FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981)
Article 4434 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-29-2014
Directed by John Glen
Featuring Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol
Country: UK
What it is: James Bond movie

James Bond is sent out on a mission to prevent a communication device in a sunken spy ship from falling into enemy hands.

This is the latest movie chronologically from the James Bond series that I’ve seen to date, and I have to admit that one of the biggest impressions it made on me was that it made me realize how much I missed the jazzy scores of the sixties movies from the franchise. There was a time when I didn’t care for those early scores, but after listening to the rather bland and run-of-the-mill scores to the action sequences here, I really noticed how much those jazzy early scores added flavor to the series. Another impression I had of this one is that it concentrates less on interesting and fun side characters and more on the action, and for me, that’s a minus; about the only character I enjoyed was the one played by Topol. If I were a particular fan of the franchise, I’d probably find this one to be acceptable enough, but since I’m not, I was rather bored by this one. There are a few moments I liked; my favorites were the first meeting between Bond and Milos Columbo, the sequence where Bond tries to scale the mountain, and the detente reference near the end of the movie. Beyond that, I didn’t have much use for this one. The gadgetry is the fantastic content in this one, and there’s not a whole lot of it here.

THE FOOD OF THE GODS (1976)
Article 4433 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-28-2014
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Featuring Marjoe Gortner, Pamela Franklin, Ralph Meeker
Country: USA
What it is: Nature run amok, Bert I. Gordon style.

A strange substance is discovered on an island that causes animals to grow to enormous size. Soon the island is overrun by giant critters.

I remember seeing this one at the drive-in when I was a teenager, and the only scene I really remembered was Marjoe Gortner being attacked by a giant chicken. I think the reason this scene stuck with me was because I vividly remember NOT being impressed with it; it seemed pretty obvious that it was just some stagehand pushing a model of a chicken head at the actor, and the illusion that he was really being attacked by a giant chicken never became a reality for me. I do also remember there being lots of giant rats, and also being disappointed that the array of giant critters was pretty limited; outside of the chickens and rats, we have some worms and wasps… and that’s it. I understand why I didn’t remember the latter two; the worms are on for a very limited time, and the wasp effects are so bad (easily the worst in the movie) that I mercifully must have blocked them out. Watching it now, I must admit that some of Bert I. Gordon’s effects are fairly decent, albeit quite sloppy at times. I’m certainly not impressed with this script, which is loaded with cliches, one-dimensional characters, and people acting really stupid. There’s a whole lot of scenes of rats being bloodily blown away, and I really found myself wondering about the treatment of the animals during the making of this movie. I was amused by two touches, though; the first is that the farmhouse in which the characters take refuge actually has a print of “American Gothic” on the wall, and the second is that the credits claim that the movie is based on a “portion” of the H.G. Wells novel of the same name; now there’s truth in advertising for you. No, the movie is hardly what I’d call good, but for all of its flaws, I can’t help but look at the movie and feel a bit of affection for Mr. Gordon and his history of movies with giant creatures and people.

FIVE MINUTES TO LIVE (1961)
aka Door-to-Door Maniac
Article 4432 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-27-2014
Directed by Bill Karn
Featuring Johnny Cash, Donald Woods, Cay Forester
Country: USA
What it is: Crime thriller

A seasoned bank robber partners with a down-on-his-luck hood to pull off a ransom scheme by holding a bank manager’s wife hostage; she will be killed unless he approves a bad check for $70,000 dollars. However, the plan does not run smoothly…

Several years ago Johnny Cash released a three-disc set retrospective of his work in which each of the discs dealt with a theme that he consistently returned to in his musical work. The third disc was entitled “Murder”, and those familiar with his musical output certainly can attest to the fact that he has a knack for singing about criminals and killers. So it makes sense that his first movie role would feature him as a sadistic hood with little respect for human life, and when he’s in the scenes where he’s holding the banker’s wife hostage, we really sense that he’s dangerous and unbalanced. However, there is a real question as to whether he’s unbalanced enough for this movie to qualify as horror, and I don’t think it does (even if one of the alternate titles is DOOR-TO-DOOR MANIAC); he never kills anyone for no reason at all. As for the movie as a whole, I like the central concept, but the script isn’t particularly good, and the direction is often lifeless; when it works, it’s usually the result of the skill of the actors. The movie feature Vic Tayback, (who is very effective as the robber who pairs with Johnny Cash), Ron Howard, and another well-known country artist, Merle Travis.

FEAST OF FLESH (1967)
aka Placer sangriento
Article 4369 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-17-2013
Directed by Emilio Vieyra
Featuring Alberto Candeau, Eduardo Munoz, Ricardo Bauleo
Country: Argentina
What it is: Exploitation horror

A masked fiend controls women with a combination of heroin and weird music; when they overdose, he leaves their dead bodies behind with hypos sticking out of their chests. Police investigate.

