THE EMBALMER (1966)
(a.k.a. IL MOSTRO DI VENEZIA)
Article #902 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-3-2003
Posting Date: 1-31-2004
Directed by Dino Tavella
Featuring Maureen Brown, Elmo Caruso, Jean Mart

A murderer in Venice is killing and embalming women for his collection, but the only one who believes in his existence is a journalist.

This movie has some good ideas; the movie takes place in Venice, and the murderer’s lair is in an old monastary in the catacombs of Venice; he leaves through an underwater entrance in scuba gear, and drags the womens’ bodies underwater to his lair, thus leaving no trace. He also is dressed as a monk with a skeleton mask, which allows him on occasion to pose as one of the many corpses of monks lying around the area. However, the pacing on this one is incredibly lethargic, the dubbing is bad, the comic relief duo is more annoying than funny, and the fight choreography towards the end is quite bad. It also has a somewhat downbeat ending that will either impress you (if you’re impressed by that sort of thing) or annoy you (because it was unnecessary). At any rate, I emerged from this one knowing why Dino Tavella’s name is not as well known as Mario Bava’s.

ELEPHANT BOY (1937)
Article #901 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-2-2003
Posting Date: 1-30-2004
Directed by Zoltan Korda and Robert Flaherty
Featuring Sabu, W. E. Holloway, Walter Hudd

A boy from India has dreams of being a great hunter, and joins his father and his elephant on a safari.

This is the movie that introduced Sabu to the world, and though he has great screen presence and decent acting ability, he still hadn’t quite mastered the English language yet, and his accent was so thick that I had trouble understanding him at times. This made it a little difficult to follow the plot at first, but when you get down to it, the plot is pretty basic; it’s your boy-with-a-dream story crossed with a boy-and-his-dog story, except that in this case the dog is fifteen feet tall, has two great big white tusks and a trunk. The plot is also fairly slow in coming; the movie is nearly half over before things really start happening in this regard. On the other hand, the plot isn’t really important; the spectacle is what matters, and we get an abundance of great elephant footage, at least partially due to the participation of famed documentarian Robert Flaherty. The fantastic aspects of the movie are a little harder to pin down, but they seem to revolve around Sabu’s almost mystical rapport with the elephants. Certainly, a key sequence in the second half of the movie when a large herd of elephants congregates and engages in a dance moves the movie into fantastic territory, even if the possibility exists that the event is just a dream. Nonetheless, this sequence is the best part of the movie, and makes the somewhat slow beginning more palatable.

EARTHBOUND (1940)
Article #870 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-2-2003
Posting Date: 12-30-2003
Directed by Irving Pichel
Featuring Warner Baxter, Andrea Leeds, Lynn Bari

A man is murdered by an ex-lover, and his ghost tries to help his wife unravel the murder.

Title check: Since a ghost who can’t go to heaven is indeed earthbound, the title is appropriate. Unfortunately, the title reminds me of a stupid science fiction movie from the early eighties, which is, of course, not this movie’s fault. It just reminds me that I’ll have to cover that movie some day.

This is a remake of a movie from 1920 of the same name. It starts out strong, but once the murder occurs, the movie loses a bit of steam. I get a bit annoyed at how long it takes for the murder victim to figure out he’s a ghost, and ultimately the movie never really finds novel ways to handle the concept. Granted, this one predates some other movies with similar plots, but they tend to be a bit more creative with their concept than this one is. It may be of interest to fans of ghost movies, but you may want to keep your expectations at a reasonable level.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962)
(a.k.a. EL ANGEL EXTERMINADOR)
Article #855 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-18-2003
Posting Date: 12-15-2003
Directed by Luis Bunuel
Featuring Claudio Brook, Silvia Pinal, Lucy Gallardo

Members of a posh dinner party find themselves unable to leave the room after a recital, and eventually courtesy and civilization deteriorate among them.

Title check: I’d have to know exactly what the movie means to say anything about the title, though I suspect it has something to do with the very last moments of the movie.

