FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (1964)
Article #188 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-20-2001
Posting date: 2-3-2002

A giant version of the Frankenstein monster does battle with a burrowing monster known as Baragon.

The fifties and sixties were a bizarre time for Frankenstein and his creations, with several variations on the theme that were quite offbeat. This was one of the strangest, with the heart of the Frankenstein monster being sent to Japan during World War II, where it is on hand for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing a giant version of the Frankenstein monster to grow from it. The monster is basically good, but misunderstood, more a victim than an aggressor, Once again I admire the skillful model work that Toho put into their movies; the scenes of him walking through the city are quite effective. I also like the touches of humor and (possibly) good-natured parody; when the heart is taken away from the scientist at the beginning of the movie, he destroys his own lab in much the same way we’ve known the monster to do so in the Universal movies. Two of my favorite moments are comic in nature, both involving the monster’s hunt for food. The first is where he tosses a tree at a wild boar, and the second is when he digs a pit to catch it and what he catches in its place. It’s colorful and energetic, but ultimately I find it a little dull and disappointing; I prefer the sequel, THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS, even though the English version of this movie excised all references that tied the two movies together. Nick Adams is on hand as one of the scientists.

THE FLYING SAUCER (1950)
Article #187 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-19-2001
Posting date: 2-2-2002

From the title, you’d think this movie would be about visiting aliens from another world. Well, let’s find out.

SPOILERS A-PLENTY AHEAD (If you just want a hint as to what the movie is about, just scan through quickly and look at the words in caps.)

In the SNOW-covered lands of Alaska, there have been sightings of a flying saucer. One old woman is so terrified after seeing one, she turns to the camera and screams, the sounds reverberating back and forth across the SNOW-covered landscape. (You have now seen the good part of the movie).

Our governement decides to investigate the sightings, so they send a hard-drinking playboy to the SNOW-covered wilds of Alaska, along with their own agent, disguised as the playboy’s nurse. They take a long cruise up to Juneau, where we, the viewers, are treated to many shots of the beautiful SNOW-covered scenery.

When they reach the cabin in the middle of a field covered with SNOW, they meet the caretaker, whom nobody has met before and who acts suspicious and speaks with a Russian accent. They don’t suspect he’s a Russian spy sent to kill them and leave their dead bodies in the SNOW. They now embark on their ingenious method of investigating the saucer, which involves waiting around for something to fall into their laps (which gives them ample time to shovel the SNOW, have SNOWball fights, make SNOW angels, build SNOW forts, and try to build a romance). The spy makes some pathetic attempts to knock them off, but someone keeps entering the room and spoiling his plans; apparently he figures he doesn’t have a SNOWball’s chance in hell of knocking them off at the same time.

Eventually, the playboy comes to the conclusion that there is a flaw in their ingenious scheme, so he decides to pursue HIS plan, which is to go to Juneau, get stinking drunk, and wander around from bar to SNOW-covered bar to find old friends. Amazingly, this works, as he encounters a friend who is in the employ of Russian spies who are also hunting for a flying saucer in the SNOW-covered wilds of Alaska. The spies kill the friend, and beat up the playboy, who is left to die but is saved by the nurse when she spots his body, which must have stood out quite well against the milky whiteness of the SNOW.

He recovers and rents a plane which flies for five minutes over MANY ACRES AND ACRES OF SNOW. He finds a shed with a flying saucer in it, and so he flies back the way he came, once again giving us a view of the SAME MANY ACRES OF SNOW we saw on his flight out. He gets back in time to be kidnapped by Russian spies, along with the nurse and the scientist who build the saucer, and they take a long journey in a tunnel that runs under the SNOW-covered mountains. When they’re almost to the shed, the playboy tricks one of the spies into firing his gun, causing an avalanche which drops TONS OF SNOW on the heads of all but one of the spies. The survivor of the spies runs to the shed and takes off in the saucer, not noticing the safety device the scientist had installed (a bomb), which goes off, destroying the spy and the saucer, scattering little pieces of them over the VAST SNOW-COVERED LANDSCAPES OF ALASKA, where there is a plenteous bounty of SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW.

I think you know what the movie is about by now.

FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958)
Article #186 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-18-2001
Posting date: 2-1-2002

A scientist experimenting with telekinetic powers taps into the power from a nearby atomic plant at a military site, and ends up creating a hoard of invisible brain-sucking creatures.

There’s more than one fiend to begin with, and since they’re invisible, of course they don’t have faces. But they do become visible later on, and when they do, they still don’t have faces; they look like disembodied central nervous systems, all brain and spinal cords, and they crawl around like inchworms, or launch themselves like grasshoppers into the air in order to feed on their unsuspecting victims. The movie is a bit uneven, with more dull spots than it really should have, but there are some interesting touches to the story, such as the subplot on how the residents of the area resent the military base because the jets are upsetting the cows so they don’t give as much milk. The romance angle is dull and could have been dispensed with, but once the inchbrains become visible and surround a farmhouse, it turns into kind of a killer brain version of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (and like the zombies in that movie, they’re defeated by shooting them in the brains). There’s lots of great stop-motion work, and some of it is pretty explicit for the time, with the crawling brains expiring in disgusting piles of goo. The attacks are pretty strong stuff, too, even when the brains are still invisible; thank the foley artists who came up with some truly unsettling sound effects for these sequences.

FIDDLERS THREE (1944)
Article #169 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-1-2001
Posting date: 1-15-2002

Three sailors (two men and a woman) find themselves at Stonehenge during a storm, and are magically transported back to the days of ancient Rome, where they encounter the emperor Nero. Comedy ensues.

When I first began this movie watching project, I knew that I’d stumble across a lot of oddities and obscurities that I might otherwise bypass, or that I’d never even known existed in the first place. This British comedy is one of the latter, and when it first popped up on my list, I thought it would be one of those movies that would sit around on the list for years without my being able to come by a copy; instead, I found one almost right off the bat. The movie is okay, but to my mind not particularly memorable, and even though I’ve never heard of him before, it appears that Tommy Trinder (the star of the film) has a certain cult following. The most interesting aspect of this film to me is that it appeared in 1944, the same year as TIME FLIES, another British time travel comedy; sounds like a short-lived trend that sprang up and died a quick death.

Frankly, I’m surprised I even had this much to say about it.

THE FROZEN GHOST (1945)
Article #163 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-26-2001
Posting date: 1-9-2002

A stage hypnotist believes he has gained the power to will people to death when a drunk that was taunting him during one of his performances dies suddenly.

This is our first revisit to the Inner Sanctum since I covered CALLING DR. DEATH some time ago. Boy, they had a wide variety of storylines; that one was about a hypnotist who believes he killed someone, and this one is about a hypnotist who believes he killed someone.

All right, I’m being a little unfair here. Actually, the Lon Chaney Jr. character in DEATH was a physician who used hypnotism instead of the stage hypnotist of GHOST. In fact, this movie uses these same elements in very different ways; in comparing the two movies, it almost feels like one of those creative writing projects where two different people are told to write a screenplay involving hypnotism and a man who thinks he killed someone. (Throw in a third writer, and you might end up with the script for FEAR IN THE NIGHT.)

There’s several familiar faces and names in this one; along with Chaney, we have Evelyn Ankers, Elena Verdugo, Martin Kosleck and Milburn Stone (Doc on “Gunsmoke”). Even though the Inner Sanctum movies bored me when I was a kid, nowadays I enjoy them well enough; they’re the cinematic equivalent of a comfy old pair of slippers you put on when you just want to sit back and relax. Or maybe they’re a little like a visit to McDonald’s; whether you like them or not, at least you know what to expect.

FRIGHT (1956)
Article #162 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-25-2001
Posting date: 1-8-2002

A physician who uses a form of hypnosis finds himself dealing with a woman who is the reincarnation of the mistress of a German prince. When the mistress takes over the woman completely, he tries to find a way to cure her.

Though I wouldn’t exactly call this movie a classic, I think it’s the best movie of W. Lee Wilder’s that I’ve seen to date. Though he’s mostly known for his science fiction movies ( THE SNOW CREATURE, KILLERS FROM SPACE and PHANTOM FROM SPACE), I’ve always found these movies to be poorly constructed and filled with uninteresting characters; in this one, the characters show greater development, which is essential, as character drives this story. There’s a few other movies of his that I will be catching before I finish this project, and I’m a little curious as to what I’ll find. I’m not going to be overly hopeful, though: I’ve not heard good things about THE OMEGANS or the one about the head of Nostradamus.

