A FLORIDA ENCHANTMENT (1914)
Article 5382 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-28-2017
Directed by Sidney Drew
Featuring Sidney Drew, Edith Storey, Charles Kent
Country: USA
What it is: Gender bending comedy

A woman comes to Florida to visit friends and visit her fiance. She discovers a casket with four seeds that can change the sex of the people who consume them. When she feels neglected by her fiance, she decides to take one herself…

What most impresses me about this unusual silent fantasy is that it often goes for the subtle rather than the obvious, and its greatest strength is the performance of Edith Storey. After her character takes one of the seeds, she may never quite end up looking convincing as a man, but she sells the transformation through the use of body language, gesture and acting. I also like the fact that it mostly avoids the slapstick route; instead the main character realizes the problems the sex change would cause, and to that end, sets up a situation where she fakes her own death and takes on a new identity. The slapstick antics are largely confined to the black characters; she changes her black maid to a black valet, and that character goes wild. Because of the gender-bending, it flirts with homosexuality and lesbianism in a way that is pretty rare for films of this era, which makes it pretty sophisticated in some ways. However, it’s not so sophisticated that it allows the black characters to be played by blacks; they’re all white actors in blackface. And I’m also not surprised by the cop-out ending; I would have liked to see the situations resolved in a way that doesn’t happen here. All in all, this is one of those movies that is very interesting, but not entirely effective.

FELIX THE CAT WOOS WHOOPEE (1928)
Article 5371 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-15-2017
Directed by Otto Messmer
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Felix the Cat cartoon

Felix the Cat is having a high old time at the Whoopee Club, unaware that his wife is angrily waiting at home with a rolling pin. And soon Felix makes his way out of the club and heads home…

The plot of this cartoon sounds like a hoary old comic situation that’s been done many times, but plot isn’t really that important in a Felix the Cat cartoon; it’s what happens outside of the plot that’s entertaining. In this case, most of the fun happens while Felix is on his way home, and since he’s fairly lubricated, he finds himself at the mercy of his hallucinations, which include things like traffic cops who attack with their buttons and street lamps that turn into dragons. The twenties were not a great time for cartoons, but the Felix ones are my favorite from that era; his penchant for playing around with the unreality of animation is appealing. This isn’t one of his best, but it is fun; I particularly like some of the weird monsters he dreams up.

FROM MORN TO MIDNIGHT (1920)
aka Von morgens bis mitternacht
Article 5368 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-9-2017
Directed by Karl Heinz Martin
Featuring Ernst Deutsch, Erna Morena, Roma Bahn
Country: Germany
What it is: An expressionistic nightmare

A bank clerk is seduced by the lure of wealth, embezzles money, and leaves for the city, where he undergoes an odyssey of self-discovery.

There aren’t very many movies that you can place next to THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and come away with the conclusion that CALIGARI is the one that is stylistically more realistic. This is one. The sets are so twisted, the acting style so stylized, and the general tone of the movie so bizarre that I’m almost tempted to agree with Walt Lee when he attributes the fantastic content of this movie as being the result of the style. However, when you get down to it, there’s only one element of the plot that lapses into the fantastic, and that’s that our protagonist keeps seeing the face of Death in various women. It’s based on a radical stage play from 1912, and I find it almost perverse that a silent version of a stage play would abjure title cards, but it tries to tell the story in purely visual terms. It doesn’t quite work; I had to find a plot description to figure out what was going on in the story. My print is in very poor condition; it’s jittery and washed out, but somehow, that just enhances the nightmarish feel of the whole experience. Reportedly, this was never released in Germany but somehow found life in Japan, and it was believed lost for many years. It’s worth seeing, if for no other reason to see how outlandish expressionism could get.

FILM EXERCISE # 4 (1944)
aka Fourth Film
Article 5270 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-13-2016
Directed by John Whitney Sr. and James Whitney
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Experimental film

Shapes move around while sound effects play.

