bat terrorizes residents of a country home.

This movie used a very early widescreen process, which makes it somewhat novel, and frankly it needs all the novelty it can get. The first twenty minutes aren’t bad, with some very effective swooping camera shots; you can see how they were done, but they’re still fun. It’s only when the action settles into the country home where it starts to feel like a photographed stage play, shot with the same stiff snooze-inducing style that hamstringed DRACULA, and considering the fairly large array of characters that get thrown your way in a very short time, this is not a good thing. The comic relief maid wears thin very quickly, and the lack of music makes it all that much more hard to pay attention. It has a nice gimmick ending, though.

BERSERK! (1968)
Article #172 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-4-2001
Posting date: 1-18-2002

Horrible murders are being committed in a circus.

The circus setting gives writer/producer Herman Cohen a chance to pad out the film with circus footage, including a musical number performed by the freaks in which they imply that they may turn out to be the missing loves in your life. Unfortunately, these are the high points of the movie. Though there is no doubt that Cohen has penchant for the visceral murder thrill (a spike through the head, a woman sawed in half, a man strangled by a high wire), his plots can be compared to women who try to cover up their age by wearing too much makeup; they don’t bear close scrutiny. And while we’re on the subject, Joan Crawford (who is desired by all the men in the movie and spends much of the film wearing tights) was in her early sixties when this was made; she also looks less than thrilled with where she was on her current career arc, and IMHO barely walks through the role. Maybe she saw TROG coming in a couple of years.

Michael Gough and Diana Dors are also in this, but I’d suggest you don’t get too attached to their characters. And for those of you who are plot-hole spotters, ask yourself about the first two murders once you know who the murderer is. And try to figure out how the murderer pulled off the opening death.

BRIDE OF THE GORILLA (1951)
Article #158 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-21-2001
Posting date: 1-4-2002

A foreman gains control of a plantation by allowing its owner to get killed and then marrying the widow. He also gets on the wrong side of a native woman who places a curse on him that turns him into a gorilla, at least in his own mind.

This horror movie was made during a bad time for horror films, caught as it was in that space of time after which Universal had stopped making classic horror films and before Hammer had resurrected them. The movie feels like a cross between THE CAT PEOPLE (with the central character believing he is changing into an animal) and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (with its voodoo touches and its tropical setting), and the presence of Tom Conway (who was also in both of those films) only adds to the feeling that the movie has a certain similarity to the works of Val Lewton. However, it lacks the depth and well-developed characters of the Lewton counterparts, and it’s hard to dredge up any sympathy for Raymond Burr’s foreman. Lon Chaney, Jr. is wasted in the poorly-written and horribly uninteresting role of Commissioner Taro, and I don’t buy for a second that he’s a native of the region; however, this is exactly the type of character that would have come to life and been pivotal if this had been a Lewton project.

There was a little talk on the board about this movie before I posted this review, particularly about Barbara Payton, and I remember a comment being made about the members of the cast not liking each other at all. I think this shows in the movie; there seems to be a singular lack of chemistry between everyone involved.

Keep your eyes open, though, for a short but interesting scene with Woody Strode. Herman Cohen was one of the associate producers, and it was written and directed by Curt Siodmak.

THE BLACK SLEEP (1956)
Article #157 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-20-2001
Posting date: 1-3-2002

Dr. Joel Cadman frames Dr. Gordon Ramsay for murder, so that he can give him a drug that will cause him to survive his execution. He then uses the doctor as an ally in his brain surgery experiments, by which he hopes to learn a way to cure his wife’s tumor.

