THE CAT CREEPS (1946)
Article #1111 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-30-2004
Posting Date: 8-27-2004
Directed by Erle C. Kenton
Featuring Lois Collier, Fred Brady, Paul Kelly

The attempt to solve a fifteen-year-old murder and the possibility of finding a hidden treasure of two hundred thousand dollars lead several people to an old house on an isolated island.

By the time this movie made it to theatres, the “old dark house” genre had been done to death and had largely vanished from theatres. In fact, the opening few minutes of the movie made me wonder if it was going to be an “old dark house” film at all, being concerned as it was with a politician coming under suspicion for an old murder and possibly losing an election as a result. It also never feels like an “old dark house” movie; the characters all speak in hushed tones and take it all very seriously. Even Noah Beery Jr.’s comic relief photographer underplays everything. It’s almost like the movie is trying to take on the mood of a Val Lewton film or a film noir. This might have actually worked if the movie had had more substance than it does; unfortunately, it really is nothing more than an “old dark house” film, only gloomy, somber, and not much fun at all. As such, it almost seems a death knell for this subgenre, and one of Universal’s weakest horror entries. Even the Paula Dupree series looks pretty good compared to this one.

CAPTAIN SINDBAD (1963)
Article #1110 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-29-2004
Posting Date: 8-26-2004
Directed by Byron Haskins
Featuring Guy Williams, Heidi Bruhl, Pedro Armendariz

Sindbad finds himself trying to save a princess from a cruel tyrant who is seemingly impervious to being killed.

I don’t want to be too hard on this Arabian Nights fantasy; it’s spirited, energetic, and really trying its best to entertain. Unfortunately, it’s constantly straining against the limitations of a budget that is obviously too small for its ambitions, and the movie suffers for it. As a result, the exteriors look like interiors, the models and miniatures look like models and miniatures, and one never gets a real sense that the sets extend to a real world beyond the range of the cameras. Consequently, the movie is infected with a cheesiness that is so inescapable that when it is announced that Sindbad must do battle with a truly terrifying beastie in the arena, it comes as no real surprise that the primary visual attribute of said beastie is invisibility. We also get some pathetic-looking crocodiles, a puppet hydra, and a beating disembodied heart that looks more like a Valentines day gift than a real bodily organ. The movie still can be enjoyed, but it does require that you to give it the benefit of the doubt and play along with the illusions. The most notable acting performance is Abraham Sofaer’s as the eccentric magician, Galgo; I can’t quite decide whether it’s good or bad, but I will go so far as to say that it is entertainingly strange.

THE CRIMSON GHOST (1946)
(Serial)
Article #979 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-19-2003
Posting Date: 4-17-2004
Directed by Fred C. Brannon and William Witney
Featuring Charles Quigley, Linda Stirling, Clayton Moore

An evildoer known as the Crimson Ghost attempts to get his hands on a destructive weapon known as the Cyclotrode.

This is considered one of the better serials out there, and rightfully so; it’s efficient, the fights are well staged, it’s packed with gadgets, and it has a great villain. Well, actually, it’s not so much the villain that is great as the mask he wears; the skull mask is eerie and somewhat gruesome; it’s even missing some of its teeth. I wish I had enjoyed this one a little more than I did, but I attribute my relative lack of enjoyment of this one more to a certain degree of having somewhat O.D’d on these things lately rather than to any real problem with the serial itself; I suspect it will be well worth-revisiting under better circumstances. It’s probably not my favorite; I prefer at this point the silliness of THE LOST CITY or the grittiness of GANG BUSTERS, but this one definitely makes my top ten list of favorite serials.

CURUCU, BEAST OF THE AMAZON (1956)
Article #963 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-3-2003
Posting Date: 4-1-2004
Directed by Curt Siodmak
Featuring John Bromfield, Beverly Garland, Tom Payne

A man and a woman go up the Amazon to explore rumors of a murdering monster loose in the rain forest.

This movie is somewhat infamous; almost anyone who has seen it can tell you why, and they usually do. I myself won’t give it away, but I will tell you that if you go in expecting a jungle movie rather than a monster movie, you’ll be much better prepared for it. This is not to say that it’s a particularly good example of the former genre; it’s merely to say if you’re familiar with the way jungle movies work, you’ll know just what you’re getting into here. Lots of safari and lots of talk fill up the running length of the movie. It was shot on location in Brazil, and it probably looks good in color (my copy is in black and white), but as far as I’m concerned, the best thing about it is Beverly Garland, who has the best moments; one in which she flirts with a sloth (no, not John Bromfield), and another in which she “doesn’t” get sick on hearing what’s in the food she’s eating, standing that comic cliche on its head and proving that her character really is tough in her own way. Unfortunately, the movie decides to punish her for her toughness; the last thirty minutes of the movie seems designed solely to frighten this woman into realizing that it’s arrogant of her to think of herself as being as tough as a man; one can almost hear the smug snickerings of the men behind the scenes saying “That’ll show her!”

You know, I really don’t like this movie.

CAPTAIN AMERICA (1944)
(Serial)
Article #953 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-24-2003
Posting Date: 3-22-2004
Directed by Elmer Clifton and John English
Featuring Dick Purcell, Lorna Gray, Lionel Atwill

Captain America does battle with a supervillain known as The Scarab, who is killing off all members of a Mayan expedition.

You know, if you’re going to fight crime while wearing a silly costume you should either a) have superpowers, or b) have a truckload of useful gadgets, or at the very least, c) be a Mexican wrestler. If you can’t manage any of these things, at least you should be phenomenally competent, and I’m afraid that’s the category that Captain America falls into in this serial. I’m really not familiar with the Captain America of the forties, but from all reports, this guy is a pale imitation of him. However, he is very competent indeed, and (this being a Republic serial), the fights are exciting and well staged. The cliffhangers are better than usual as well, though they do get a little repetitive and eventually rely too much on certain standard perils. This serial also has the presence of Lionel Atwill, who makes a formidable foe indeed. All in all, I found it one of the more enjoyable serials I’ve seen, but I would warn any fans of the real Captain America to expect somebody other than the beshielded hero they know and love.