For those of you not familiar with the work of Luis Bunuel, this bizarre little fantasy (and I call it a fantasy because I’m not sure what else you can call it) will most likely leave you scratching your head. If you are, you might still be left scratching your head, but at least it won’t catch you off guard. I find it fascinating to watch the mental deterioration of those trapped in the room, and I love the little surreal touches that pop up; there’s even a crawling hand segment that might remind you of THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (I’ve heard rumors that Bunuel was involved with the filming of that one). In some ways it’s a bizarre puzzle movie with an interesting solution, though that is definitely a simplification. At any rate, this is for fans of the offbeat, the bizarre and the surreal.

EXPERIMENT PERILOUS (1944)
Article #854 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-17-2003
Posting Date: 12-14-2003
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Featuring Hedy Lamarr, George Brent, Paul Lukas

A doctor becomes involved with a woman who is married to a man who is up to something suspicious.

Title check: The title is from a poem that is quoted in the movie; it sounds good, but I don’t think it really gives a good sense of the movie.

The movie starts out strong, with some moody shots of a train during a storm, and a passenger on the train meeting a woman who seems to be scared about something but covering it up. Unfortunately, the movie gets bogged down somewhat after this by some overlong sequences of character development and exposition; fortunately, it picked up again before I lost interest completely. It’s only marginally a horror movie (madness plays a role in the proceedings), and I’ve often heard it described as a variation on GASLIGHT; quite frankly, I was quite pleased to find out that, though it has certain plot elements that bear a similarity to that movie, it really is playing a somewhat different game. Not bad, but the first half does require an extra dose of patience.

THE EVIL BRAIN FROM OUTER SPACE (1964)
Article #787 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-11-2003
Posting Date: 10-8-2003
Directed by Chogi Akasaka
Featuring Ken Utsui, Junko Ikeuchi, Reiko Seto

An Evil Brain from outer space threatens to take over the Earth, but not if Starman can prevent it.

Some thoughts on this one.

1. This movie has given me the brainstorm to include a new feature to my MOTD; the Title Check, where I check to see if the movie actually delivers what the title promises. In this case, yes, it does; the plot does include an Evil Brain from Outer Space.

2. The main character is called Starman. There is also a 1984 movie called STARMAN. That movie has a coherent plot; this one has an atomic mime.

3. This movie was culled from a Japanese TV series (I think) called “Super Giant.” Since Starman is approximately the size of all the other cast members, I’m led to believe one of the following, either 1) it doesn’t take much to be a giant in Japan, or 2) he’s only a giant in the metaphorical sense, or 3) something was horribly lost in translation.

4. Starman has a costume. He also wears a three piece suit. He changes costumes by cleverly ducking out of the frame and reappearing in his other garb.

5. Starman’s costume features tights, and I mean that in both the literal and descriptive sense; in other words, there isn’t a whole lot left to the imagination.

6. One of Starman’s foes is a really skinny guy with long teeth, long fingernails, a lacrosse racket around his head, and an eye in his stomach. The costume may seem overdone, but it does manage to upstage both Starman and the atomic mime.

7. The evil scientist in the wheelchair has a pet falcon who lives on his shoulder. I hope he changes his clothes often.

8. There’s lots of rotating masonry in this movie.

9. The fight scenes in this movie may appeal to humanitarians; you can watch them with real confidence that no one is getting hurt.

10. There is a point in this movie where we are supposed to be startled and amazed by the identity of an Arab leader. It was only long after seeing the movie that I realized this was supposed to be a plot twist. Unfortunately, in order for a plot twist to work, you need one special ingredient; a plot.

All in all, I enjoyed it much more than INVASION OF THE NEPTUNE MEN.

ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN (1973)
Article #786 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-10-2003
Posting Date: 10-7-2003
Directed by Harry Thomason
Featuring Rod Serling, Gene Ross, Rosie Holotik

A trilogy of three horror tales based on actual events.

