THE DIABOLICAL DR. Z (1966)
(a.k.a. MISS MUERTE)
Article #1676 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-16-2005
Posting Date: 3-15-2006
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Antonio Jimenez Escribano, Mabel Karr, Howard Vernon

When a scientist researching methods of human mind control dies as a result of public humiliation at a scientific conference, his daughter fakes her own death and sets out on a plan to seek vengeance against those responsible for her father’s death.

Like THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF, this is one of the better Franco movies out there. In fact, this one is even better than that one; the somewhat conventional plot is given a lot of unexpected and interesting touches, and Franco’s visual style is very strong here. It’s remarkably free of the excesses and throwaway scenes that inundate so many of his other movies. Another plus is that the dubbing is far better than usual; it’s not always in sync with the mouths, but the quality of the acting of those supplying the dubbed voices is fairly high, and that makes up for it. I also like the fact that the murders aren’t just duplicates of each other, but unfold in vastly different ways; it shows that a good deal of care was taken with this one. I do have problems believing that Miss Muerte’s stage act would actually fly in a nightclub, but I could be wrong; after all, the fact that she’s wearing a skin-tight translucent outfit may well be enough to satisfy most men. I’d have to choose this as the best Franco movie I’ve seen to date.

THE DEVIL’S HAND (1962)
Article #1675 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-15-2005
Posting Date: 3-14-2006
Directed by William Hole Jr.
Featuring Linda Christian, Robert Alda, Neil Hamilton

A man is haunted by strange dreams of a beautiful woman, and is surprised to encounter a doll that looks just like her in a doll shop. He is then startled to discover that not only does the owner of the shop claim that he commissioned the doll to be made, but there is also a doll on the premises that looks just like his current fiancee. In unlocking the mystery, he is drawn into an evil cult.

I must admit that this movie opens with an intriguing mystery. Unfortunately, the mystery resolves itself a little too early in the proceedings for my liking, and the movie turns into a devil cult movie with a love triangle subplot that is a little too ordinary. There are some odd touches; the cult is a bizarre cross between witchcraft, voodoo and Satanism (all of which have similar elements but which do tend to have differentiations), and the Russian Roulette style of sacrifice is interesting. However, some of the dialogue is melodramatic and silly, and the cult itself is hard to swallow; I take my hat off to every actor in the movie who can talk about worshiping the great god Gamba without breaking into laughter. The movie also shows how scotch tape can be used to defeat voodoo curses, certainly a useful household hint for certain households. The cast includes the father of actor Alan Alda and Commissioner Gordon from the “Batman” TV series.

DAIMAJIN (1966)
(a.k.a. MAJIN, MONSTER OF TERROR)
Article #1563 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-25-2005
Posting Date: 11-22-2005
Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda
Featuring Miwa Takada, Yoshihiko Aoyana, Jun Fujimaki

When a warlord stages a coup and takes over a small town, the children of the original lord escape and take refuge in a mountain housing the spirit of the god Majin.

While Daiei was putting out the most juvenile series of kaiju movies featuring Gamera, they also put out a series of more adult monster movies with the Majin series. I consider the monsters in kaiju movies to be gods of a sort, and it’s interesting to find one that is actually meant to be a god; he is worshiped, prayed to and pleaded with. He is also slow to take action; he really doesn’t get moving until the last quarter of the movie, so fans of monster mayhem will need to exercise a little patience. This really isn’t a problem, though; the first three-quarters of the movie is exciting, full of action, and interesting in its own right. The rampage of Majin (who manifests himself as a big stone statue) is definitely the highlight of the movie, especially when he figures out to do with that spike stuck in his head. This was the first of the series; it would be followed by two sequels.

THE DARK WIND (1991)
Article #1559 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-21-2005
Posting Date: 11-18-2005
Directed by Errol Morris
Featuring Lou Diamond Phillips, Gary Farmer, John Karlen

A Navajo policeman assigned to catch a vandal witnesses a plane accident that is tied to drug smugglers. He then finds himself caught up in a series of murders and is targeted by corrupt federal agents.

If you’ve been following this series of write-ups, you probably have two questions. First of all, why have I made this leap into the decade of the nineties when most of my coverage recently has been in the sixties and seventies and the latest date I’ve reached previous to this listing is 1982? I have an explanation. I choose the movies for my hunt list going through my various sources, picking ten at a time and then going with the earliest date. “John Stanley’s Creature Features Strike Back” guide has a New Update section in the middle of the book, and most of the movies are from the early nineties. With very little competition from earlier years, it was inevitable that I would have to select one from a very late vintage, and this was the choice.

