FIRE MONSTERS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1962)
aka Maciste contro i mostri
Article 2971 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-26-2009
Posting Date: 10-2-2009
Directed by Guido Malatesta
Featuring Reg Lewis, Margaret Lee, Luciano Marin
Country: Italy

The son of Hercules named Maxus comes to the aid of a primitive tribe of sun worshipers who are beset by evil moon worshipers.

Cool! Who wouldn’t want to see one of the sons of Hercules take on the dreaded fire monsters? What a great idea for a sword-and-sandal movie! But wait a second – where are the swords? Where are the sandals? It looks more like one of those club-and-loincloth movies to me! So what’s one of the sons of Hercules (and I know he’s one of them because he said so) doing in the prehistoric era, a time which predates Hercules? I was guessing that the son of Hercules here (named Maxus) must have borrowed Maciste’s tardis, but a quick look at the original Italian title of this one indicates that this Maxus personality is just a sham; this is the time-travelling Maciste himself.

Well, this is all secondary, of course – what we’re really waiting for is seeing this guy take on those fire monsters! So let’s see – he takes on a sea monster who doesn’t seem to have much of anything to do with fire. He battles hordes of cavemen who wear underwear underneath their loincloths (and believe me, you’ll be glad that they did), but I can’t really call these guys fire monsters. He looks at a slurpasaur for a few seconds, but we don’t hang around long enough to see if he breathes fire or anything, and they never fight anyway. He battles a prehistoric creature in a cave who has big teeth but seems noticeably lacking in fire. And then he… well, that’s about it really. If the truth be told, there are no fire monsters in this movie. I’m beginning to think someone just made up the title.

Oh, and there’s no evil queen, either, for those who are keeping score on such things.

THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU (1980)
Article 2970 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-25-2009
Posting Date: 10-1-2009
Directed by Piers Haggard, Richard Quine and Peter Sellers
Featuring Peter Sellers, Helen Mirren, David Tomlinson

Dr. Fu Manchu seeks the ingredients for a secret potion that has kept him alive to the age of 168. However, Nayland Smith has come out of retirement to stop him.

Reportedly, Peter Sellers’s doctor warned him against making this movie due to his weak heart. Not only did Sellers make the movie (playing two roles and doing his own stunts), but he took over directorial reins after dismissing original director Piers Haggard. I can’t help but admire the man’s dedication; I just wish it had been at the service of a better movie than this one. Rather than a straightforward parody of the Fu Manchu stories (which wouldn’t have been a bad idea in itself), it instead attempts to be a quirky variation on the stories; unfortunately, the end result is strange, muddled and unfunny. I also feel uncomfortable watching Sellers’s’ performance on occasion here; there are times where his characters seem tired and ailing, and I’m not sure if I’m watching an actor’s choice, or Sellers’s own illness showing through. This would indeed prove to be Sellers’s last movie, and when one considers that his last movie would have been BEING THERE if this one had not been made, it makes it all that much sadder. The surprisingly good cast (which also features Sid Caesar) is sadly wasted.

FEAR IN THE NIGHT (1972)
Article 2969 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-24-2009
Posting Date: 9-30-2009
Directed by Jimmy Sangster
Featuring Judy Geeson, Joan Collins, Ralph Bates
Country: UK

A woman finds no one believes her when she is assaulted by someone with an artificial arm. When she moves into a cottage at a boys’ school with her husband, she is assaulted again, and once again she is not believed. Could someone at the school be responsible?

The acting is quite good from everyone here; Judy Geeson and Joan Collins do fine, fourth-billed Peter Cushing is excellent as usual, and Ralph Bates gives the best performance of his that I’ve seen so far. Unfortunately, it’s at the service of one of the most predictable scripts I’ve encountered in some time, and this is one of those stories that should be anything but predictable. For a while, I thought it was walking the well-trodden GASLIGHT path, but after a while it became apparent that the also over-traveled road of DIABOLIQUE was its real route. The less familiar you are with that movie (or its many imitations), the more likely it is you’ll like this one. Still, I must say I do like a few of the side touches, such as the backstories about the headmaster and the school; I only wish they had been put to the service of a less tired storyline.