Don’t let the presence of Rod Serling fool you; his only creative involvement with this was providing narration (voice-over only) to each of the three tales; since these narrations are much better-written than anything else in the movie, I’m also guessing that he may have written these himself. As for the trio of lethargically paced purportedly-true stories, don’t expect anything that would have passed muster on “The Twilight Zone” (or, for that matter, “Night Gallery”). The first and the third stories are utterly predictable; the first involves a prophecy which you know will come true (after all, no one would bother telling the story if it didn’t turn out to be true), though at least one plot element (involving a gun that goes off accidentally) is such an odd, unexpected event that it does make the story a bit more convincing. The third story is one of the most common urban legends around; I call this segment “Encounter with the All Too Well-Known”. It’s the second story that is the most interesting, as it leaves its mystery unresolved, and generates a fair amount of atmosphere. The most annoying aspect of this movie is its constant recycling of its own footage over and over again (the event happens; someone tells somebody else about the event, and we see the footage again; that person tells a third person about the event, and we see it again, etc.) as if constant reviewing of the footage will give it a documentary feel; instead it made the movie irritating (I didn’t NEED (or want) to see the scene of the woman making the prediction at the funeral five or six times). Incidentally, the movie is essentially over fifteen minutes before it’s over; the last part of the movie includes a mushy romantic interlude with a love song and lovers walking through fields and doing cutesy lovey-dovey stuff, and then a ten-minute commentary on the events in the movie (using, you guessed it, footage we’ve already seen).

P.S. – Don’t try to check up on the events in these stories; the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945)
Article #708 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-21-2003
Posting Date: 7-21-2003
Directed by John Cromwell
Featuring Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Herbert Marshall

A plain young woman takes a job at an old cottage once set aside for newlyweds, and there encounters a man who is bitter and lonely due to his having been disfigured and maimed in the war.

The fantastic premise in this movie is that the cottage is enchanted by the spirits of all the lovers who have lived there during the years, and at one point in the story it causes transformations in the main characters. It is a movie well-loved by many; as for me, I’ve loathed the movie for many years in my inimitable curmudgeonly fashion, and I looked forward to watching it again as I would look forward to my next root canal. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I didn’t hate it this time; like it or not, it touches a few chords thematically, and it is well acted and has some lovely scenery. But I still do consider it highly problematic; I find it artificial, precious, obvious and contrived, with characters whose functions are so blatantly symbolic that they never take on a life of their own as real living, breathing people. Consequently, I can see the manipulative strings being pulled at every step of the way, and that’s enough to make me keep my distance. I suspect that romantics and love story enthusiasts will find this a lot more compelling than I do; me, I was actually just happy to scratch this one off my list and replace it with a Francis, the talking mule movie.

THE ETERNAL RETURN (1943)
(a.k.a. L’ETERNEL RETOUR)
Article #663 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-7-2003
Posting Date: 6-6-2003

A man finds a wife for his uncle, but ends up falling in love with her himself when he drinks a love potion.

Though it’s directed by Jean Delannoy, the script was written by Jean Cocteau, the man responsible for LA BELLE ET LA BETE, and though it lacks the visual splendor of that classic, it still does well enough. It also features Jean Marais from that movie as one of the lovers. It is based on the story of Tristan and Isolde, but I have to confess to not being familiar with that story, so I can’t make any comparisons at all. It’s a beautiful, moving and sad love story, and the only fantastic element is the love potion (the bottle is marked “Poison”) that figures into the plot, so its fantastic element is rather slight. The most memorable character, though, is the unpredictable dwarf son of the relatives, played by Pieral, who also appeared in the 1956 version of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.

THE EVIL EYE (1963)
(a.k.a. THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH)
Article #576 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-12-2002
Posting date: 3-7-2003

A woman believes she has witnessed a murder, and then undertakes to discover the truth of the situation herself.

There’s a beautiful shot in this movie of the light shining through two bullet holes in a door; it is a great example of where some of the appeal lies in Mario Bava movies in its exemplary use of light and dark. THE EVIL EYE is not a good title in itself; the alternate title, THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, is both a better description and makes manifest a certain Hitchcockian feel to this movie. Though the tale itself is quite suspenseful, particularly in a sequence where the heroine follows a voice in an old building, there is a surprising amount of humor in this movie; there’s even shtick involving John Saxon’s broken thumb at several points. I haven’t really seen enough giallo at this point to say whether this is where the whole genre began, but I’ve heard it referred to as such, so I’ll leave it to others to decide. At any rate, this movie is a great deal of fun and well worth catching.