What a line-up for a horror film: Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, and Tor Johnson, with Basil Rathbone and Akim Tamiroff (not really horror actors) thrown in for good measure! And what a waste of horror stars; the two good roles go to Rathbone and Tamiroff. Lugosi is consigned to the mute butler role; it most likely was his very last role if you don’t count the home movie footage used as part of PLAN 9. Lon Chaney, Jr. is a hulking brute (a role he ended up playing way too often in his later years), and Carradine plays a one-dimensional bearded madman. Only Tor is playing at his usual level (as a big, bald, hulking brute with blank eyes), but that hardly counts; despite his screen presence, he was never in the same league with the others. I wonder how Lugosi and Chaney, who had last worked together in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN where they relived their glory roles, felt about their careers at this point. The movie itself is somewhat reminiscent of THE UNEARTHLY (which had both Carradine and Johnson, both in much better roles; they even gave Tor some lines in that one), but, like that movie, the mutants steal the show at the end. Rathbone does a fine job, but I found Tamiroff’s performance a little over the top for my taste.

BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN (1962)
(a.k.a. NEBO SOVYOT)
Article #156 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-19-2001
Posting date: 1-2-2002

A rescue mission is performed in outer space.

I can’t say what the original Russian movie was like, but in its Americanized version, this one is a tedious, talky bore, made worse by the substandard dubbing, and some of the meddling with the film, especially the addition of the two godawful monsters who pop up near the end of the movie. Talkiness is in itself not automatically dull, but it requires much better dialogue and acting than we get here, though I suspect subtitles might have been just as difficult and the movie could really only be fully enjoyed in its original language, but I’m afraid I don’t speak Russian. There is some plot tampering to be found; I got quite annoyed with that electronic blot covering up a section of one of the spaceships (I’m assuming it was to cover up something that would have made it clear that the ship was Russian). As for the monster footage, it’s not only bad, it’s insulting; this movie was trying to be a legitimate science fiction drama, and the monsters are so inappropriate that it left me feeling that an unnatural act was being performed on the movie (which might explain why the monsters look so phallic). I don’t know how good the original version would be, but it’s got to be better than this one.

BATMAN (1966)
Article #153 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-16-2001
Posting date: 12-30-2001

Four supervillains combine forces to attempt to take over the world by taking hostage the security council of the United Nations. Batman is called onto the job to defeat them.

I have friends who despise the 1966 TV series for its failure to be true to the dark, somber persona of Batman as they know him from the comic books. Though they would most likely defecate adobe at my next comment, I feel it necessary to admit at this point that, despite my life-long love of cinematic fantasy/horror/science fiction, I’ve never been a fan of super heroes and/or comic books; if anything, I prefer parodies of that whole genre to serious entries in it. That being the case, I quite enjoyed the “Batman” TV series of the sixties; watching it recently, I remember cracking up at a point where Batman parks the Batmobile, and is about to run into the building with Robin, but stops and says “Wait a minute, Robin. We forgot to put a nickel in the meter!”, followed by a conversation about how superheroes must first be responsible citizens. Call me a heretic, if you wish, but I found that bit priceless.

I’m not quite as fond of the movie, however, as it runs on way too long for its own good; what is effective in thirty minute chunks can be quite tiresome in an hour and forty-five minute movie. Nonetheless, I do enjoy the array of familiar names and faces of the supervillains, and the high point of the movie for me has Batman trying to dispose of a bomb (you can tell it’s a bomb because it’s perfectly round, black, and has a lit fuse on the top; this is the only time I know of outside of cartoons where a bomb actually looks like that), but he can’t find a place to throw it because he keeps running into people who would be hurt, like a pair of nuns, a woman with a baby carriage, a salvation army band, and a flock of ducks.

THE BODY DISAPPEARS (1941)
Article #90 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-14-2001
Posting date: 10-28-2001

A scientist concocts a formula that can return life to the dead. When he tries it on a man who he mistakes for a corpse (as a result of a college prank), he discovers that the formula has a side effect of rendering its subject invisible. He tries to find an antidote before the condition becomes permanent.

Not to be confused with THE CORPSE VANISHES, this movie is a mostly lame invisible man comedy with poor special effects. The title has a double meaning, both in the sense that the body is missing from the disecting room from which it is taken and the fact that it has turned invisible. Far and away the best thing about this movie is the presence of Edward Everett Horton as the scientist; I find him genuinely funny even when saddled with unpromising material like this. Also present in the cast are Jane Wyman, Willie Best, David Bruce and Charles Halton in a fun little role as Horton’s next door neighbor who thinks Horton has gone round the bend when he searches his back yard for a missing invisible monkey.

