THE DANCING MIDGET (1902)
aka La danseuse microscopique
Article 4064 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-27-2012
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Melies magic short

A magician uses his comic relief servant to produce several eggs, from which he produces a tiny dancer.

I’m beginning to think that many of Melies’s shorts can easily be pigeonholed into several types. On top of his epics, there’s his dream movies and his magic shorts, this being one of the latter. These always feature a magician coming on and doing a handful of cinema-enhanced magic tricks. This is a fairly typical example; it’s entertaining, but nothing special.

DEATH RAY 2000 (1981)
aka T.R. Sloane
TV-Movie
Article 4017 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-29-2012
Directed by Lee H. Katzin
Featuring Robert Logan, Dan O’Herlihy, Penelope Windust
Country: USA
What it is: Bond TV show pilot, Quinn Martin style

When a super-dehydrator is stolen (a virtual death ray), a special agent named T.R. Sloane is called out to find the culprit.

There was a resurgence of popularity in the James Bond movies in the late seventies/early eighties, resulting in an assortment of rip-offs. This pilot for the TV series “A Man Called Sloane” is one of them, though a few changes were made for the TV series; the rather uninteresting Robert Logan was replaced by Robert Conrad (who, having played James West in “The Wild, Wild West”, already had his James Bond imitation credentials in order), and the henchman villain of this movie (Ji-Tu Cumbuka) would be resurrected as one of the good guys, both of which probably helped the series, albeit not enough to make the series last for more than half a season. The movie pilot itself isn’t particularly impressive; in fact, much of it feels silly and forced. Dan O’Herlihy probably steals the movie performance-wise, and Clive Revill and Cumbuka aren’t bad as the villains, but the hero is dull and the pacing is poor. All in all, this one is pretty forgettable.

THE DYING DETECTIVE (1921)
Silent short
Article 4003 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-13-2012
Directed by Maurice Elvey
Featuring Ellie Norwood, Hubert Willis, Cecil Humphreys
Country: UK
What it is: Episode of movie series “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”

Sherlock Holmes must contend with a clever specialist in Asiatic diseases who may be guilty of a murder. Can he outwit the man?

In Walt Lee’s “Reference Guide to Fantastic Films”, he includes the Ellie Norwood Sherlock Holmes series as a single entity, and, since certain episodes of that series do have fantastic content, that’s acceptable. However, IMDB lists all fifteen episodes as distinct movies, so those that haven’t already done so will now be making their way to my hunt list. But that doesn’t mean that every episode will have fantastic content, and, unless the Asiatic disease in question here is in the realm of science fiction, there’s no real fantastic content to this one. Still, the story is entertaining enough, though I do think that the plot actually relying on the villain to tell all of his secrets to someone he thinks is going to die is a bit of a stretch. I haven’t quite settled on whether I care for Norwood as Holmes yet, but this may have more to do with the fact that I prefer to hear the voice of the actors playing the character, and this being a silent movie, I don’t have that opportunity. I’ve already covered one of the movies in the series, and there are a few others on my hunt list already that I’ve not been able to find, but I’ll probably be covering the rest of them that I do have in the near future.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. MOUSE (1947)
Animated short
Article 3986 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-21-2012
Directed by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna
No voice actors
Country: USA
What it is: Cat vs mouse

Tom, tired of Jerry constantly drinking his milk, decides to do him away with a poisoned dish of it. However, the poison has an unexpected side effect; it turns Jerry into giant mouse with super strength.

Ah, there’s nothing like a little classic animation to brighten things up for a bit. This one is typical Tom & Jerry with a fantastically themed twist. As expected, all of the gags are visual, there’s quite a bit of violence (though it’s not as violent as the team can be in their most extreme), and it is very amusing. And sometimes, I find the littlest touches amusing; my favorite example here is when Tom discovers that Jerry has a mouse door to the wall safe, the mouse door itself looks like a vault door. To be truthful, I like Hanna and Barbera much better before they discovered limited animation.

LE DERNIER HOMME (1969)
aka The Last Man
Article 3982 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-17-2012
Directed by Charles L. Bitsch
Featuring Jean-Claude Bouillon, Sofia Torkeli, Corinne Brill
Country: France
What it is: End of the world drama

A man, his wife, and a female friend emerge from a cave exploring expedition to find that the rest of the world has died from a nuclear disaster. Complications arrive when the man begins to neglect his wife and fall in love with the other woman.

Here’s another that’s finally been retrieved from my “ones that got away” list. My copy is in French without English subtitles, so I’m sure that I missed some subtleties in the dialogue, but the basic premise is pretty clear, and the story isn’t particularly difficult to follow. A few of the critiques of the movie say that it isn’t particularly well acted, and, truth to tell, I often get the sense that the actors seem a little bored with it all; given the situation, everyone seems a little too blase. If there is something about this one that makes it special, then it’s hidden in the dialogue; on the surface, everything seems a little obvious and even a bit shallow. There’s a couple of arty touches here and there, but it mostly feels pretty straightforward.

LE DIMANCHE DE LA VIE (1967)
aka The Sunday of Life
Article 3971 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-6-2012
Directed by Jean Herman
Featuring Danielle Darrieux, Jean-Pierre Moulin, Olivier Hussenot
Country: France
What it is: Bizarre French comedy

In the years before World War II, an older woman marries a private who inherits a picture frame shop. She discovers she has clairvoyance, and becomes a fortune teller. The war approaches.