FANGS (1974)
aka Snakes, Holy Wednesday
Article 2967 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-22-2009
Posting Date: 9-28-2009
Directed by Art Names
Featuring Les Tremayne, Janet Wood, Bebe Kelly
Country: USA

When the local snake fanatic Snakey Bender finds his Wednesday routine messed up by a series of individuals (including a preacher, a teacher, the proprietors of a general store and a gold digger), he vows revenge, and intends to use his slithery friends for help.

So what separates this snake movie from the likes of RATTLERS and STANLEY? I’d have to say it’s its sense of humor. Not that its sense of humor is particularly sophisticated, mind you – most of the laughs come from the bizarre rustic small-town types that inhabit the movie, with Snakey himself (played with perhaps too much gusto by Les Tremayne) one of the oddest of the lot, what with his snake obsession coupled with his love of Sousa marches. I suppose the movie is quite bad, but I was laughing too consistently to make that matter much to me. My favorite scenes include the opening, where we encounter perhaps the worst marching band in history, the scene where a three-way music battle ensues between a church choir, a country music radio station and a phonograph of marching music, the scenes where Snakey disposes of the bodies of his victims, and the hilarious final scene of revenge. It gets pretty kinky at times as well; wait until you discover the nature of the schoolteacher’s real relationship with Snakey. Chalk it up as a guilty pleasure.

LA FILLE DE DRACULA (1972)
aka Daughter of Dracula
Article 2963 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-18-2009
Posting Date: 9-24-2009
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Britt Nichols, Anne Libert, Alberto Dalbes
Country: France / Portugal

A woman learns that she is a descendant of the Karnsteins. She opens up a crypt and unleashes Dracula, who begins terrorizing the area. She turns into a vampire as well, and engages in lesbian sex. Police investigate.

Well, it’s a damn sight better than yesterday’s movie, I’ll give it that much. Still, it looks like your typical Jesus Franco movie to me. The two most interesting things I found about this one is that it comes up with an alternative way to dispatch of vampires, and Franco has a more prominent acting role in this one than is his wont. Other than that, I found little to hold my interest here, and the fact that the English subtitles were so dinky on my print just made it a bit annoying. I’m beginning to suspect that I’ll never understand why Franco advocates find his work so brilliant, and that may well be my loss.

THE FEAR CHAMBER (1968)
Article 2956 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-11-2009
Posting Date: 9-17-2009
Directed by Jack Hill and Juan Ibanez
Featuring Boris Karloff, Julissa, Carlos East
Country: Mexico / USA

A scientist discovers a living rock in the depths of the earth, and connects it to computers in the hopes of discovering its secrets. However, in order to keep it alive, it has to be fed with a substance that is only produced in the bodies of people in mortal terror. Eventually the scientist ends the experiment, but two of his assistants decide to continue…

This is the last of the four Mexican films Boris Karloff made at the end of his life that I’ve covered for this series. If anything, I’ve been a little too nice to these awful movies, and I’ll probably be so with even this one, which is the one I loathe the most. Visually, it’s the most interesting; in fact, it’s almost arty at times. I also like the concept of scientists attempting to converse with an intelligent rock. Nevertheless, beneath the novel concept, we have that basic concept of scientists driven to commit atrocities in the pursuit of knowledge. Furthermore, the idea that people (usually beautiful young women in various states of undress) must be nearly frightened to death to produce a substance to feed the rock is extremely contrived, and that idea contributes to the sadistic mean-spiritedness of the movie that renders it rather repellent; it’s this joyless nastiness that makes me loathe the movie. In short, this movie has none of the charm I would associate with either Boris Karloff movies or Mexican horror movies. Karloff does what he can, but it’s not enough.

