GOG (1954)
Article #247 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-18-2001
Posting date: 4-3-2002

Strange murders are being committed at a secret laboratory in the desert which is doing research on a project designed to launch a space station. It becomes obvious that someone is using the computer to commit the crimes.

I found this gadget-happy robot movie (intended to be in 3D, which explains why some of the scenes are shot the way they are) to be a quite entertaining cold war thriller. It starts very well with the death of two scientists engaged in suspended animation experiments (I have to admit that any movie that starts with a shot of a hypodermic needle has succeeded in catching my attention). It requires a bit of patience to get through the next talky, gadget-happy thirty minutes where the movie sets itself up for the exciting last half, but it’s not too hard an ordeal, and when the action starts, it’s quite satisfying. I was quite surprised to see it was in color; I’d heard that for a while no color prints were believed to have survived of this movie. All in all, not a bad movie.

GAMERA (1965)
Article #234 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-5-2001
Posting date: 3-21-2002

A giant turtle is awakened when atomic weapons explode in the arctic regions. This monster, known as Gamera, terrorizes Japan.

This was the first of a series of movies from Daiei that attempted to cash in on Toho’s Godzilla series. Though it is the most serious movie of the series, I also find it one of the most tedious; it fails to emulate the original Godzilla movie effectively, as it lacks the sense of devastation, real pain, and suffering that enfuses its model, nor does it come up with a compelling human story to add to the proceedings. Instead, it gives us a little boy who runs around claiming Gamera is good; unfortunately, the only good action performed by the monster is to save the life of the child (after putting it in danger in the first place). The charming silliness of later entries were more fun, though Gamera would really not come into his own until the nineties with GAMERA, GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE.

SPOILER

I do find it interesting that the monster is allowed to live at the end of the movie, though this was probably done in anticipation of sequels. I’ve never seen the American version of this movie that features new footage of Brian Donlevy; all I’ve seen is the recent Sandy Frank version which contains (I think) all the footage of the Japanese version, but is hampered by very substandard dubbing.

THE GREEN SLIME (1969)
Article #215 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-17-2001
Posting date: 3-2-2002

A strange mold from a wandering planet gets taken aboard a space station, where it grows into hideous energy-eating creatures.

You know, this Japanese/American coproduction wouldn’t be too bad if it didn’t have a few problems; 1) the sets and special effects are unconvincing and cheap, 2) the monsters are rather silly-looking, especially the mushy red masses on either side of their eyes, 3) the two men who hate/respect each other and love the same woman are enmeshed in one of the most hackneyed subplots I’ve seen, and 4) the acting throughout is none too good. Other than that, not too bad. I do like late-sixties quasi-Jimi-Hendrix-psychedelic theme song.

I also can’t help but notice that the movie does anticipate one area of life that will improve immensely in the future, and that is the efficacy of post-ballistics projectile weapon tossing, that strategy whereby one finds a last-minute use for a firearm devoid of ammunition by throwing it at his foe. I can’t help but notice that in most movies where this technique is used, the results are pretty pathetic, but in this one, it seems to be the best way of handling the creatures; once those ray guns can zap no more, tossing them at the slime creatures invariably results in hitting them squre in the eye, causing them to shriek horribly. Since the ammunition did no damage itself, one wonders why they just didn’t skip that step and toss their firearms from the beginning.

THE GOLEM (1920)
Article #214 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-16-2001
Posting date: 3-1-2002

In order to fight a pogrom, a rabbi creates a Golem which he brings to the castle and uses to convince the king not to evict his people. Afterwards, the Golem runs wild.

This movie served as a prequel to the 1915 movie also called THE GOLEM, though technically, the full title of this one is THE GOLEM: HOW HE CAME INTO THE WORLD. I would love to see the 1915 version sometime, but I’m not even sure if it exists, though I’ve heard claims to the contrary. I suspect that a lot of these claims are from people who think they’ve seen the 1915 version but have actually seen the 1920 version. To complicate matters, IMDB has the 1915 version of the movie marked as being available on DVD, but the link merely takes you to a collection of German classics which contains the 1920 version. There are also about fifty votes for the 1915 version, but the only user comment on the movie contains what is clearly a description of the 1920 movie, so I have to write that off as confusion between the two movies.

