FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR (1968)
aka La Marca del Hombre-lobo, The Mark of the Wolfman
Article 2200 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-25-2007
Posting Date: 8-21-2007
Directed by Enrique Lopez Eguiluz
Featuring Jacinto Molina (Paul Naschy), Manuel Manzaneque, Dyanik Zurakowska

When a werewolf is accidentally revived by greedy gypsies, two romantic rivals join a hunting party looking for wolves. When the werewolf attacks one of them, the other one destroys it, but not before being bitten himself. Upon discovering that he has now inherited the werewolf curse, he has his rival lock him in a cell in an abandoned monastery. The rival then contacts a doctor who is believed to have cure for lycanthropy, but it turns out the doctor is actually a vampire. Complications ensue.

Let’s face it; the plot description above makes the movie sound fairly goofy, and the fact that the American title for this compendium of werewolves and vampires draws in the name of Frankenstein (who is only referred to in a dumb opening prologue that tries to tie his name to that of Wolfstein) only makes it seem sillier; there’s no mad science to be found here. In truth, the movie is better than that; it’s quite moody at times (I love the creepy forest with the bare white trees), it handles the transformation sequences with a creative use of acting, shadows and sound, and it paces its far-fetched plot in such a way that you have no trouble buying into it within the context of the movie. It’s also the movie that debuted Paul Naschy in his most famous role as Waldemar Daninsky, and it’s definitely one of the better movies of the series. As usual, Naschy plays his character with an interesting contradiction of being both hero and villain, though it needs the presence of extra monsters to help him accomplish this; it is only because he is a werewolf that he can resist the willpower of the vampires, and this makes him the hero, albeit one that must be destroyed himself. It helps that I saw this movie in a nice restored letterbox version, which compensates somewhat for the fact that it is dubbed, though not badly so. At any rate, it is a good starting place to explore the Naschy movies.

FLYING DISC MAN FROM MARS (1950)
(Serial)
Article 2194 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-19-2007
Posting Date: 8-15-2007
Directed by Fred C. Brannon
Featuring Walter Reed, Lois Collier, Gregory Gaye

A martian tempts a scientist with promises of power to get his help in preparing for an invasion of the earth. They find resistance in the form of an air patrol officer.

I can’t help but express my dismay with this one. The title promises a much greater amount of science-fiction thrills than is usual for the serial genre, but the disappointments start early. It initially seems like a remake of THE PURPLE MONSTER STRIKES , but this time the Martian doesn’t have any cool powers, and once he holes up in the volcano, he plays virtually no part in the action to come except for appearing for a few seconds and barking a few orders. Sure, the “flying disc” gets some air time, but other than the fact that it can fly straight up from the volcano, it pretty much functions like a normal airplane. It doesn’t even look like a disc; it’s pudgy and triangular. It’s also another one of those serials that was made after Republic lost their touch with the fight scenes, and this is especially disappointing since some of the locations of the fights would really lend themselves well to those scenes; when a fight takes place in a lab full of scientific glassware and almost all of it is still intact afterwards, that’s a bad sign. No, this one isn’t particularly awful; it’s just pretty ordinary. As a matter of fact, I don’t think the good guys ever figure out that they’re dealing with Martians.

FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1973)
Article 2189 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-14-2007
Posting Date: 8-10-2007
Directed by Kevin Connor
Featuring Peter Cushing, Ian Bannen, Ian Carmichael

Several customers visit an antique shop, and those that try to cheat the proprietor find themselves suffering strange and horrible fates.

I quite like this anthology from Amicus. I like all the stories at least a little, with my favorite being the second (“An Act of Kindness”), in which a man in a bad marriage strikes up a friendship with a poor veteran and his rather strange daughter (played to wonderful perfection by real life father and daughter Donald and Angela Pleasance). The last story (about a room behind an ominous door) is fairly straightforward, but colorful and entertaining. The first story (about a haunted mirror) is the most obvious tale of the bunch, but it is hauntingly moody and makes wonderful use of smoke. The third story (about a man haunted by an elemental) is amusing enough at first, but I found the ending a little weak. It’s all tied together by the framing story of the visits to the antique shop, and Peter Cushing is wonderful as the soft-spoken proprietor who you really don’t want to cheat, no matter what sort of temptation comes your way. All in all, this was a fairly solid horror anthology.