FACE OF TERROR (1962)
aka La cara del terror
Article 2955 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-10-2009
Posting Date: 9-16-2009
Directed by Isidoro M. Ferry and William J. Hole Jr
Featuring Lisa Gaye, Fernando Rey, Virgilio Teixeira
Country: Spain

A scientist tests a new method of plastic surgery on a horribly scarred young woman. However, he is unaware that the woman is an escapee from a mental institute…

In some ways, I really admire this movie. It has one of the greatest Spanish actors in the role of the mad scientist (Fernando Rey), and the character is given more rounding and fullness than it might have gotten otherwise. This greater attention to character includes the woman escapee as well; once she’s had the operation, she just doesn’t go out and begin killing people, but sets out initially to live a normal life. Still, despite these touches, the story is utterly humdrum and predictable, and at least one scene is extremely bad; really, if you were in the midst of blackmailing an escapee from a mental institute, would you force open a pair of elevator doors to stare down the open shaft with the escapee right behind you? The dubbing is merely passable for the most part (it sounds like everyone is in an echo chamber), though the dubbing for Rey is quite good; I wonder if he dubbed himself here.

FX 18 (1964)
aka Agent secret FX 18
Article 2942 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-28-2009
Posting Date: 9-3-2009
Directed by Maurice Cloche
Featuring Ken Clark, Jany Clair, Jacques Dacqmine
Country: France / Italy / Spain

Secret agent FX 18 is sent out with his team to capture a Russian spy and find out how he’s transmitting information to the Russians.

This is one of the earliest movies in the Spyghetti genre, and though it doesn’t have much of a reputation, I found it entertaining enough in that low-budget ersatz-Bond way. The use of music in this one is rather interesting, with one fight scene underscored by a baroque classical piece that is quite amusing, and there are other moments as well where the music hints that this is not to be taken too seriously. The secret agent here, though obviously the leader, works as part of a team, which makes him come across as less of a one-man operation than James Bond does. The violence on the part of the good guys seems a bit more brutal than is usually found, with the heroes occasionally acting as you would usually expect villains to do in other movies. The structure is a bit odd; the first thirty minutes are quite confusing, as a bunch of characters are thrown our way without any chance of getting used to them; FX 18 doesn’t appear until almost a third of the movie is over, and only then are we given the real threads of the plot. The fantastic content is slight; one of the prizes in the struggle is a special satellite transmitter that gives the movie a little science fiction content. All in all, I found this one not bad for this type of movie.

FANTOMAS (1947)
Article 2871 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-18-2009
Posting Date: 6-23-2009
Directed by Jean Sacha
Featuring Marcel Herrand, Simone Signoret, Alexandre Rignault
Country: France

Detective Juve matches wits with super-criminal Fantomas.

If you take the five episodes of Louis Fuillade’s serial about the title character as one unit (IMDB lists the five episodes as different movies and I’ve covered them the same way), then this is the third version that I’ve seen of this story. Unfortunately, except for the second episode of the aforementioned serial, every version I’ve seen has been in unsubtitled French, and this one is no exception. In fact, this particular version is so dependent on words to flesh out its story that I couldn’t follow the story at all, hence the vague plot description above. It does seem, though, that the Fantomas in this movie is rather different than the ones I remember from the earlier versions; in fact, there are moments where the movie made me think more of Dr. Mabuse than Fantomas. The fantastic content is more marked though; there’s some definite science fiction content, with a number of strange machines, an odd-looking helicopter, and a death ray machine. A few nice visual moments help a little, and the action scenes at the end are fun, but it looks like I’m really going to need to see this one in English to appreciate it.

LES FRERES CORSES (1962)
aka The Corsican Brothers, I Fratelli Corsi
Article 2866 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-13-2009
Posting Date: 6-19-2009
Directed by Anton Giulio Majano
Featuring Geoffrey Horne, Gerard Barray, Nerio Bernardi
Country: France / Italy

Two Siamese twin brothers are separated and raised in different worlds when their family is massacred. They meet again many years later when one of them undertakes to kill a tyrant.

This version of the Dumas novel is in French without subtitles, and, though I’m at least a little bit familiar with the basic story and have seen the earlier version with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. the story has never really planted itself firmly in my mind. This means that I was fairly lost for most of the movie, though the fantastic element (the brothers have a psychic link in which one can feel the other’s pain) is apparent, if used only slightly. Going on feel, though, the movie seemed fairly ordinary; it’s more talk than action, and only seems to come to life at the beginning and end of the movie. To be sure, a dubbed or subtitled version would give me a better chance to judge it, but I doubt that I’d radically change my opinion if I saw one.