CHARLEY AND THE ANGEL (1973)
Article 2914 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-30-2009
Posting Date: 8-5-2009
Directed by Vincent McEveety
Featuring Fred MacMurray, Cloris Leachman, Harry Morgan
Country: USA

The owner of a hardware store gets a visitation from an angel announcing to him that his time is nearly up, but he may be spared his fate if he learns to spend more time with his neglected wife and kids.

Given the fact that this movie takes place during the depression and deals with the theme of impending death (rather than, say, flubber), one might expect that this movie doesn’t really qualify as one of Disney’s “shopping cart” movies. However, once we realize that Harry Morgan’s angel is primarily a comic character (he has a funny name and only Charley can see him, supplying us with the usual supply of “who are you talking to?/You’re going crazy!” jokes), that the plot features Disney-style gangsters, and that the centerpiece of the picture is a big chase scene, you’ll realize that the “shopping cart” spirit is alive and well here. Unfortunately, the movie tries to have it both ways and ends up having it neither; it’s too fluffy to have much emotional impact, and it’s too somber to be a comic delight. I wish they had chosen to keep the tone more serious and the comedy less silly; there are moments in Cloris Leachman’s performance in which she manages to wordlessly express some fairly deep feelings that give hints on how this movie might have been as a whole. As it is, it’s definitely one of Disney’s weaker efforts, despite a cast that also features Kurt Russell and Ed Begley Jr.

THE CHALLENGE (1970)
TV-Movie
Article 2913 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-29-2009
Posting Date: 8-4-2009
Directed by George McCowan and Alan Smithee
Featuring Darren McGavin, Broderick Crawford, Mako
Country: USA

In order to avert war between the United States and an unspecified Asian country, the two nations settle on a battle of surrogates; each nation will pick one representative to do battle on a small island.

The idea of having the outcome of a war settled by a battle of one individual representative of each side is nothing really new; anyone who has read Fredric Brown’s story “Arena” or seen the “Star Trek” episode of the same name based on it has seen it before. However, the difference in this one is that those other versions have what could be described as a super-powerful referee who organizes the one-on-one confrontation (against the wills of the warring factions) who can enforce the final result; here, it’s the individual countries who agree to the confrontation, and there is no referee. This puts me more in mind of the anti-war advocate who wonders why don’t have the two country’s leaders just battle it out between themselves, a naive notion at best. To its credit, the movie does recognize that its premise is indeed naive by throwing in some plot twists in the second half which seem utterly logical, and it ends in probably what is only the real satisfying conclusion to the premise. That being said, this is a highly entertaining TV-Movie with excellent performances, especially from Darren McGavin, Broderick Crawford, Mako and James Whitmore. Furthermore, the movie makes careful and effective use of sound, especially in its use of silence at crucial moments. Its fantastic content is another issue; though it’s not as clearly an example of science fiction as the models listed above, it does fall under the banner by being in the category of speculative political fiction. Overall, this is a fairly impressive production, especially for a TV-Movie.

CARRY ON SCREAMING (1966)
Article 2912 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-29-2009
Posting Date: 8-3-2009
Directed by Gerald Thomas
Featuring Harry H. Corbett, Kenneth Williams, Jim Dale
Country: UK

Women are disappearing in a nearby forest. Evidence indicates that monsters may be responsible for the disappearances. Do the residents of the nearby Bide-a-Wee rest home know something about this?

This is my second encounter with the Carry On gang in my cinematic journey of fantastic cinema. When I reviewed the first one, CARRY ON SPYING, I commented on how I became annoyed with Kenneth Williams’s performance; fortunately, I’ve gotten use to his style, so that’s no longer a problem. Nevertheless, I’ve come to the conclusion that this series is not really my cup of tea. With their jokes about sex, they must have been daring at the time, but nowadays, they just seem rather quaint; they’re not bad, but they seem tame and old-fashioned. This wouldn’t have made a difference if I found the movie really funny, but outside of a smile or two and a couple of chuckles, I found it predictable. Granted, it didn’t help that the two performers I enjoyed most in the movie (Charles Hawtrey and Jon Pertwee) only have what amount to cameos. Fortunately, it wasn’t painfully or desperately unfunny; it just falls flat most of the time.