The other question is about the nature of the fantastic content in the movie, something that does not come out in the above description. Part of the plot surrounds the rituals of Navajo witchcraft, and there are touches of Navajo and Hopi mysticism as well. At heart, it’s a crime drama, and I found it rather enjoyable, if slow and somewhat confusing at times. Still, it all comes together at the end, and the performances are quite good throughout. Genre-wise, it’s marginal, but not bad.

DESTINATION SATURN (1966)
Article #1540 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-2-2005
Posting Date: 10-30-2005
Directed by Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind
Featuring Buster Crabbe, Constance Moore, Jackie Moran

Buck Rogers ends up in the 25th century and joins a group of rebels intent on defeating the evil Killer Kane.

Yes, it’s another feature version of a serial (BUCK ROGERS, to be precise) – twelve weeks of excitement crammed into ninety minutes in much the same way that Cinderella’s sisters tried to squash their feet into the glass slipper. It’s pretty much the same routine; though I can intellectually appreciate the idea of the thrill-a-minute action movie this technique is supposed to produce, in truth, the deluge of repetitive action sequences causes the movie to collapse under its own weight and sink into dullness. However, you can feel free to ignore my commentary if you like this sort of thing; I’ve expressed my distaste before about this whole serial-into-feature process, and I’ll readily admit that my prejudice against it colors these reviews. Still, you can’t blame me for wishing that they had at least taken the trouble to make the music on this one fit the action; as it is, the music jumps back and forth between pompous and comic without paying any attention to the action on the screen. Still, I understand why the music is the way it is; to have spent more time on it would have no doubt cut into the slender profit margin they surely expected from this sort of thing.

DIABOLIQUE (1955)
(a.k.a. LES DIABOLIQUES)
Article #1536 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-29-2005
Posting Date: 10-26-2005
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot
Featuring Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, Paul Meurisse

A man’s wife and his mistress conspire together to murder him.

This suspense thriller is considered a classic, and rightly so. However, it is also rather widely known, and over the years I’ve heard enough about it and its influence that the movie didn’t hold a lot of surprises to me. In particular, knowing that this movie was influential on one specific director and having had access to several of that director’s movies (some of which borrow heavily from DIABOLIQUE) was enough to clue me off on several crucial plot points.

Writing about movies like this without engaging in spoilers is also a nightmare; even slight, subtle hints have the potential to give things away. Therefore, I’ll just say this; if you haven’t seen the movie and haven’t heard much about it and all, you’d be best off watching it now before you learn more. This is one movie that thrives on surprise, and to say more would be to give things away. Suffice it to say that the movie does move into the realm of horror before all is said and done, and thus does qualify as genre.

And, to the movies credit, the final moment of the movie does have one last surprise that I didn’t see coming.

THE DEAD ARE ALIVE (1972)
(a.k.a. L’ETRUSCO UCCIDE ANCORA/THE ETRUSCAN KILLS AGAIN)
Article #1516 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-9-2005
Posting Date: 10-6-2005
Directed by Armando Crispino
Featuring Alex Cord, Samantha Eggar, John Marley

When murders are committed in an Etruscan tomb, detectives investigate several suspects, including an alcoholic archaelogist and a bad-tempered conductor.

The reaction you have to a movie is often dependent on your expectations. Given the fact that the title is THE DEAD ARE ALIVE, the alternate title is THE ETRUSCAN KILLS AGAIN, and at least one source talked about the movie in terms of marauding zombies, I went in fully expecting to find a movie about Etruscan living dead. Yet, a little ways into the movie, I began wondering why their was so little mention of the zombies and a lot of time spent on the criminal investigation and the soap-opera love lives of all concerned. It began to dawn on me that either the movie was spinning its wheels or was going in another direction than the one implied by the titles, promotional materials and the various sources. As it turns out, the latter is the case here. It’s still a horror movie, but a very different one than I expected. Yet, I really think the movie would have been more effective if I hadn’t been deceived about the nature of the movie.

Other factors can also affect your reaction to a movie. My print of the movie is splicey, faded, and has really bad sound. The latter is particularly problematic, as certain points of the movie use sound for its shock moments, and when the sound is this bad, it blunts the effect. Being vaguely aware that this moment should have made you jump isn’t the same thing as the moment actually having made you jump. Furthermore, my print seems to be incomplete; the movie ends abruptly before the final credits role and takes you to the DVD menu.

There are other problems with the movie not related to these particular bad circumstances, of course. I think the script is muddled, the characters unlikable, the dialogue quite bad at times. Though the latter is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it’s partially dubbed, this doesn’t change the fact that several of the major characters are speaking English as their native language, and their dialogue is no better. Still, it does have some effective shock moments, and had the other circumstances surrounding my viewing of this movie been different, I might have actually liked it a lot more than I did. As it is, this was a drab and dreary experience.