CROWHAVEN FARM (1970)
Article #933 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-4-2003
Posting Date: 3-2-2004
Directed by Walter Grauman
Featuring Hope Lange, Paul Burke, Lloyd Bochner

A childless couple inherit a farm that used to serve as a meeting place for a coven of witches, and the woman begins to have an eerie feeling that she’s lived there in a past life.

This is a TV movie, and I have to admit that I’m not really a particular fan of the form. This movie illustrates some of the common problems I have with the TV movies; it is painfully blatant about setting up its foreshadowing (at one point, someone asks the wife if she thinks her husband is going to take down that gun hanging over the fireplace and shoot someone), and it overplays some of its emotional reactions quite badly (when the handyman carries the door out of the cellar into the kitchen, we see the wife turn and see it, look upset, have a flashback to the vision of the door in her nightmares, scream “Burn it! Burn it!”, drop a plate on the floor which then shatters, and then turn to us again just in case we hadn’t figured out that she was upset). My overall reaction to moments like these is that they thought I was too stupid to pick up on the clues and felt they had to deliver them wrapped around the head of a sledgehammer. On the positive side, though, since TV movies were under much of the same type of censorship that hovered over theatrical movies from the thirties to the fifties, they had to make the horrors themselves a little bit subtler, and that is something that this movie does accomplish. Thought the movie itself seems modeled somewhat after ROSEMARY’S BABY, it’s also a good thing that it’s telling a different story at heart, and it does have definite surprises in the plot. John Carradine is on hand here, but he really isn’t give much to do.

COLOSSUS OF THE ARENA (1962)
(a.k.a. DEATH IN THE ARENA)
Article #932 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-3-2003
Posting Date: 3-1-2004
Directed by Michele Lupo
Featuring Mark Forest, Scilla Gabel, Jon Chevron

Several gladiators are enlisted to aid in an attempt to overthrow a queen who protects the common people from the wrath of the nobles, but Maciste is on hand to prevent this.

Hey, it’s another sword and sandal with a plot I can follow, and it has a fairly good one this time. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its requisite share of problems; the dubbing is horrendous (if you’re going to dub a monkey, please use the voice of a monkey), and there’s no one by the name of Colossus to be found (though there is this guy named Maciste, though). It certainly doesn’t stint on the action, though; it’s hard to find a scene here that doesn’t involve a fight, some in quite interesting places (two men duke it out in the rapids of a river while other soldiers fight in a pen of sheep). It also seems to be at least partially a comedy; there’s an extended fight in a bar that is definitely played for laughs, though it is heavily marred by the fact that a) the scene involves the gladiators bullying and tormenting women, old men, weaklings, little kids and midgets, and b) the scene goes on way too long. Still, it’s not bad for this sort of thing, but you’ll really get annoyed with the old man whining about his beard. Unfortunately, the fantastic aspects are very weak here; though Maciste is strong, he doesn’t appear inhumanly so, and so this remains marginal only because of its sword-and-sandal origins.

CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS. ATOMIC INVADERS (1953)
(Serial)
Article #920 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-21-2003
Posting date: 2-18-2004
Directed by Franklin Adreon
Featuring William Henry, Susan Morrow, Arthur Space

A mountie does battle with spies intent on setting up a missile base in the wilds of Canada.

All right, I’ll admit I’m used to serials having only slight science fiction elements as most of them do, but with a title like CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS. ATOMIC INVADERS, I certainly expect the ‘Atomic Invaders’ to have something science fictional about them. In truth, they’re just spies, and the fact that they’re in Canada to build a secret missile base for use in an attack on the United States is the only thing even remotely science fictional about this one, and it’s not near enough. It’s even devoid of the entertaining science fiction gadgetry found in other serials. On the plus side, one of the advantages the later serials had was that the episodes were shorter, and that forced them to trim out unnecessary scenes; it doesn’t prevent them, however, from including episode ten, which is made up of recycled footage from the other episodes. The first few episodes take place in the snow-covered North, which does give it a unique setting, even if some of the scenes look like people standing in front of a painting full of snow, but once the action switches back to the woods, the serial becomes rather repetitive and snore-inducing. This one is not a high point in the history of serials.

THE CHRONICLES OF THE GRAY HOUSE (1925)
(a.k.a. ZUR CHRONIK VON GRIESHUUS)
Article #918 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-19-2003
Posting date: 2-16-2004
Directed by Arthur von Gerlach
Featuring Gertrud Arnold, Lil Dagover, Rudolf Forster

Two brothers fight over possession of the estate of their deceased father.

The Gray House actually looks more like a castle than a house, but that’s a minor point. I actually have two copies of this one. The longer one is a little more than an hour and a half, has German title cards in one of those impenetrable German fonts, and has music (various edits of Beethoven’s fifth symphony). The shorter one has no music and runs less than half the length, but has English subtitles, which gave me a chance to figure out certain details of the plot that I might otherwise have missed in the longer version. You can see that the longer one goes into more detail about the relationship between the two brothers. There are also lots of scenes of documents being crumpled and ripped up in the longer version (it happens enough that I saw fit to mention it). It’s basically a somewhat operatic drama; the only fantastic content involves the appearance of a ghost at a crucial moment in the proceedings. If the whole movie feels a bit similar to a Fritz Lang film, this may be attributable to the fact that it was written by Thea von Harbou, who wrote the scripts for many of Lang’s early movies.