The 1920 version is quite entertaining, and it’s interesting to compare it to the 1931 FRANKENSTEIN; both movies involve the creation of artificial men that get out of control, both have impressive high sets, and both have central scenes involving the monster and a little girl. What I most admire about this movie was Paul Wegener’s way of controlling his body in order to make the Golem look as if he was actually made out of stone; this and his makeup job combine to make the character a lot more convincing than it would otherwise be.

THE GRUESOME TWOSOME (1967)
Article #201 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-3-2001
Posting date: 2-16-2002

A mad woman who runs a toupee shop has her idiot son scalp women for their hair.

Could there be a more inauspicious way to start this next run of one hundred movies? When I first conceived of this movie-watching project, I almost set a limit to include only movies from 1962 backwards. Why 1962, you may ask? It’s because I could have then avoided having to cover Herschell Gordon Lewis and the rise of gore, a development that went a long ways towards taking the fun out of horror and turning these movies into dare games. Nonetheless, there is a lot of great horror after this year, so I didn’t set that limit. Unfortunately, HGL popped up all too quickly on my viewing list, and I found myself having to watch this.

The problem with the use of gore in this movie is that he dwells on the scenes for so long that you not only figure out how the effect was done, but whatever initial shock you may have had dissipates into a sort of tedious boredom long before he cuts away. Another thing I noticed was how bad the sound was throughout this movie, even on DVD; he must have been using the cheapest equipment available. Actually, I found myself less embarrassed by the gore than by some of the other scenes; there is a long sequence here where a college girl tails a janitor carrying a package which is one of the most amateurish things I’ve ever seen committed to celluloid. There’s also a scene in a drive-in where he demonstrates that he doesn’t even know how to show people watching a movie on a screen; he just cuts back and forth between the character and what they’re watching (a pointless film with lots of eating) without any indication that what they’re seeing is on a movie screen.

Some people may admire this movie for its comedy; they might even think the opening scene with two talking dummy heads (put into the movie for no other reason than to add running time) is brilliant cinema. But for comedy to be effective, it has to be funny; it certainly doesn’t tickle my funny bone as much as appal me. It’s obvious that all Lewis really wants is to gross me out, and I have no use for this kind of movie.

Well, let’s see. With this movie, I’ve now covered at one time or another Herschell Gordon Lewis, Phil Tucker, Edward D. Wood, Jr., Larry Buchanan, and Al Adamson. Can Andy Milligan be far behind? Sometimes it’s best not to look too far into the future.

GODZILLA VS. THE THING (1964)
(a.k.a. GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA)
Article #200 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-2-2001
Posting date: 2-15-2002

When a giant egg washes up on the shore of Japan, an entrepreneur buys it and plans to build a tourist attraction around it. The egg belongs to Mothra, however, and when Godzilla rises from the earth, the failure of Japan to return the egg to Mothra impedes plans to have Mothra save the world from this threat.

First of all, where did they get this title? When I was a kid, I thought this movie would pit Godzilla against James Arness; instead, I find “The Thing” is a euphemism for Mothra! Well, having him fight Mothra does make more sense, anyway, as they’re both Toho creations (and roughly the same size); in fact, this is the first movie to pit two pre-existing Toho creations against each other (King Kong was not originally a Toho creation, and Angilus was created specifically for GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN). It retreats from the comic aspects of KING KONG VS. GODZILLA to mark one of the more serious entries in the field, though its commentary on greed owes a little to that movie. In many ways, it’s even more of a sequel to MOTHRA, in the sense that it embodies many of the same elements of that movie, with the egg being the victim of greedy promoters rather than the Alilenas.

At any rate, a quick note about how much I enjoy the music of Akira Ifukube in the Godzilla movies. I’m not a particular fan of movie music, but I’ve always loved his scores, especially some of those familiar pieces that appear again and again in these movies. Both the Godzilla theme and the lovely Mothra song are particular favorites of mine.

THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN (1919)
Article #194 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-26-2001
Posting date: 2-9-2002

A man tells a story to his two sons about his trip to Slumber Mouuntain, where he dreamed he met the ghost of Mad Dick and saw dinosaurs through his special viewing mechanism.

There’s really not a whole lot to this eleven-minute short; the above description tells you pretty much all that heppens. Still, I find it has a real charm to it. The special effects are by Willis O’Brien, and I think this may be the first time he tried for realistic dinosaurs in contrast to some of the more comic types of his earlier stop-motion shorts. Overall, it’s a strange little film with some bizarre moments, such as when the man asks his guide to undress and pose like a faun. This is an interesting oddity.