This movie has now been retrieved from my “ones that got away” list, and, as is often the case, I found a version in French without English subtitles. I tried to find a plot description to help me out, but the best one I could find openly admitted that the story doesn’t make much sense, and if that’s true for someone who understands the French language, that doesn’t give me (who doesn’t understand French) much hope. Well, at least it has some visual pizzazz to hold my attention. The fortune-telling is the main fantastic content of the movie, though there do appear to be some surreal dream sequences as well. No, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it, but even given this limitation, I did find it somewhat fun, thanks to a rather odd array of characters. Still, I’ll hold off on any real evaluation until I can see a subtitled copy of the movie.

LA DAMA DE LA MUERTE (1946)
aka The Lady and Death
Article 3951 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-8-2012
Directed by Carlos Hugo Christensen
Featuring Carlos Cores, Judith Sulian, Guillermo Battaglia
Country: Chile
What it is: Another version of “The Suicide Club”

A desperate man joins a suicide club, but afterwards finds a reason to keep living. Unfortunately, he has been dealt the losing card…

Here’s another foreign movie that has no English subtitles to help me out, but it does seem to be cut from rather familiar cloth; it’s another version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Suicide Club”. It’s also one of the movies that Jerry Warren pillaged for footage for THE CURSE OF THE STONE HAND, and though I suppose I could rewatch that one to help me over some of the rough spots of this one, I somehow don’t think it will help much. This is perhaps the most elaborate version of the story I’ve seen, but most of the others have been as parts of anthology films. There are some striking visual moments, though; I love the parts where they actually play the game, because each of the members of the club has his own quirks about how they pick up and show the card. Nonetheless, the lack of subtitles does mar the viewing a bit, especially during the second half of the movie when you’re waiting for the other shoe to fall. Still, this one looks fairly decent. Still, I do wonder just how much this story can be classified as genre.

THE DOLL (1919)
aka Die Puppe
Article 3935 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-15-2012
Posting Date: 5-23-2012
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Featuring Josefine Dora, Victor Janson, Max Kronert
Country: Germany
What it is: Fantasy love story

The timid nephew of a Baron takes refuge in a monastery when his uncle seeks to force the young man into marrying. When the monks discover that the baron is offering a huge dowry to the woman who marries the nephew, they convince the young man to get the money by marrying a life-like automaton created by a doll maker named Hilarius. The nephew marries the automaton, unaware that the doll-maker’s daughter has actually substituted herself for the automaton.

Ernst Lubitsch’s movies don’t venture into the fantastic genres very often; this is only the third one I’ve seen for this series. The other two are considered his two weakest movies by IMDB; this one is easily the best of the bunch. At first I was wondering how much fantastic content there would be; the first description merely talked about the man marrying a doll who wasn’t really a doll, which by itself doesn’t make it qualify, but the elaborateness of the automatons here does push it into science fiction territory. Furthermore, the whole movie is shot in a non-realistic style in much of the same manner as THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI was, though the style is markedly different. The non-realistic approach manifests itself in some interesting ways; the horse-drawn carriage is being drawn by two sets of men in horse suits, and it’s a tribute to how well the movie works that you’re willing to buy into it. There’s also some animation and stop-motion sequences as well. I found the movie highly amusing; Lubitsch does a great job of getting wonderful reactions from his character, and Ossi Oswalda steals the movie in an excellent performance as the girl pretending to be an automaton. This one was delightful.

P.S. Actually, I discovered that I’ve seen two other Lubitsch films for this project, though this one is still towards the top of the list.

DANSE MACABRE (1922)
Article 3934 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-13-2012
Posting Date: 5-22-2012
Directed by Dudley Murphy
Featuring Adolph Bolm, Olin Howland, Ruth Page
Country: USA
What it is: Eight-minute horror ballet

Youth and Love find themselves threatened by Death.

Lest we forget, silent movies weren’t shown silent; they had musicians performing to them. Therefore it makes a certain amount of sense that a silent ballet could be made out of a well-known classical piece, as this one does of Saint-Saens’s “Danse macabre”. It’s an engaging little short, using animation and double-exposure to tell the tale of a young couple threatened by a fiddle-playing figure of Death. Incidentally, the latter role is played by the old man in THE BLOB; namely, Olin Howland. My favorite part of this one may be the animation of the movie title, in which a number of small animated figures all move slightly to spell out the title.

THE DEATH OF OCEAN VIEW PARK (1979)
TV-Movie
Article 3903 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-11-2012
Posting Date: 4-21-2012
Directed by E.W. Swackhamer
Featuring Mike Connors, Diana Canova, Perry Lang
Country: USA
What it is: Amusement park disaster movie

A woman is having premonitions of a disaster at the amusement park where her husband works. Meanwhile, a former owner of the park believes that there is some real danger at the park because of a recent hurricane, but the new owners don’t take him seriously.

If I have the backstory on this movie correct, the park where this was made was bought by Playboy and was to be torn down. They decided to make the park’s destruction a part of a movie, and the script for this one was chosen. I’m glad I discovered this; I was initially thinking of praising the movie for its excellent special effects, but knowing that the destruction scenes were other than the usual movie magic makes it somewhat less impressive. Some of the plot descriptions I’ve found of this one talk about the accidents at the park being due to some supernatural force, but the movie doesn’t bear that out; in the movie itself, all that is discussed is the juxtaposition of various natural phenomena, whereas from a visual point of view, the culprit seems to be a damaged gas line. Still, the presence of the precognition subplot does add the necessary fantastic content, but overall, the script is trite and predictable. Occasionally, the acting and professionalism go a way towards alleviating the script’s weaknesses, and that helps a little. Overall, the movie is only so-so.