During the mid-forties, John Whitney Sr. and his son, James Whitney made five film exercises numbered one through five. For some reason, IMDB sees fit to list these five movies as only three; the second and third movies are combined, as are the fourth and fifth. I don’t know if this reflects how they were first shown; all I know is that though I could find the fourth movie, I’ve not been able to locate the fifth. However, since the Walt Lee guide only specifies the fourth, that’s all I need for my review.

Once again, the fantastic content is the non-realistic nature of a movie featuring abstract images, though the sound effects on the soundtrack do sound like ones you’d expect from science fiction movies of the fifties. However, watching abstract images move around to sound effects isn’t really all that exciting, and though the film runs close to seven minutes, it simply doesn’t do enough with the idea to hold the attention for that length. In short, this one is rather dull. I’ll probably be watching other movies from these film-makers, but I hope they’re more engaging. And, given that the title of one of their movies is CELERY STALKS AT MIDNIGHT, I assume that somewhere in their hearts lies a sense of humor.

FLEUR DE FOUGERE (1949)
aka Flower of the Fern
Article 5216 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-28-2016
Directed by Wladyslaw Starewicz
Voice cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Animated fairy tale

A young boy seeks a flower in an enchanted forest that will grant him his greatest wish; to meet Cinderella.

Since the copy I found of this one was in French without English subtitles, I had a little trouble following the story until I read a plot summary afterwards. However, it doesn’t really matter; all you really need to know is that it is the work of Wladyslaw Starewicz, who, with every work I see of his, seems destined to be in my opinion the single finest animator who ever lived. He still dabbles in the insects that were his initial subjects for animation, but in this one, there are all manners of creatures, as well as humans. We see trees coming to life and chasing the main character, mushrooms and pine cones sprouting faces and singing, various animals interacting at a banquet… quite frankly, I’m amazed at his creativity. He has a way of transporting you to other worlds which in some ways seem as real as our own. This is a lovely film.

FAUST AND MEPHISTOPHELES (1903)
aka Faust et Mephistopheles
Article 5210 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-21-2016
Directed by Alice Guy
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Two minutes of the story

Faust makes a deal with the devil that ends up doing little more than tormenting him. Can a woman with a cross save him?

Alice Guy didn’t try to emulate George Melies all that often, which is understandable, because she really didn’t seem to capture the sense of fun that Melies had with his work. She does, however, try to tell a variation of the Faust story… or as much of a variation as she can manage in a two-minute running time. It mostly consists of the signing of the pact, people being turned into other people and a sudden happy ending. It’s cute and moves fast, but it’s not really all that enjoyable and the story doesn’t amount to much. There’s no dancing ladies… but no tumbling imps, either.

I FANTASTICI 3 $UPERMEN (1967)
aka The Three Fantastic Supermen
Article 5186 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-19-2016
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini
Featuring Tony Kendall, Brad Harris, Aldo Canti
Country: Yugoslavia / Italy / West Germany / France
What it is: Superhero shenanigans

An FBI agent teams with two old friends who have become supercrooks to form a crimefighting team known as the Three Fantastic Supermen. They take on counterfeiting plot that is also able to create counterfeit people.

My copy of this movie is in Italian without subtitles… and you know, I didn’t really care. It became obvious to me early on that the appeal of the movie wasn’t going to be the plot subtleties (and the general gist of the plot is pretty easy to follow), but in catching the looney energy of the athletic action sequences. As a whole, it comes across as something of a cross between the “Batman” TV series of the sixties and a James Bond movie with an emphasis on comedy. The stuntwork was actually pretty impressive, and it did keep me grinning throughout. The three supermen are bulletproof in their costumes, and their weapon of choice seems to be a metal ball on a string. I really enjoyed this one, though from some of the reviews on IMDB, I gather there is an English dubbed version out there, and I suspect it detracts from the fun.