GIGANTIS, THE FIRE MONSTER (1955)
(a.k.a. GODZILLA RAIDS AGAIN)
Article #193 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-25-2001
Posting date: 2-8-2002

Two giant prehistoric monsters are discovered, which then set out to attack the city of Osaka.

Once again, I wish to point out that all comments are based on the American version of the movie, having not seen the original Japanese version, whose title roughly translates as GODZILLA’S COUNTERATTACK. I’m not sure why Godzilla’s name was changed in the U.S. version; perhaps they couldn’t get the rights to use the Godzilla name. The movie itself is pretty disappointing; it lacks both the full-blown horror of the original movie and the goofy charm of later entries in the series. There is entirely too much narration throughout, the vast amount of which is totally unnecessary. I also feel that there was some confusion during the dubbing; if I didn’t know Gigantis was Godzilla and Angilus was the big hedgehog, I might have had a lot of trouble figuring out which name went with which monster, as it seems to switch around at certain points in the movie. In fact, the trademark cries of the monsters also seem to switch around on occasion, unless my imagination is playing dirty tricks on me. The structure is also pretty strange; the destruction of Osaka should occur much later in the movie; as it is, this sequence occurs about halfway through, and the rest of the movie suffers from a number of unexpected dead spots where the monsters appear to vanish from the picture. I don’t consider it the worst Godzilla movie, but it may well be the least interesting of them.

THE GIANT CLAW (1957)
Article #192 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-24-2001
Posting date: 2-7-2002

A giant prehistoric bird from outer space attacks the earth.

Imagine you’re watching a new James Bond movie, and you’re waiting in anticipation to find out who the supervillain will be, and when he appears, you discover he’s being played by Pauly Shore. That’s what this movie is like if you haven’t been forewarned; it plays out like a Ray Harryhausen movie (director Fred F. Sears and producer Sam Katzman were both involved in EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS), and it works well enough as such until you reach the point where you’d be expecting to finally see some Harryhausen effects, and you get the bird seen in this one. Of all the monsters I’ve ever seen, this snarling, nostril-flaring, ragged, hair-tufted excuse for a buzzard is the most knee-slappingly funny monster ever devised; too bad the movie wasn’t intended as a comedy. Apparently, Sam Katzman saved a bundle of money by having the special effects done by a company in Mexico; none of the cast members saw what the monster would look like until the movie was released. Jeff Morrow saw it for the first time in his home town and with all his friends at the local movie theatre, and was appalled at what he saw; he’d been told it would look like a streamlined eagle. The movie also features Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum, and lots of footage from EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS.

My favorite moment: a look at a series of pictures taken of the monster by a weather balloon that climaxes with a close-up shot of the monster grimacing into the camera.

THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942)
Article #191 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-23-2001
Posting date: 2-6-2002

Ygor and the Frankenstein Monster visit a son of the original Dr. Frankenstein, who decides to replace the monster’s brain.

It seems that whenever this movie or its immediate predecessor in the series SON OF FRANKENSTEIN are mentioned, eventually the discussion turns on which of the two movies are better. These are interesting movies to compare, as SON marked the end of an era, being the last of the Universal Frankenstein movies that was intended as a top-of-the-line production and the last to feature Karloff as the monster, whereas GHOST marks the beginning of an era where the movies were seen as product and largely churned out; the production values do appear to have dropped quite a bit in this entry. My own preference is a little towards SON, but on rewatching this one, I was surprised at how well it stood up. Cedric Hardwicke has been accused of walking through his role as Ludwig Frankenstein, and there may be some truth to that, but I still enjoy the performance; it makes a striking contrast to either Colin Clive’s or Basil Rathbone’s performances. There is always Lionel Atwill on hand here to take up any slack on that account. I also think it was the last time the monster had much in the way of dimension or really played much of a role in the proceedings; from the next movie onwards he would spend most of his time being upstaged by other monsters or lying on a slab looking tired. Bela Lugosi is back as Ygor, with Lon Chaney, Jr. as the monster. Also in the cast are Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Bellamy, and in smaller roles, Dwight Frye (playing both a villager and Fritz the hunchback in a flashback), Michael Mark, and Brandon Hurst. My favorite moment in the movie is when the monster presents his suggestion as to whose brain he should get. And as a side note, I think the actress who plays the little girl in this movie is worlds better than the actor who played the little boy in SON.