THE CANNIBAL MAN (1972)
aka La semana del asesino, Apartment on the Thirteenth Floor
Article 2900 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-16-2009
Posting Date: 7-22-2009
Directed by Eloy de la Iglesia
Featuring Vicente Parra, Emma Cohen, Eusebio Poncela
Country: Spain

When a slaughterhouse worker accidentally kills a cabbie, he finds himself caught up in a spiral of murder to cover up his crime.

This movie was promoted with a gimmick; patrons were offered free vomit bags when watching the film. Combine that with the lurid (and inaccurate) English title (the Spanish title translates into WEEK OF THE KILLER), and you have a promotional campaign designed to appeal to horror fans. The first half of the movie may satisfy them, but the second half won’t, as the movie’s focus shifts away from the killer’s spiraling nightmare and more onto his relationship with a neighbor who lives in a nearby high-rise who may be aware of the bodies that the killer is keeping in his bedroom. It’s this relationship that gives the movie its soul; it’s more interesting than the murder spiral, which gets repetitive in its predictability (people keep discovering the previous murders, and he has to keep killing new people). If the barf bags were useful at all, it was most likely during the opening slaughterhouse scene, which was probably grotesque enough to drive many people away who might have appreciated the subtler character aspects of the film. Still, given the subject matter, it’s no surprise it was promoted the way it was; after all, it had a better chance of making money that way than by being promoted as an art film. And it is at least halfway a horror film.

I CANNIBALI (1970)
aka The Year of the Cannibal
Article 2847 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-22-2009
Posting Date: 5-30-2009
Directed by Liliana Cavani
Featuring Pierre Clementi, Britt Ekland, Tomas Milian
Country: Italy

During World War III, the tyrannical government in Milan passes a law making it a crime to bury the bodies of dead insurgents lying in the streets. A woman defies the law with the help of a Christ-like figure she meets.

Hey, it’s an Italian movie with the word “cannibal” in the title; it must be an Italian cannibal movie, right? I pity anyone who goes into this one with that hope; they will emerge frustrated and disappointed. “Cannibal” must be a metaphorical term; this is an art movie, a political allegory modeled off of the story of Antigone. At least you won’t feel critically pressured to like it; the movie was not a critical success, and its current rating of 4.5 on IMDB indicates that it’s not well loved; to some extent, I think the implausibility of the central concept (i.e. that any government would leave the streets littered with thousands of corpses and not worrying about the fact that this is a sanitary disaster in the making) is the problem here. I myself have to reserve judgment, since I’ve only seen the movie in Italian without subtitles, and even the plot description above is highly suspect, as I culled it from several sources and am not entirely sure it’s an accurate reflection of what happens in the movie. At this point, all I can say is I found some of the scenes obvious, and others bizarre. A working knowledge of the Antigone story is helpful.

CRIME DOCTOR’S WARNING (1945)
Article 2832 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-7-2009
Posting Date: 5-15-2009
Directed by William Castle
Featuring Warner Baxter, John Litle, Dusty Anderson
Country: USA

Dr. Ordway is consulted on the murder of a model. He has a patient who suffers blackouts who may be connected to the crime, a possibility that exists when a model he’s been using also ends up murdered.

For the second day in a row, I find myself dealing with artists and models, albeit in a distinctly different genre. And, as it was yesterday, the fantastic content is pretty slight; we have a character with multiple personalities, hypnotism is used at one point, and a wax sculpture turns up. I do like the Crime Doctor series; they’re efficient and solidly told, but ultimately the story here doesn’t quite satisfy, and the ending is a letdown; when you get right down to it, the various story elements don’t really mesh as well as they could. John Abbott shows up as a silhouettist who is one of the suspects, and Eduardo Ciannelli appears as an overly colorful male model who resents the overuse of beautiful women in the trade. Still, for a b-movie, this is quite watchable.

CONQUISTADOR DE LA LUNA (1960)
aka Conquest of the Moon
Article 2825 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-31-2009
Posting Date: 5-8-2009
Directed by Rogelio A. Gonzalez
Featuring Antonio Espino, Ana Luisa Peluffo, Adres Soler
Country: Mexico

An eccentric inventor and his girlfriend accidentally take off in a rocket and land on the moon. There they meet Martians intent on attacking the earth.