BLOOD OF DRACULA (1957)
Article #54 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-9-2001
Posting date: 9-22-2001

A teenage girl is sent away to a girls’ school, where she comes under the control of a science teacher who tries to “save the world” by causing her to turn into a bloodthirsty vampire.

This movie was a part of a set of movies that included I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, and it’s surprising it wasn’t called I WAS A TEENAGE VAMPIRE. As it is, it obviously models its plot off of WEREWOLF, but it emphasizes the weaknesses of that movie while losing its strengths; there isn’t a performance here to equal Michael Landon’s, for example. The scientist’s plan to save the world makes no sense whatsoever, there are far too many scenes that have no point and lead nowhere, and the whole girls’ school setup is contrived and unbelievable; this is one movie that I don’t believe for a second of its running time.

It also has an especially lousy musical number, “Puppy Love”; this is why fast forward buttons exist. I don’t know if this song was supposed to be rock ‘n’ roll; if it was, somebody didn’t know what rock ‘n’ roll was. At any rate, I would have been glad if someone had recognized it for the sickening tripe that it was and cut the song from the movie; unfortunately, they would have just had to add some new padding elsewhere. It was not a hit single.

BUCK ROGERS (1939)
(Serial)
Article #47 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-2-2001
Posting date: 9-15-2001
Due to an accident, Buck Rogers goes into suspended animation. When he awakes in the twenty-fifth century, he joins forces with a resistance movement fighting the world’s dictator, Killer Kane.

I’m afraid I have to confess that serials aren’t real favorites of mine. I was too young to see them in theaters, but I’d heard about them and thought I would enjoy them. I knew I enjoyed TV shows like “Doctor Who” that had several episodes to a story, but I was years into adulthood before I really saw my first serial. I can’t even begin to express my disappointment.

My problem with serials is that they are basically action-adventure movies drawn out over several episodes. Whole episodes will sometimes pass without any plot development or new discoveries, but will contain nothing more than a series of “thrilling” action sequences, ending with a cliffhanger that all too often will be resolved in the next episode by editing a scene in where there was none before, usually showing how the hero escaped the disaster before it even happened. This, to my sensibilities, is cheating.

I’ve figured out the best way to watch serials is one episode at a time over a given period. Don’t try to watch them all at one sitting; they weren’t designed or structured to be enjoyed in that way. You also have to be patient with plot points being repeated ad infinitum. You also have to be patient with seeing the same footage repeated again and again in various episodes so they can pad out the running time.

In the case of BUCK ROGERS, you will get plenty of shots of spaceships entering the secret entrance to the resistance movement’s hideout by flying through the hidden door in the side of a mountain. All in all, this one isn’t too bad for one of these things; at least there’s a decent variety to the episodes to hold the interest throughout the whole series.

THE BLACK CASTLE (1952)
Article #35 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-20-2001
Posting date: 9-2-2001

A nobleman (Richard Greene) believes the evil Count von Bruno (Stephen McNally) is responsible for the death of two of his friends. He gains an invitation to the Count’s castle in the Black Forest for a hunting party, and attempts to find evidence of the crime. There he meets the Count’s beautiful wife (Paula Corday), and falls in love with her.

This is one of those movies that gets lumped into the horror genre because it features both Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. in minor roles. Chaney plays the mute hulking brute Gargon (a role he would play repeatedly under different names in other movies), and Karloff is wasted as Dr. Meissen; both actors do the best they can with what they’re given, but it wasn’t much. The film is largely a gothic revenge story, with minor touches of horror and even a smidgen of SF (a drug that makes people seem dead for twelve hours). The movie is only so-so, but at least director Nathan Juran knew how to add some life to the proceedings.