FANTASMI A ROMA (1961)
Article 2159 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-12-2007
Posting Date: 7-11-2007
Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli
Featuring Marcello Mastroianni, Belinda Lee, Sandra Milo

When a prince dies from a freak water heater accident, his nephew plans to sell his palace to real estate speculators. However, the ghosts that inhabit the palace plot to prevent the sale from happening.

I had to check several sources to figure out the plot of this one; my copy is in Italian without subtitles. As a result, I can’t say just how amusing this comedy is, but I didn’t find it a waste of time. It’s visually creative and well acted, some of the sight gags are quite amusing, and it has a lightness of touch very reminiscent of Rene Clair. I also have to give special credit to Marcello Mastroianni who plays three roles here; I knew he was playing one of the ghosts, but was unaware that he was playing two other roles as well; the movie is also devoid of the sort of give-away moments when movies have an actor in several roles. All in all, it struck me as quite charming, and I hope someday to see a subtitled version.

FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (1969)
Article 2154 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-7-2007
Posting Date: 7-6-2007
Directed by Terence Fisher
Featuring Peter Cushing, Veronica Carlson, Freddie Jones

Dr. Frankenstein kidnaps an associate who has been committed to an insane asylum in the hopes of curing his madness and discovering a secret he had involving brain transplants.

I first encountered this movie when I was much younger. It popped up on a late night movie show, but I got bored with it quickly because it didn’t appear to have anything in the way of a real monster to it. I held a fairly low opinion of it for many years, and was quite surprised to learn that the movie was considered by many to be one of the best of the Hammer Frankenstein cycle. I looked forward to seeing it again, now that I was older and could appreciate other aspects of a horror movie than the mere existence of a monster.

Having seen it again, I find myself more agreeing with the assessment than not. Dr. Frankenstein has certainly never been more evil than he is here. Unfortunately, I think he’s a bit too evil; his rape of Veronica Carlson’s character seems out of character for him, Frankenstein may be evil, but not in that way. That and the fact that I don’t care much for the comic relief police inspector are my main problems with this one. Nonetheless, Cushing gives an excellent performance, and he’s never more fascinating than when circumstances force him to act quickly, especially in the scene where the wife of the kidnapped scientist visits his dwelling place, and he is forced to allay her suspicions (I find it interesting that Dr. Frankenstein himself, like Cushing, is a consummate actor). Still, my favorite performance in the movie is from Freddie Jones, who is deeply affecting as the man who has his brain replaced with that of the scientist; the scenes where he tries to explain to his wife that he is indeed her husband even though he’s in a different body are especially well done. The movie also has one of the best showdowns between Frankenstein and his creation that I’ve seen. I don’t know if it’s the best of the series, but it’s certainly the best one since REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and well worth a watch.

FLESH FEAST (1970)
Article 2150 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-3-2007
Posting Date: 7-2-2007
Directed by Brad F. Grinter
Featuring Veronica Lake, Phil Philbin, Doug Foster

A female scientist has come up with a radical method to reverse aging using flesh-eating maggots. She is hired by leaders of a South American revolution to regenerate their leader.

Veronica Lake’s career thrived in the the early forties. Her career took a nosedive after she changed her trademark peek-a-boo hairstyle, but she continued to work in movies and television for another ten years before disappearing from the industry. She popped up in only two movies after that; one is an obscure Canadian adventure movie, and this one, in which she was convinced not only to star but to invest her own money. It’s pretty awful; horridly written, badly directed, and amateurishly acted. Lake herself is long past her prime as an actress; she has moments here where it seems she has trouble with her lines and struggles with her props. Practically every write-up I’ve seen of this movie also gives away the ending twists, which is a shame; they’re about the only thing this movie has going for it. Up to that point, the movie is dull and confusing. At least the ending scene makes it into the realm of campiness, and Lake overacts monstrously as she exacts a long-awaited revenge. Though it was planned as Lake’s comeback, it ended being nothing of the kind, and she would die only a few years later.

FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS (1960)
aka DER SCHWEIGEND STERN
Article 2149 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-2-2007
Posting Date: 7-1-2007
Directed by Kurt Maetzig
Featuring Yoko Tani, Oldrich Lukes, Ignacy Machowski

When a strange object is discovered to be a spool with a recording from another planet, scientists discover it must have come from Venus. Attempts to contact the planet prove unsuccessful, so an expedition is planned to take a spaceship to the planet.

With at least fourteen minutes missing, so-so dubbing and an altered soundtrack (it sounds mostly like stock music), it’s really difficult to judge what this movie was like in its original form. It’s confusing on first watching, but it proves more interesting on rewatching, and I suspect that it is somewhat better than its reputation would lead you to believe (it’s currently sitting with a 3.3 rating on IMDB). Still, though it’s interesting, it never quite becomes compelling, and the actual trip to Venus is full of cliches about weightlessness and meteor showers. The high point of the movie is seeing the landscape on Venus; it’s a surreal skeleton of a world, full of bizarre little pieces of technology and other touches, such as a seemingly sentient piece of slime and little hopping metal machines which apparently serve as some sort of tape recorder. I’ve heard that the original version of the movie is also out there, and I may just have to pick it up one of these days; I suspect that it’s a lot more interesting than the USA release. And I do find it an interesting touch that the cute little robot turns dangerous at one point in the proceedings.

FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1964)
Article 2148 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-1-2007
Posting Date: 6-30-2007
Directed by Gilberto Martinez Solares, Rafael Portillo and Jerry Warren
Featuring Lon Chaney Jr., Yerye Beirute, George Mitchell

Scientists visit a pyramid in Yucatan, and find two mummies, one of which is very much active. The other mummy is stolen and brought to life by other scientists, who are unaware that this mummy is actually a werewolf. Chaos ensues.

Some thoughts on FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF.

1) There were two types of Jerry Warren movies. First of all, there were the ones that mostly consisted of original stories and footage. Then there were those that were cobbled together from foreign movies mixed with original footage to fill in the plot points that were lost because of Warren’s reluctance to use extensive dubbing. If I had to choose, I’d say that this is the best movie he made of the latter type.

2) Of course, just because it’s the best of that type of movie of his, that doesn’t mean it’s any good; it is, in fact, like all of his other efforts in this vein (and most of the others in the other vein) godawful. It is, however, somewhat more watchable than his other exercises.

3) One of the reasons this one works better is that he keeps the number of long pointless insert scenes to a minimum. These were always the worst scenes of these movies; they largely consisted of people sitting around having long-winded and boring conversations that added nothing to the plot. There’s only one scene here that is like that, and it’s relatively short. Be thankful for small favors.

4) Another reason it works a little better is that it’s cobbled together from two movies rather than one. Given the fact that Warren hated trying to sync up dubbing with lip movements, he felt compelled to remove all conversation scenes and keep only scenes of a primarily visual nature. When he was doing this with only one movie, you got lots of inserts. When he had two, there were much fewer. The fewer scenes Jerry Warren himself directed, the better.

5) Of course, given that two different movies were cobbled together (HOUSE OF TERROR and THE AZTEC MUMMY, the latter of which he had already extensively pillaged for ATTACK OF THE MAYAN MUMMY), the resulting plot is loopy and confused. One of the more amusing things in this regard is to see how he figures out to kill almost all of the major characters from THE AZTEC MUMMY footage in order to keep us wondering why none of them appear in the second half of the movie, which is mostly made up of footage from HOUSE OF TERROR.

6) In some ways, I have to admire his techniques for getting around the dubbing problem. If he has to dub in dialogue, he almost always has the person who is talking either a) not onscreen, b) with his back turned to the viewer, or c) in the dark so you can’t see his lips. Every once in a while he gets amitious and actually tries to dub words to moving lips; I think this happens with about ten words during the course of the movie.

7) It would be interesting to write a list sometime of pieces of footage that popped up repeatedly in different movies. The footage of the sacrificial ceremony from THE AZTEC MUMMY appears here once again; that footage also popped up in the sequels to THE AZTEC MUMMY as well as ATTACK OF THE MAYAN MUMMY.