45 MINUTES FROM HOLLYWOOD (1926)
Article 5116 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-24-2016
Directed by Fred Guiol
Featuring Glenn Tryon, Charlotte Mineau, Jack Rube Clifford
Country: USA
What it is: Slapstick comedy

A young man goes to Hollywood to pay off a mortgage, but he is robbed when he ends up running into a bank robber dressed as a woman.

Let’s get the fantastic content out of the way first. After having seen this short, I had to go back to the Don Willis book to see what the fantastic content was supposed to have been, and it was supposed to have featured dinosaurs at some point. If it does, it’s in a sequence that is missing from the print I saw. The only point where I think it might have occurred is during a tour of Hollywood in which we see footage of some famous Hollywood personalities, such as Theda Bara and the Our Gang kids. If my print is complete, than this is a false alarm.

As for the short itself, it’s probably most famous as an early pairing of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, though not as a team. Stan Laurel plays a starving actor who bears an uncanny resemblance to James Finlayson, while Hardy plays a hotel detective. As far as I can tell, they don’t appear in any scenes together. Most of the comic antics involve Glenn Tryon, and they’re not particularly good; Ollie gives the most memorable performance here, and it’s a supporting role. I have to admit to having been disappointed with this one, but I went into it expecting a typical pairing of Laurel and Hardy, and that’s not what I got.

NOTE I have since discovered that my print was indeed missing footage. However, the dinosaur is so fleeting and distant, you’ll be lucky if you find it.

THE FATAL HOUR (1940)
Article 5115 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-23-2016
Directed by William Nigh
Featuring Boris Karloff, Marjorie Reynolds, Grant Withers
Country: USA
What it is: Mystery

Mr. Wong helps Captain Street investigate the murder of a fellow cop who was investigating a smuggling racket.

I have a copy of this movie in a fifty-movie megapack from Treeline called “Horror Classics”, but it doesn’t belong; it’s clearly a mystery, and never even nudges into horror. It does nudge into science fiction, however; one of the murders involves a “radio remote”, which can work from 200 feet away from the radio, and I suspect this was beyond the technology of the time. The use of this gimmick is certainly the most novel thing about this movie; the rest of it is a poorly written compendium of cliches and sometimes embarrassingly bad dialogue. Karloff does what he can with what he is given to work with, but far too much time is spent on the byplay between Grant Withers’ cranky cop and the intrusive female reporter played by Marjorie Reynolds. I’ve only seen one other movie in the Mr. Wong series for these reviews, and that one was superior to this one.

THE FORCE BEYOND (1978)
Article 5099 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-5-2016
Directed by William Sachs
Featuring Orson Welles, Donn Davison, Rosko
Country: USA
What it is: UFO documentary

Evidence is presented for the existence of UFOs.

Here’s another documentary about UFOs, and for good measure, it has some segments on Bigfoot, the attempts to use psychics to find out about the lost continent of Atlantis, and the Bermuda Triangle; only the latter really connects in any real way to the main thrust of the movie. Movies like this were a dime a dozen in the seventies, and most of them were shot in the same dreary way. I’ve seen more of them than I care to mention, but I have to credit director William Sachs for his handling of this one; he actually seems to be going out of his way to make the presentation interesting. This includes such clever touches as incorporating newsreel footage into the movie (Orson Welles appears in this movie only in footage making a quote concerning the “War of the Worlds” scare), arty presentation tricks (such as showing a car driving to a UFO conference while overlapping talks from the conference play over the soundtrack), and keeping the interviews quick and to the point; once one is finished he quickly switches to the next sequence. Is it convincing? Not particularly; in fact, in some of the vaunted footage I can’t see any of the UFOs that are supposed to be in them. Nor does its tendency to jump back and forth between scenes help with the movie’s coherence. It is, however, one of the more creatively mounted UFO documentaries I’ve encountered, and to my mind, that makes it one of the better ones.