THE BEAUTIFUL LEUKANIDA (1912)
aka Prekrasnaya Lyukanida
Article 5171 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-30-2016
Directed by Wladyslaw Starewicz
No cast
Country: Russia
What it is: Insects at war

Two King Insects go to war over a beautiful princess.

Here’s another of Starewicz’s animated insect movies. There’s not a whole lot here from a plot perspective, but fortunately, the creativity and imagination Starewicz uses in staging his scenes is still strong. In particular, there’s a battle scene on the ramparts of a castle that is pretty impressive, especially because of the number of insects that appear in the scene. It’s not one of Starewicz’s better productions, but is still pretty solid, and fans of Starewicz will find much to enjoy.

BEANSTALK BUNNY (1955)
Article 5170 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-29-2016
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Arthur Q. Bryan
Country: USA
What it is: Bugs Bunny cartoon

Jack climbs the beanstalk and meets the giant… only this time he has a rabbit for his companion.

Chuck Jones made four cartoons in which he incorporated the characters of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd; this is perhaps the least of them. This is perhaps because the other three used them as a comedy team adept at verbal gymnastics, the end result being that Bugs always bamboozled Elmer into shooting Daffy rather than him. This one takes a more conventional route by casting them in “Jack and the Beanstalk”, with Daffy as Jack, Elmer as the Giant, and Bugs as a rabbit who just happens to follow along (not a regular character in the story). Nonetheless, this is still a solid Warner Brothers cartoon, with two great lines (one is Elmer’s comment when he picks up a pepper mill, and the other is Daffy’s first line after having been caught in a mousetrap), and some fun slapstick. One of the odd touches of this one is that the characters know they’re playing characters in a fairy tale, so we get some self-referential humor as well. The cartoon also has one of my three favorite moments in which Bugs Bunny proves the effectiveness of tripping an enemy.

THE BAND CONCERT (1935)
Article 5169 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-28-2016
Directed by Wilfred Jackson
Featuring the voice of Clarence Nash
Country: USA
What it is: Mickey Mouse cartoon

Mickey Mouse attempts to conduct The William Tell Overture despite interference from an ice-cream selling duck (whose flute-playing causes to orchestra to break into “Turkey in the Straw”), a bee, and a tornado.

This was Mickey Mouse’s first color cartoon, and it’s one of the most impressive Disney shorts ever made. The use of music is exemplary (especially the melding of the two different tunes during the Donald Duck sequences) and the animation is excellent; in fact, it’s positively breathtaking during the tornado sequence in which the band continues to play while being blown in circles around the screen. I’ve tended to be a little hard on some of the Disney shorts because in terms of humor, they fall a bit short of the Warner Brothers cartoons at their best, but this one is so impressively mounted that I find it impossible not to marvel at it. The anthropomorphic animals make up the primary fantastic content, but there are also some park benches that come to life in the process. This one is highly recommended.

BALLET MECANIQUE (1924)
Article 5168 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-27-2016
Directed by Fernand Leger and Dudley Murphy
Featuring Fernand Leger, Dudley Murphy, Katherine Murphy
Country: France
What it is: Early experimental film

Putting down a plot description for this type of film is useless. It is basically a cascade of images, some animated, some abstract, some concrete but used in abstract ways. The emphasis is on movement, rhythm and repetition; an image of a woman carrying a bag up a flight of stairs becomes something other than mundane if repeated on a rhythmic loop. One of the animated segments looks like a cubist’s version of Charlie Chaplin, and we get visions of a woman swinging from some unsettling angles. As always, these abstract films become fantasies by dint of the fact that they are simply not realistic. This won’t convert anyone not fond of experimental films, but those with a bent for non-linear abstraction should enjoy this one.

BAD BILL BUNION (1945)
aka Mighty Mouse Meets Bad Bill Bunion
Article 5134 By Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-19-2016
Directed by Mannie Davis
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Mighty Mouse cartoon

Mighty Mouse goes out west to take on the desperado, Bad Bill Bunion, whose latest scheme is to kidnap a saloon singer named Belle.