There are some points of interest to this one. The murderer is genuinely creepy, and the exploitation elements are pretty daring for its time, especially when you consider the movie was made two years before it was released. The cheap, sleazy style works well with these elements of the movie; unfortunately, it works far less well with the police investigation scenes which make up most of the movie. As a result, there’s a lot of dull stretches in the movie, and sorting out the characters becomes a tiresome chore. Even with that, I quickly picked out the identity of the murderer. I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie has a bit of a cult following (especially among exploitation fans), but I suspect it’s a fairly small one.

FANTOMAS VS. SCOTLAND YARD (1967)
aka Fantomas contre Scotland Yard
Article 4368 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-16-2013
Directed by Andre Hunebelle
Featuring Jean Marais, Louis de Funes, Mylene Demongeot
Country: France / Italy
What it is: Supervillain comedy

Fantamos embarks on a new scheme by which he extorts the rich with a “tax” which they must pay for the right to remain alive. The victims attempt to defeat him by setting a trap for him at a Scottish castle by bringing in his enemies, Juve and Fandor.

This is the last of the three Fantomas movies from the mid-sixties. I remember being blindsided by the first one, since I wasn’t expecting a comedy. I enjoyed the second one more, since I knew what to expect at that point. I’m afraid the disappointment returns with this one, at least partially because this movie blindsided me as well; the first half of this movie is, for all intents and purposes, an “old dark house” movie, with Juve staying in a haunted mansion and becoming the person who keeps finding dead bodies that disappear when he tries to tell anybody else. I will fess up to being fond of “old dark house” movies, but, to my mind, this is a real step down for the characters in question; it’s like trying to imagine James Bond or Superman appearing in one. The humor feels broader, sillier and more desperate as well. The movie does have its moments, I suppose, but I felt less inclined to enjoy them; that’s because the realization came roaring back to me how much I prefer Fantomas and Juve in a much more serious context and as real matches for each other. I will admit, though, that this series does leave behind one intriguing mystery; is Fantomas really a blue-skinned monster of some sort or does he wear masks under his masks? The movies never answer this question.

FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND (1981)
Article 4323 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-1-2013
Directed by Jerry Warren
Featuring Robert Clarke, Steve Brodie, Cameron Mitchell
Country: USA
What it is: Horror hodgepodge of gross ineptitude

Four balloonists find themselves stranded on an island that is being used for unholy experiments.

When I covered 2 + 5 MISSION HYDRA and A*P*E, I mentioned that both films were part of an unholy trio of movies that became notorious initiation standards in a bad movie watching group I ran called “The Exposed Film Society”. This was the third, and it marks the cinematic swan song of Jerry Warren, my own personal choice for the worst director of all time.

Most of Jerry Warren’s movies are what I would classify as snoozefests; they’re long-winded, incoherent, and devoid of interesting events. In the mid-sixties, he discovered the swinging sixties action sequence, and though he proved utterly inept at them, it did at least add a smidgen of interest factor to his work, which became laughingly bad rather than sleep-inducing, and I suppose this might be called an improvement. The movie that resulted at that time was THE WILD WORLD OF BATWOMAN; a lawsuit followed, and it would prove to be Warren’s last film for many years.

I wonder how long the idea for FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND germinated; it has the air of having been cobbled together from fifteen years of story ideas. It’s a very loose remake of the director’s own TEENAGE ZOMBIES, and on top of having zombies (most of whom seem to resemble Elton John), it incorporates the Frankenstein legend, references to the Dracula story, a race of bikini-clab Amazon extraterrestrials, the extension of life, communications from the dead, arty psychedelic touches with Freudian undertones, black magic, Poe obsessions, disembodied brains, and strange pains induced by the mention of other places that is supposed to be similar to telepathy (or so the dialogue tells me). Throw in such touches as an annoying laughing man, a toy devil’s pitchfork that induces vampirism, a rotating pink ammo box and random appearances of the ghost of John Carradine talking about power and the golden thread, and you have a working definition of movie clutter. Trying to make a coherent whole of this mess would have taxed the best writers, directors and editors in the world; with Jerry Warren in all three capacities, the result is some of the most ambitious low-budget ineptitude to make it to the screen. Though the movie has several genre name actors, most of them seem lost and confused, and who can blame them; only Cameron Mitchell seems to maintain focus, and even his character (a captive sea captain mourning his lost Lenore) is so contrived that it’s a losing battle. It’s all topped off with an ending which recycles one of the worst cliches of all time, and the lab fight may be the single worst action sequence of all time.

