F.P.1 DOESN’T ANSWER (1933)
Article #479 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-7-2002
Posting date: 11-30-2002

A construction company builds a floating platform in the ocean, only to find it sabotaged by rival competitors.

This German science fiction epic was made in three different languages; an English, a German, and a French version. This is the English version, and I’m glad I had a chance to see it first; I once tackled one of the other versions, but had trouble following the plot, especially as the movie opens with what looks for all the world like a robbery as committed by someone who turns out to be one of the good guys; it’s all explained in the English version. Conrad Veidt is on hand in this one, and it’s a fairly entertaining movie with some quite interesting characters.

FIVE (1951)
Article #468 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-26-2002
Posting date: 11-19-2002

Several survivors gather together near an isolated house and try to survive after nuclear war.

The Granddaddy of all nuclear war survival films, and later movies such as ON THE BEACH; THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL; and (especially) THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED all owe a bit of a debt to this one. Written by Arch Oboler of radio fame, it has a lot of talk, but the talk is fascinating, tragic, touching, and always holds my attention; I attribute this to Oboler’s radio experience, where he surely learned how to make conversation interesting. There’s even a number of memorable visual images scattered throughout the film. Plotwise, it is a little predictable; if someone gave you a list and a description of the survivors and told you how many of them would be alive at the end, you’d probably be able to figure out who without any problem. Incidentally, the title could be SIX, as we actually have a sixth character who plays into the action. Whatever flaws this movie has, it is powerful and memorable.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1949)
Article #467 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-25-2002
Posting date: 11-18-2002

Sir Roderick Usher discovers that a curse has been placed upon his house.

After an introduction in which several men stand around talking about scary stories, one of them decides to read a Poe story to the rest. What follows is about thirty minutes of a plot that involves an old hag and a severed head, and I wouldn’t blame anyone who switches this one off in disgust at this point and wonders what any of this has to do with the actual Poe story (not that I actually expect every movie adaptation to be an accurate adaptation of its source, but if somebody is reading the story out of a book in the movie, you’d expect it to be more faithful). Don’t worry; the movie jumps back to the original story shortly after the halfway point, and follows it pretty closely from that point, only with the earlier subplot layered onto it. It feels for all the world like a short that was clumsily expanded to a feature length movie. There are some good moments, and much that is less so, and there are far too many “meaningful” shots of the severed head. I don’t think this movie really provides much competition against either the silent Epstein version or the Price/Corman version. It’s a bit of a curiosity that is more likely to elicit shrugs than scares.

FRANKENSTEIN (1910)
Article #456 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-14-2002
Posting date: 11-7-2002

Frankenstein tries to create a perfect human being but ends up creating a monster.

Anybody who has seen the famous still of Charles Ogle in the role of the monster has gotten a better look at the creature than you get in the movie. Pretty basic retelling of the legend, though the ending strays quite a ways from any of the other versions of the story and is probably far more convenient than sensible; the doctor gets off scot-free. The main plus here is an excellent soundtrack, which adds immeasurably to the proceedings.

THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK (1941)
Article #445 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-3-2002
Posting date: 10-27-2002

An immigrant’s hopes of making it big in the United States are dashed when he is disfigured in a fire. His scarred face makes him unemployable, and he eventually turns to crime.

Once again we have a movie that gets lumped into horror but really doesn’t belong there; even though his face is horribly scarred (you never get a good look at it), Janos Stavos is certainly no monster, nor does this crime drama ever attempt to be a horror movie. Instead, it provides a top-notch vehicle for Peter Lorre, and he is fantastic in this movie; the scenes where he’s a gangster are not so surprising as the opening ones, in which he is a naive immigrant, giddy and excited at his adventure in coming to America and hoping for great things. The story is not entirely convincing, but with Lorre leading the way, it’s very easy to get caught up in the story and to not notice the flaws. Actually, the movie looks very nice for what was apperently a very inexpensive production. I saw the movie years ago on my local Creature Feature, and the final scenes in the desert have stayed with me ever since. It was directed by Robert Florey.

FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE (1953)
Article #418 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-7-2002
Posting date: 9-30-2002

When a scientist in love with a woman loses her to his best friend, he creates a duplicate of her for himself.

Practically every plot description I’ve seen of this movie tells a bit more of the plot than I have above, and I think they give away too much. I do know that if you know in advance certain plot points, the first part of the movie seems interminable; as it is, this early Hammer film (before they turned to horror) has more running time than story, the latter of which would neatly fill a half-hour of “The Twilight Zone.” The movie tries to flesh out the story by concentrating on character, which I believe is the proper strategy in this case, but it never really goes far enough; the characters never become compellingly interesting people, and instead you’re left with too many scenes that go on too long, too much unnecessary narration, and too many plot points that are unnecessarily repeated. It’s certainly not your conventional science fiction story, but it’s also not a success, IMO; only a nice try.