As far as quality goes, I found this one to be a little below average for the series; most of the gags are pretty lame. The best one has the saloon singer warbling “Belle of the Golden West”, and then making bell sounds with her hoop skirt while swinging from a tree limb. That being said, I do have a few observations about this one. The first is that there doesn’t seem to be a consistent mythology for Mighty Mouse; here he lives in a skyscraper penthouse, is informed of his tasks through a TV set, and spends the entire cartoon interacting with human beings where he usually interacts with anthropomorphized cats and mice. This is also one of the non-operetta cartoons. Second, there seems to be some inconsistency with how his size is portrayed. When he enters the skyscraper, he looks roughly the size of an average human being, and when he first shares the frame with Big Bill Bunion, they look roughly the same size. However, when they get to one-on-one battling, he’s much smaller. One last detail is that there’s the possibility that I have the wrong cartoon; there’s a user comment on IMDB which describes a totally different cartoon, but since Bad Bill Bunion starts that one in prison, I suspect there was a sequel made. It is a bit of a shame I didn’t see that one, though; it has cameos of both Dracula and the Frankenstein monster.

NOTE I have since discovered that I did have the correct cartoon here.

THE BLACK RIDER (1954)
Article 5112 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-18-2016
Directed by Wolf Rilla
Featuring Jimmy Hanley, Rona Anderson, Leslie Dwyer
Country: UK
What it is: Spy thriller

A reporter romances his girlfriend, tries to solve the mystery of the mysterious black rider, and tools around on his motorcycle.

The fantastic content? Legend has it that the black rider (who is supposed to be riding a horse) is the devil himself. We, the audience, know from square one that it’s just a smuggler tooling around on a motorcycle, and though the method of locomotion is supposedly equipped with a silencer to make it sound like hoofbeats, it never sounds like anything else but a motorcycle to these ears. There may be a tinge of science fiction in the fact that the smuggling involves a new type of atomic device that’s small enough that its parts can be easily smuggled, but that about covers the fantastic content. It’s really just a routine spy thriller with an inordinate amount of screen time dedicated to various British men tooling around on motorcycles; the story itself practically takes a back seat to all that. It’s competently mounted and efficient, but there’s really not much to this one. And it is pretty depressing in terms of fantastic content that even the historical evidence for the black rider cited in the movie reveals that he was really just a smuggler.

BLIND DATE (1984)
Article 5037 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-2-2016
Directed by Nico Mastorakis
Featuring Joseph Bottoms, Kirstie Alley, James Daughton
Country: USA / Greece
What it is: Giallo of sorts

A man has an accident and goes blind, though there appears to be nothing physically wrong with him. A scientist fits him with a device that will allow him to use computer technology that will allow him to see within certain limits. When he stumbles across a serial killer, he finds his life in danger and must try to bring him to justice.

After I watched this movie, I went back and read the reviews of the other Nico Mastorakis movies I’ve seen, and if I see a pattern, it’s that they usually have an interesting central concept or gimmick, but for some reason it never quite gestates into a compelling movie. Also, there’s usually a lot of great Greek scenery to enjoy. In this one, however, he’s less interested in Greek landscapes and is more interested in pulchritude; the movie is full of women in skimpy outfits; some appear topless as well. I know many people consider this a plus, but it’s also such an easy directorial choice that it doesn’t impress me. The gimmick about a man using an artificial device that works like sonar to allow him to see is a clever concept, but I must admit to being disappointed with the way the movie handles the concept visually, and I’m not sure the gimmick is really necessary to a story that boils down to a man facing off with a serial killer. Still, I do feel that one of my major problems with the movie is that I never feel a shred of suspense; though intellectually I know how I’m supposed to feel in certain scenes, I never actually feel it, and at least part of the reason here is that I don’t really like or care for the main character. It also doesn’t help that the script seems quite contrived at time, and the climax just plain doesn’t work for me. In short, the movie never really sucks me into its story; it remains distant and remote. I found this one quite disappointing.