8) Believe it or not, I think there’s a King Kong reference in the movie. Now, I can buy King Kong carrying a beautiful woman up the side of a building; it’s a little harder to swallow if it’s a werewolf, even if he’s being chased by German “Tin Tan” Valdes.

9) For the record, this movie has the worst moment of editing I’ve seen since EL BAUL MACABRO (where the scene clipboard actually makes it to the final footage), and that’s a scene where we see Lon Chaney Jr. in a cell. He sits down and waits. The scene then cuts to an aerial view of a big city while jazzy music plays. Then the scene cuts to…well, I’ll let you see for yourself. If you’re like me, your jaw will drop.

10) In the lab scene, there is a machine with three clear man-sized tubes that revolves like a merry-go-round. Someday, I hope to find out just what that thing is supposed to do.

FOR LOVE OR MURDER (1970)
aka KEMEK
Article 2097 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-12-2006
Posting Date: 5-10-2007
Directed by Theodore Gershuny
Featuring Alexandra Stewart, David Hedison, Mary Woronov

A man and a private detective find a woman who knows the truth about the death of the man’s ex-wife. The story involves a dead scientist, a missing wristwatch, and experimental drugs.

With an IMDB rating of 3.0 at the time of this writing, it seems quite clear to me that this movie is quite disliked in certain quarters, and I can fully understand why; the story makes it sound like it should be an exciting mystery-thriller, and the presence of cult favorite Mary Woronov seems to promise something in the way of low budget exploitation fun. Instead, it feels like some sort of arthouse film; slow-moving and ponderous with a curious soundtrack mixing Motown and modern jazz. It’s not quite as indecipherable as some people make it out to be, but it is singularly uncompelling enough to give no impetus to the viewer to try to sort it out. It’s all very detached; it plays like a character piece, but none of the characters ever really come to life as people. The fantastic aspect of the movie is in the presence of the experimental drugs, and they really don’t play much into the story line when all is said and done.

FINIAN’S RAINBOW (1968)
Article 2073 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-17-2006
Posting Date: 4-16-2007
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Featuring Fred Astaire, Petula Clark, Tommy Steele

An Irishman comes to the small town of Rainbow Valley to bury a pot of gold (stolen from a leprachaun) near Fort Knox, in the hope that it will produce more gold. He ends up having to contend with his nemesis, the leprechaun who wants his pot of gold back and is slowly turning mortal, and a corrupt senator who is trying to seize the land in the town.

This movie was based on a 1947 Broadway musical that took twenty years to finally make it to the silver screen; this was due to the fact that those studios who were interested in adapting it to the screen wanted to make changes to the story (the themes of racism were ahead of their time and considered too hot to handle), but the writers held out until a faithful version could be made. By the time the movie was made, the themes were no longer controversial, but time had also rendered some of it quaint and a little dated.

Nevertheless, I found the movie thoroughly enjoyable. The opening scenes in which Fred Astaire and Petula Clark are seen walking against a backdrop of beautiful landscapes and famous sites (including the Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore) are a form of cinematic magic that fires the imagination and prepares one for the magical events that follow. Fred Astaire was in his late sixties at the time, and even though he keeps his dancing quite simple, he still remains light on his feet and engaging throughout. The movie is also filled with top-notch songs and people who can actually sing (two things that DOCTOR DOLITTLE could have used), with Petula Clark and Don Francks performing beautifully, but Tommy Steele (as the leprechaun) doesn’t always manage to keep on the right side of annoying. Barbara Hancock is wonderful as a deaf and dumb girl (who communicates through dance, an appropriate conceit for a musical). Keenan Wynn almost steals the movie (he would have if Fred Astaire hadn’t been present) as the racist, pompous Senator who is turned black to learn the other side of his racist ways; unfortunately, his makeup is not particularly convincing in many of the scenes. The use of language is stunning in this movie; you can hear the music of the Irish lilt, and it is loaded with memorable lines. It’s a bit too long, though, and the plot gets confused at times, but there’s a lot of real magic here, and it’s become one of my favorite movie musicals.