DEADLY RAY FROM MARS (1966)
Article #1510 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-3-2005
Posting Date: 9-30-2005
Featuring Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton

Flash Gordon packs fifteen weeks of adventure into ninety minutes when he flies to Mars to fight Ming the Merciless.

I’ve gone on at length before on my opinion of feature versions of serials. Quite frankly, I’m as bored with rehashing this opinion as I’m sure you are with hearing me beat this dead horse. However, I still have plenty of them to watch, and my reaction remains the same. So how am I going to write about the experience of having watched yet another one? Simple; I’ll couch the experience in an extended but labored simile which I nevertheless hope will prove somewhat entertaining.

Watching an episode of a serial is like eating a candy bar. It’s sweet and tasty but full of empty calories and has no nutritional value. One is enough for any reasonable length of time, as their rich sweetness definitely calls into play the law of diminishing returns. Of course, not all candy bars are created equal; some I like quite a bit, while I have no appetite at all for others. Got that?

Watching a feature version of a serial is like wolfing down a given number (in this case, fifteen) of a specific candy bar in a compressed period of time (say, ninety-six minutes). The fact that I like this particular candy bar makes little difference; the sickening overdose of a sugar rush renders the experience aggressively unpleasant. In this context, the only positive thing about the experience is that this candy bar has almonds, which remain tasty nonetheless (i.e., I like the sets).

Personally, I’m glad it’s only a simile. I am on a diet, you know.

DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (1973)
Article #1502 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-25-2005
Posting Date: 9-22-2005
Directed by John Newland
Featuring Kim Darby, Jim Hutton, Barbara Anderson

When a couple moves into an old house, the wife unbolts a small ash door in a bricked-up fireplace, and releases some small malevolent creatures who have sinister plans for her.

My experience with made-for-TV horror movies was rarely positive. When an ad for a made-for-TV movie caught my attention, I would tune in to watch it, but rarely was I really satisfied with the results; the Kolchak movies remained for me the sole exception to this experience. Eventually, I gave up on them; why waste time with these limp substitutions for horror movies when my local Creature Feature was showing the real thing on Saturday Nights?

Had I caught this movie as a kid, I might have had a better time of it; this is one that would have had me on the edge of my seat as a kid, and I’m sure that the warmth of my memories of this one would have been reflected in this review. Unfortunately, today marks the first time I’ve seen it, and though I think it works well enough, it still falls a little short. Though the fireplace monsters are unique and original creations, the surrounding story is a little too familiar; I’ve seen the subplot about the wife who isn’t getting enough attention from her career-obsessed husband several times before, the handyman (William Demarest in this case) who spends most of his screen time giving out vague warnings is also pretty cliched, and though the whispering voices of the creatures are suitably eerie, the movie overuses the concept. Still, I think anyone with fond memories of this one won’t be disappointed by a rewatching, and it is definitely one of the better made-for-TV horror movies out there.

DIMENSION 5 (1966)
Article #1501 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-24-2005
Posting Date: 9-21-2005
Directed by Franklin Adreon
Featuring Jeffrey Hunter, France Nuyen, Harold Sakata

Spies use a time-traveling belt to help prevent an attempt by communists to blow up the city of Los Angeles.

If you haven’t figured it out from the plot description, the gimmick in this movie is the time-traveling belt. I really am disappointed that they found nothing better to do with the idea than make it part of a James Bond style spy thriller, but this being the mid-sixties, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. At least I think it’s supposed to be a James Bond style spy thriller; actually, it comes across as if someone had been told about James Bond style thrillers, and decided to make one of his own without the benefit of having seen any of the originals. Yes, there are pretty girls and suave spies who specialize in witty repartee. However, the story would easily fit into thirty minutes of a real James Bond thriller, the pacing is non-existent, the repartee painful, the music anonymous and without any of the brassy charm of a real James Bond soundtrack. About the only thing that really comes across as Bondian is the presence of Harold ‘Oddjob’ Sakata as the main villain, and even he’s been dubbed by Paul Frees. The time-traveling belt gimmick remains little more than such; the movie could have been easily rewritten to remove it. In short, this is a dull, cheap, tired little spy thriller; it is a James Bond movie devoid of all the style that goes into that type of movie, and since I consider James Bond movies to be example of “style over substance”, I would say that if you take the style away, you have very little left. In this context, the best thing about it is France Nuyen, who plays her part with a bored sultriness, a decision that would be fatal in most movies but somehow manages to be somewhat interesting here. Jeffrey Hunter is mostly remembered nowadays for having almost been the captain of the Enterprise in ‘Star Trek’, but passed on the opportunity to appear in a second pilot for the series, the role going to William Shatner.

Incidentally, in the U.K., this movie was called DIMENSION FOUR. I take this to mean that they realized that there was less dimension here than originally promised.