FEAR IN THE NIGHT (1947)
Article #92 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-16-2001
Posting date: 10-30-2001

A man dreams that he stabs someone in an octagonal room of mirrors and locks the body in a closet, and when he wakes up, he discovers marks on his throat, a strange key in his hand, and blood on his cuff. His policeman brother-in-law tries to convince him it was just a dream, and his search for the house in which the murder took place yields nothing. Then, one day, while trying to find shelter from the rain, he finds himself taking refuge in the house from his dream.

This movie is more of a noir/mystery than a fantastic movie, but it contains certain elements that link it with the horror genre; one is the bizarre dream sequences, and the other has to do with the role hypnotism plays in the story. “Star Trek” fans will of course recognize the dreaming man as DeForest Kelley; his brother-in-law is played by Paul Kelly. This is a pretty good mystery, though I was able to figure out what the explanation would be long before the end of the movie. It was based on the novel “Nightmare” by Cornell Woolrich (the same man responsible for the novel on which THE LEOPARD MAN was based), and the movie would be remade just 9 years later by the same director as NIGHTMARE, with Edward G. Robinson in the Paul Kelly role.

FLASH GORDON’S TRIP TO MARS (1938)
Article #77 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-1-2001
Posting date: 10-15-2001

A deadly ray from outer space is sucking all the Nitron out of the Earth’s atmosphere, which, as we all know, causes horrible storms, because a day without Nitron is like a day without sunshine. (Okay, shoot me now.) Flash Gordon, Dr. Zarkov, and Dale Arden, along with stowaway Happy Hapgood go to Mars, the source of the ray, and there they battle the magic of Queen Azura and Ming the Merciless, on loan from Mongo.

This followup to FLASH GORDON is longer by three episodes, but it doesn’t feel padded; as usual with the Flash Gordon serials, there is actually enough of a story to fill out the whole series. It pretty much captures the feel of the original, and brings back most of the original actors. The action is non-stop, it doesn’t cheat on the cliffhangers, and the costumes are, as usual, fun and outlandish (though they really should have thought twice about putting either Frank Shannon or Richard Alexander in those abbreviated shorts). With Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Donald Kerr, and Ed Wood favorite Kenne Duncan.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928)
(directed by Jean Epstein)
Article #71 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-26-2001
Posting date: 10-9-2001

A man visits the shunned house of Roderick Usher, who obsesses over a painting he is making of his wife.

There were two movies of this title that appeared in 1928; this is the French version directed by Jean Epstein (Luis Bunuel was assistant director), and it’s quite simply one of the most visually stunning movies I’ve seen, and quite reminiscent of Carl Dreyer’s VAMPYR. The plot is secondary; what matters is the wash of unsettling images. It took a second viewing for this movie to have its full effect on me, but I found hypnotic and strangely beautiful, and the recent DVD version has what is essential for any silent film; a masterful soundtrack. It’s definitely worth a look.

A FACE IN THE FOG (1936)
Article #70 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-25-2001
Posting date: 10-8-2001

A hunchback killer known as “The Fiend” has been killing off members of a theatrical troupe using a special gun that shoots frozen poison. When a plucky girl reporter prints a story claiming she can identify “The Fiend”, she finds herself the next target of the killer.

Basically, this is a mystery with slight horror and SF elements, a type of movie very common during the thirties. This one is quite silly, but fun in its hokey way.

The comic relief is provided by Al “Fuzzy” St. John, a comedian from the silent era who would later be most known for playing bewhiskered sidekicks in B-Westerns, and here he plays Elmer, the befuddled photographer. Oddly enough, I can’t decide whether I like him or not, but I am geniuinely amused by some of his shenanigans, and he may well be the best thing in the movie. In fact, I had to rewatch this movie in preparation for writing this MOTD entry, because all I could remember from my first viewing was that Elmer had this impenetrable running joke, which I will now quote. “What’s the difference, as long as you’re healthy!” This line comes out of nowhere, pops up several times, and goes nowhere. Consider yourself prepared.