THE FURY OF HERCULES (1961)
Article #268 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-9-2001
Posting date: 4-24-2002

Hercules battles sinister court intrigue in ancient times. To do so, he relies on his political savvy, his diplomatic tact, and his—nah, he throws people around like rag dolls.

More sword-and-sandal fun for all, with Brad Harris as Hercules, son of Zeus (to separate him from that imposter Maciste, or Hercules son of Otis). The presence of The Zagreb Opera Ballet in the opening credits should clue you in to the fact that we’re going to have a dance sequence. Hercules even fights elephants this time around. Well, not exactly, but he does look at them in such a way so that they go away without ever entering the same frame as him. There are lots of speeches, some protracted death scenes, and the ever-popular wall of spikes. Hercules wrestles a big cat, knocks down big doors, and lifts a guy over his head and throws him.

Q: How do you tell the bad guys from the good guys in a Sword and Sandal epic?

A: The bad guys wear helmets.

In this one, Hercules has a little friend named Mosquito. Mosquito doesn’t leave with Hercules in the end, though, which is a shame; I think they could have come up with an action comedy series about the exploits of Hercules and Mosquito.

Aren’t these movies fun?

FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE (1940)
(Serial)
Article #204 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-6-2001
Posting date: 2-19-2002

A strange plague that is ravaging the earth turns out to be the work of the evil Emperor Ming. So Flash and his friends return to Mongo to do battle with him.

The third of the Flash Gordon serials does a little recasting in some of the roles; new actresses play Dale Arden and Princess Aura, and a new actor takes the role of Prince Barin. They’re not bad by any means, but I did find that they didn’t look anywhere as distinctive as their predecessors in the series; therefore, I have a lot of trouble telling the characters apart in this outing. There’s still plenty of variety in the story to keep each episode from looking exactly like the others, but it really does feel like a rehash of the first Flash Gordon serial to me; nevertheless, this is still one of the better serials out there, and the opening plot summary crawls show that this serial had a clear influence on STAR WARS.

FROM HELL IT CAME (1957)
Article #190 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-22-2001
Posting date: 2-5-2002

When a South Seas island prince is executed, he comes back to life as a killer tree to exact revenge.

This movie has one of those unfortunate titles that makes it easy to come up with a bad review; just tell the reader where the movie should go back to. To further the problem, the movie itself doesn’t exactly inspire a good review; the story is slow, talky, confusing, and badly acted, and the monster is one of the least spry this side of Kharis. Still, i can’t help but love the monster; the Tabanga suit was designed (though not built nor performed) by Paul Blaisdell, and it has his trademark, “Grr! I’m scary!” expression. I always felt the best way to avoid being killed by this monster was to lie down and force him to pick you up; that should keep him busy for a couple of hours. the strangest aspect of this movie is the attempt by the doctors to find some scientific basis for the existence of the monster, trotting in that magic monster word of the fifties, “radiation”; IMHO, this is one monster that really defies any scientific explanation.

Oh, and as for Tina Carver’s legendary screams in this movie, the last time I heard that sound, I had to clean up after the cat.

Is it my imagination, or have I had more than my share of turkeys lately?

FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER (1958)
Article #189 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-21-2001
Posting date: 2-4-2002

The assistant to a scientist is actually the evil Dr. Frankenstein, and he’s performing hideous experiments under the scientist’s nose.

I approach my discussion of this film with a little trepidation, as I know that it is quite popular among many people I’ve known. Unfortunately, the only real appeal I can find to this movie is in the “so campy it’s good” category; as a genuinely scary movie I think it’s quite awful, despite the fact that the first minute does catch my attention. In order for a movie like this to work for me, I need to believe it on some level, but in order to suspend my disbelief with this one, I’d need a crane. Most of the problems I have revolve around the character of Dr. Frank; I find it unbelievable that he would have secret storage areas in another scientist’s house that nobody but him and his assistant know about, or that the scientist wouldn’t fire him after all the stunts he pulls (such as destroying the scientist’s hard-bought supply of Degenerol) and his constant attempts to seduce the scientist’s daughter. I also consider Donald Murphy’s performance as Dr. Frank to be one of the worst I’ve ever seen. The character doesn’t come across as being deliciously creepy, but as being a creep (and there is a difference); I almost expect to see scenes of him going through the dirty laundry and smelling everyone’s underwear. All in all, I don’t find the movie a great deal of fun; rather, I find it somewhat stupid and more than a little repellent.