THE BLACK PANTHER OF RATANA (1963)
aka Der schwarze Panther von Ratana
Article 5027 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-23-2015
Directed by Jurgen Roland
Featuring Roberto Bianchi Montero, Horst Frank, Heinz Drache
Country: West Germany / Italy / Thailand
What it is: Krimi, sort of

Four men take part in the heist of a sapphire from a temple, but two of them are double-crossed. Years later, one of the latter men locates one of the men who betrayed him, but enemies of this man tend to fall victim to panther attacks…

I used the phrase “sort of” above to indicate that in some ways this movie resembles the German krimis of the era; it has a somewhat involved crime plot with surprise twists, some comic relief, and a bit of horror feel to the proceedings. However, in many ways it feels very different; it has no association with Edgar Wallace, is in color (most krimis of this period were in black and white), and was shot on location in Thailand rather than taking place in London, the usual location for the form. The movie’s refusal to show us the panther responsible for the attacks and the extreme convenience for certain individuals in its choice of victims will certainly clue you in that there’s no real panther on the loose, and the horror content is rather slight, so this is fairly marginal in terms of its genre content. The plot is also somewhat easier to follow than is usual the case for krimis, and you’re not going to be too surprised by some of the final revelations. For what it is, it’s a passable enough entertainment, but it’s probably more noteworthy for crossing the krimi and adventure genres than for anything else.

BIG MEAT EATER (1982)
Article 5019 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-15-2015
Directed by Chris Windsor
Featuring Clarence ‘Big’ Miller, George Dawson, Andrew Gillies
Country: Canada
What it is: In a class by itself

Aliens hatch a plot to get hold of a supply of radioactive balonium located under a block of a small town that features a butcher shop in which a homicidal obese Turk has been newly hired by the mild-mannered butcher and a house inhabited by Russian immigrants including a savant who is trying to become the first man in space. It’s a musical.

You know, there are some movies where the question of whether it’s any good or not seem irrelevant because you’re still marveling over the fact that the movie even exists. There’s something about the tone of this movie that suggests parody, but of what? Alien invasions, serial killers, small-town life, corrupt politicians, ethnic stereotypes, the cult of progress, amateur talent shows, blues and new-wave music….all of this gets fed into the mix at one point or another, and if it hangs together at all, it’s probably only by dint of the fact that it’s all in the same movie. The overall rating for this on IMDB are 5.1, but the individual ratings are all over the map, ranging from those who think it’s a brilliant piece of regional film-making and those who think it is pure dreck. I will say this much, though; it’s not obvious and it’s not predictable. It’s also most likely not sane, either. And in its own freakish scattershot way, I must confess to having been somewhat hypnotized by this one; I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It’s a question mark, but sometimes I like question marks.

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE (1979)
Article 5018 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-14-2015
Directed by Richard Friedenberg
Featuring Brad Crandall, Donald Albee, Lin Berlitz
Country: USA
What it is: Documentary

Stories about strange disappearances and sightings in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle are reenacted.

What sets this one apart amid the rash of documentaries/pseudodocumentaries about various phenomena from the 1970s is that this one primarily uses the technique of reenactments of the stories being told. I will give this much credit to this technique; in comparison to just having the stories told to us, it is much more entertaining. Notice I said “entertaining”, not “convincing”. If anything, it makes the stories less convincing; when a UFO sighting in which the story talks about “strange lights in the skies” gets translated visually as a clearly delineated flying saucer shooting rays out from its underside, the viewer’s reaction is much more likely to reject the whole story outright. Plus, when you’re bombarded with theories such as “portals from other dimensions”, “flying saucers with death rays”, “time warps” and (my favorite) “antigravity rays from lost Atlantis”, it’s very easy for your skeptic meter to fly off the chart. Once again, I’m no expert on the Bermuda Triangle or the accounts of events that took place there; I just watch movies. All I can say is that this movie was one of the more entertaining of its type that I’ve seen, while perhaps making me even less inclined to believe the stories than I might otherwise be.