Yes, I’ve seen it several times; in its own way, it’s something of a marvel. I just make sure not to try and figure it out; that would only give me a headache.

THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW (1972)
Article 4322 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-30-2013
Directed by Pete Walker
Featuring Ray Brooks, Jenny Hanley, Luan Peters
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Homicidal maniac on the loose

A troupe of actors are called together to put together an improvisational show at an old rarely-used theater on a pier. Then someone begins knocking off the actors one by one…

Before I started this series, I’d never even heard of Pete Walker. My first encounter with him was with the movie FRIGHTMARE, a movie so savagely horrific that I mentally marked him as a director to reckon with. This movie marks my fourth encounter with him, and I’m beginning to think that FRIGHTMARE was the exception rather than the rule. The title may be the best thing about it, as it seems to promise sex and mayhem in equal doses; as it is, there’s a lot more flesh than blood here, and more of people standing around talking than either one of them. The movie suffers from a bevy of uninteresting characters, a general lack of suspense, and a sense of obviousness; you’ll probably be connecting the dots a lot earlier than the movie does if you haven’t already been lulled into a state of apathy. This is the most disappointing movie of Walker’s that I’ve seen, but then again, it’s also the earliest one of his that I’ve seen; perhaps he needed to hone his craft a bit.

FLESH AND SPIRIT (1922)
Article 4280 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-3-2013
Directed by Joseph Levering
Featuring Belle Bennett, Walter Ringham, Denton Vane
Country: USA
What it is: The reformation of an atheist

An atheistic scientist adopts a young orphan girl, but neglects his fiancee and refuses to allow her to teach the young girl about God.

One of the rules of writing that I occasionally encounter in books that try to teach you how to do such a thing is that you should give your characters names that have specific meanings to reflect the themes you want to express. Personally, I’ve always looked askance at this rule, as it seems to me that you run the risk of throwing subtlety to the wind if you do so. This movie provides one of those examples; its theme is pretty obvious to begin with, but to give the name of “Truth” to the devout and neglected fiancee is laying it on fairly thick, especially when the plot turns on the atheist seeing the ghost of his deceased fiancee for the first time. That being said, the movie is at least efficient and fairly well-made; it’s something of a cross between A CHRISTMAS CAROL and THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, and the relationship between the atheist and the little girl is remarkably similar to the relationship between the little girl and her father in the latter movie. The ghost provides the fantastic content, and once you figure out the main conflict, the movie becomes quite predictable; perhaps the biggest surprise is that it allows the atheist to have some positive qualities at all, considering how it stacks the deck in other regards.

• LA FEE PRINTEMPS (1902)
  aka The Spring Fairy
  Article 4268 by Dave Sindelar
  Date: 7-18-2013
  Directed by Segundo de Chomon
  Cast unknown
  Country: France
  What it is: Fantasy trick film

  In the dead of winter, a couple offers food and shelter to a passing old woman. But perhaps this old woman is more than she seems…

  I really find it interesting to compare the works of Segundo de Chomon with those of Georges Melies. There are times where Chomon’s works seem to be little more than imitations of Melies’s movies, and there are times where he even outdoes Melies in terms of strangeness. There are also moments where he displays a lyrical quality that seems to lie outside of the Melies universe entirely, and this movie is one of those. I like little touches such as the fact when the fairy first appears, she is the only person in the scene to be hand-tinted, giving her a special quality. The scene where the winter landscape is transformed into a spring landscape, and where the fairy magically gathers flowers are handled with a grace that does not break the lyrical mood of the piece; Melies would most likely have taken the opportunity to show off more at the expense of the mood. Ultimately, this is a satisfying little trick film that also manages to tell a coherent little story as well.

FAUST (1910)
Article 4188 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-27-2013
Directed by Enrico Guazzoni
Featuring Ugo Bazzini, Alfredo Bracci, Giuseppe Gambardella
Country: Italy
What it is: Dealings with the devil

Faust sells his soul to the devil for youth and pleasure, and falls for the beautiful Marguerite.

I’m making some guesses on the credits above; the IMDB listing for this has a problem because it mixes up credits for three different productions of the story, and since this is the Italian version from Cines, I picked out the Italian names from the cast, and hope I got it right. It’s probably the most elaborate telling of the story I’ve encountered that predates Murnau’s take on the story. Beside that, I’d say the most striking facet of this version is the extreme theatricality of the acting, especially from the actor playing Mephistopheles; if this weren’t a silent movie, I’m sure all the actors would be shouting their lines at the top of their lungs to reach the rafters. Unfortunately, the theatricality becomes more annoying than fun, and given the fact that the production is somewhat flat, this tends to make it one of the less appealing versions of the story. I wonder what the other 1910 versions of the story were like.