THE GHOST OF ROSY TAYLOR (1918)
Article 4127 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-9-2013
Directed by Edward Sloman and Henry King
Featuring Mary Miles Minter, Allan Forrest, George Periolat
Country: USA
What it is: Odd drama/mystery

A woman is startled to discover that the maid she hired to clean her house actually died several weeks ago… but the house is being tended and cleaned while she is out. She believes it may be the ghost of the maid…but there’s another explanation…

One thing I will give this movie; it throws in the fantastic content so quickly and decisively in the opening scenes that, for a few fleeting minutes, you’re hoping that this will turn out to be a real ghost story. Of course, the movie eventually shifts into the explanation of the ghostly actions of this sequence, but even when it reaches this point, I still admired the movie’s set-up of its premise. The rest of this story verges on the depressing, as it tells the tale of a young woman who, after having been taken away from American and raised in France as a child, suddenly finds herself without a family, money, stranded back in America, and with no means of survival. Things continue to deteriorate, but at least the movie alleviates some of this with touches of humor and acts of kindness from certain characters. The story ultimately relies on a some pretty outrageous coincidences, but that’s forgivable; in fact, when all is said and done, the movie is rather fun. I only wish the print I saw was in better shape, but sometimes we have to be satisfied that these movies still exist at all.

GOING TO BED UNDER DIFFICULTIES (1900)
aka Le deshabillage impossible
Article 4124 by Dave Sindelar
Date:1-5-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Comic trick film

A man’s attempt to retire for the night is hampered by the magical appearance of new pieces of clothing on him as he tries to undress.

Sometimes I get the feeling that Melies’s sense of humor was sharpest in his earlier films; this surreal piece of absurdity is perhaps his single funniest film. What makes it work is that the man becomes more frantic and desperate as new clothes constantly materialize on him; he can’t even ignore them and go to sleep because his bed vanishes as well. Perhaps it’s fitting as well that the movie has no ending; this man will be removing clothes forever. It’s not surprising that this silly little short engendered a few imitations from other directors.

LA GLACE A TROIS FACES (1927)
aka The Three-Sided Mirror
Article 4123 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-3-2013
Directed by Jean Epstein
Featuring Jeanne Helbling, Suzy Pierson, Olga Day
Country: France
What it is: Psychological avant-garde drama

The story of a man and his affairs with three women is told.

Let’s get the fantastic content out of the way first. This is one of those cases where it’s not embedded in the plot, but rather, in the distorted cinematic styles employed in the movie. The Walt Lee guide describes them as “dynamic distortions of reality”, and that’s about as good a way to describe it as any; we often see double and triple exposures that reflect the mental life of a particular character, and this at least nudges up against the genre of fantasy.

It does make for some fascinating viewing. Director Jean Epstein had a real talent for capturing telling facial expressions and expressive movements that can often tell volumes about a character while keeping the dialogue (or, in the case of this silent movie, title cards) to a minimum. It is sometimes elusive and difficult, but that’s not entirely unexpected. Still, one has to have a taste for this sort of thing, and I suspect fans of fantastic cinema will probably prefer to stick with his version of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER.

GET ALONG LITTLE ZOMBIE (1946)
Short
Article 4090 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-26-2012
Directed by Edward Bernds
Featuring Hugh Herbert, Christine McIntyre, Dick Curtis
Country: USA
What it is: Haunted house comedy short

A real estate salesman accidentally kisses another man’s wife, enraging the woman’s husband. Later, he has an appointment to show a spooky house to a couple, not knowing they’re the same people he just offended. Furthermore, the creepy caretakers of the house plan to scare them all off.

The comedy stylings of Hugh Herbert are apparently an acquired taste, but fortunately, I quite like him myself, and he did give me the biggest laugh here. Still, the real strength of this short is the energetic direction from Edward Bernds, who keeps things moving quickly. There’s the obligatory scared black chauffeur of the era, but at least Dudley Dickerson helps keep the energy up. One of the nicer things in this one is that there is a real monster running around; he’s played by professional boxer Jack Roper, and he’s scary enough. This is supposed to be one of Herbert’s better shorts, and I found it quite entertaining.

GOOFY GHOSTS (1928)
Article 4082 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-18-2012
Directed by Harold Beaudine
Featuring Jimmie Adams, Lorraine McLean, Billy Engle
Country: USA
What it is: Old Dark House, slapstick short style

A man, his wife, and their dog visit an uncle, who is being terrorized by a villain known as the Skull.

I’ve seen lots of “old dark house” movies, but I’ve rarely seen ones reduced to a slapstick short in this manner before. Which is not to say that I haven’t seen the idea in comic shorts before; shorts by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd come to mind. But this one is done in the manic “Keystone Kops” style, with non-stop slapstick shtick and frantic behavior, and that makes it a little bit different. My copy is in the accelerated speed that I’ve come to recognize as usually being a sign that the projection speed hasn’t been adjusted, but it’s the type of short that actually benefits from that; since it’s working in a farcical mode, the extra energy is a plus. If you’re not a fan of slapstick, this isn’t likely to appeal to you. It does have a few fun moments; the sequence where various parties try to get a hold of a bag of money suspended on a chandelier is pretty amusing, and a sequence where the villain tries to grab the bag of money out the hand of the uncle benefits from the speedy timing. On top of the villain in the skull mask, we have some people mistaken for ghosts because sheets are thrown over them to add to the faked fantastic content. It’s disposable, of course, but I will say this much; the scared black manservant cliche present here is much less offensive when all of the characters are acting with the same manic “frightened out of our wits” behavior.