Since my copy of this movie is in unsubtitled Spanish, I’m guessing a little on the above plot; I do know that I hear some references to “Martians” when we meet the creatures on the moon, so I’m assuming that’s where they’re from. For what is essentially a comedy, it’s pretty ambitious on a special effects level; it has two rockets, a device that drills up from beneath the moon’s crust, moon interiors and exteriors, four-armed extraterrestrials, a giant disembodied brain with a floating eye and a sprinkler system installed on top (yes, you heard me right), and other science-fictional touches. Granted, it relies on footage lifted from other movies; I recognize footage from ROCKETSHIP X-M, DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS and WARNING FROM SPACE; given that these movies are American, British and Japanese respectively, it appears that they weren’t too fussy about where they stole the footage from. Still, much of the footage is original, and they actually make some attempt to have all four arms of the Martians to be usable. My favorite moment is the opening, in which an elaborate Rube-Goldberg style device wakes the inventor from his slumber, but I’m a sucker for things like that. Perhaps the most amazing thing to me is that it manages to include a rocket trip to the moon without any meteor showers.

CHARLIE CHAN AT THE WAX MUSEUM (1940)
Article 2824 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-30-2009
Posting Date: 5-7-2009
Directed by Lynn Shores
Featuring Sidney Toler, Victor Sen Yung, C. Henry Gordon
Country: USA

Charlie Chan is invited to appear on a radio show broadcast from a wax museum to solve an old murder case; however, the show is a trap designed to give an escaped criminal the chance to get revenge on Chan, on whose evidence he was convicted. However, there’s more than one criminal at this gathering…

No, it’s not a horror movie; it’s a mystery. Still, horror movie fans might well like this one; the wax museum setting adds a lot of atmosphere, and the presence of a criminal plastic surgeon and a killer whose face is swathed in bandages certainly add more horror touches to the proceedings. If you’re a Charlie Chan fan, this one is quite enjoyable, and it has a lot of fun with the use of wax dummies (include one that is a duplicate of Chan himself). There’s also a chess-playing machine (a la THE CHESS PLAYER) to add to the mix of interesting elements.

CALLING PAUL TEMPLE (1948)
Article 2823 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-29-2009
Posting Date: 5-6-2009
Directed by Maclean Rogers
Featuring John Bentley, Dinah Sheridan, Margaretta Scott
Country: UK

A writer is called in by detectives to help figure out the identity of a serial killer who leaves the name of “Rex” at the site of his killings.

This was part of a series of British whodunits featuring the character of Paul Temple. The fantastic content is slight; there’s the serial killer angle and the use of hypnotism, though neither element is used in ways that suggest horror. The story is pretty confusing, but it’s offset by the fact that the characters of Paul Temple and his wife Steve have a bit of a “Nick and Nora” quality to them, and there’s a nice sense of surprise to some of the scenes; my favorite has a character dropping dead during a musical number that I would ordinarily have considered filler. All in all, it’s passably entertaining, but it’s definitely more of a mystery than it is a horror movie.

CHARMS (1973)
aka Hex
Article 2772 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-9-2008
Posting Date: 3-16-2009
Directed by Leo Garen
Featuring Keith Carradine, Scott Glenn, Hilary Thompson
Country: USA

Sometime after the first World War, a motorcycle gang, chased by a posse from a small Nebraska town, takes refuge on a farm inhabited by two sisters. However, one of the sisters seems to have special powers, and those that cross her must feel her wrath…

In its way, this odd period horror piece is as eccentric and unique as yesterday’s movie, DARK FORCES; however, unlike yesterday’s movie, I emerge annoyed rather than fascinated. I don’t think this movie knows what it wants to be. Is it a horror movie? A mystic love story? A comedy? A slice of life character movie? All of the above? None of the above? I just don’t know, but I do know it doesn’t succeed on any of those levels. I have several particular problems with it. First of all, the characters seem unbelievable and in the wrong time period. Also, every time the characters break into regional dialects, the end result sounds forced and awkward rather than quaint and authentic. And then there’s the simple fact that I find it impossible to take seriously any movie that prominently features a mouth harp on the score. None of the characters seem to react realistically to the strange events that go on around them; when one of the characters finally says that there’s “something strange going on”, it’s so late in the movie that it became the biggest laugh line in it for me (and a lot funnier than the intentional comedy). In the end, it feels like a somewhat arty mess. Recommended only to the extremely curious.