HET GOUDEN FEESTMAAL (1910)
aka The Golden Supper
Article 4066 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-20-2012
Directed by D.W. Griffith
Featuring Dorothy West, Charles West, Edwin August
Country: USA
What it is: Romance of noble sacrifice

Two men love the same women. She marries one of them, but falls ill and dies. Her husband, heartbroken, leaves to become a monk. However, the other man discovers that she is not really dead…

The putative reason for the inclusion of this title into the realms of fantastic cinema is that it involves one of the classic horror motifs, that of premature burial. However, the horror of that particular concept has to do with the buried one’s discovery they have been entombed and forgotten, with little chance of escape. However, this short simply doesn’t go in that direction; the other man is present when she stirs in the tomb, and he takes her out long before any terror of premature burial takes place, thus somewhat marginalizing it in terms of its fantastic content. That being said, this is a typical D.W. Griffith short of the period, though it does display his usual skill at editing and storytelling.

THE GOOD SHEPHERDESS AND THE EVIL PRINCESS (1908)
aka La bonne bergere et la mouvaise princesse
Article 4050 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-5-2012
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Good and evil

A generous and lovely shepherdess is the target of an abusive princess, no doubt jealous of her beauty. Both are visited by a mystical angel who takes them to fantasy worlds, though their respective fates are very different.

I’ve been recently watching a lot of the early silents in another movie-viewing project I’m engaged in, and I watched quite a few of Melies’s shorts. I got the overall impression during this particular year that Melies was trying to get away from his usual approach somewhat and attempting to tell more straightforward and less special-effects laden stories. Unfortunately, because he never quite changed his directorial style to accommodate, this resulted in some of the dullest movies of his career. This one really isn’t an exception; it’s mostly dull and obvious, and it only gets fun when the evil princess is terrorized by hellish visions in the ruins of a castle (including the ever-present tumbling imps), and that’s largely because it’s the most typically Meliesian scene in the movie. One can see here why he fell out of favor.

GHOST IN THE NOONDAY SUN (1973)
Article 3964 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-27-2012
Directed by Peter Medak and Spike Milligan
Featuring Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Anthony Franciosa
Country: UK
What it is: Pirate comedy

A cook on a pirate ship is taken on an excursion to bury treasure; he kills the captain and the other crew members on the excursion, and returns to the ship to take over the captain’s place, as he is the only one who knows where the treasure is buried. However, the map, written in disappearing ink, vanishes, and he ends up kidnapping a young boy who he believes can see ghosts in the hope that he can use him to locate the ghost of the dead captain and recover the treasure.

Reportedly, Peter Sellers suffered from heart problems, a streak of egotism and erratic behavior. He also wasn’t careful in his choice of material, and during the first half of the seventies, his career was at a low point for all of these reasons. Therefore, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from this movie, especially when I heard it sat on the shelf for almost ten years before being released. Watching it, I realized its greatest problem was a simple one; it just wasn’t funny. The attempted jokes are dead on arrival, and though the movie makes some stylistic attempts to add to the humor (such as framing the first five minutes as a silent comedy), it does so unsuccessfully. In truth, the best thing I can say about this movie is that it managed to keep from annoying me, and I’d say the main reason for this is that Sellers was a sharp enough actor to keep the lack of laughs from causing him to engage in the type of desperate shtick that would make this kind of movie painful; he remains on an even keel throughout. In fact, truth to tell, none of the actors embarrass themselves here. As a result, the movie never becomes unwatchable. However, there is one thing that really did disappoint me, though I should have suspected it; the fantastic content that the movie promises is painfully slight, and the movie is sure to disappoint anyone hoping for something more.

THE GHOST TRAIN (1931)
Article 3955 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-17-2012
Directed by Walter Forde
Featuring Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Ann Todd
Country: UK
What it is: Another ghost train movie

Several people get stranded in a remote train station during a storm. The station seems to be haunted by a ghost train as well.

I’m stretching things a bit to include this one; this early talkie only partially exists, and most of the reels that still exist lack the soundtrack. Fortunately, since I’ve seen two other versions of this particular story, I wasn’t exactly baffled by what I saw, but I do suspect that anyone who wasn’t familiar with the story would have trouble sorting it out. Still, with what little sound I did have to go on, I’ve come to the conclusion that one definite flaw of the story itself is it makes a rather annoying comic character the center of the action; even if the actor playing him is decent, his actions make him more irritating than funny. Fortunately, the final reel is one of the surviving reels, and it’s also one of the only two that has sound, so the climax of the story (which is pretty good) is intact. Nonetheless, I don’t think it holds a candle to the 1927 version of the movie, which for me is the most impressive of the lot.

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS (1977)
Article 3880 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-20-2012
Posting Date: 3-29-2012
Directed by Peter R. Hunt
Featuring Richard Harris, Catherine Schell, Norman Shelley
Country: UK / Belgium
What it is: Another take on the Swift satire

Gulliver becomes a ship’s surgeon, but after a storm, he is stranded in the land of Lilliput, where everyone is tiny and he’s a giant.

To its credit, this take on Jonathan Swift’s famous book doesn’t completely eliminate the satire, but given the fact that it’s still seen as primarily a children’s story, it does soft-pedal it quite a bit. As expected, it sticks to the first book of the novel, though it does end on a note that at least addresses the second voyage to Brobdingnag (perhaps a sequel was hoped for). It’s a combination of live action and animation; the latter is serviceable but uninspired. I could do without the songs myself, and though Richard Harris does all right with the title character, it’s hardly a challenge the way it’s written. Oddly enough, there’s a glimpse of totally gratuitous animated nudity as well; why, I don’t know. It’s not awful, but it’s probably the weakest take on the tale that I’ve seen for the series.