THE GHOST BREAKERS (1940)
Article #164 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-27-2001
Posting date: 1-10-2002

A radio broadcaster gets involved with gangsters and a woman who inherits a haunted castle off the coast of Cuba.

I’m going to admit right off the bat that I don’t have a whole lot of use for Bob Hope. It’s not that I think he’s bad per se (I do laugh occasionally), but he was a little too laid-back and seemed far too easily satisfied with himself for my taste; I always felt he would crack just barely enough jokes to get by. I prefer his Road movies to his other work, largely because the Road movies never pretended to be about anything at all, which I thought fit well with his style. That being said, THE GHOST BREAKERS was entertaining enough; there were enough laughs and familiar faces to hold my interest (Paulette Goddard, Richard Carlson, Paul Lukas, Willie Best, and Anthony Quinn are all on hand), and it really delivers on the atmosphere when they finally reach the haunted castle in the last twenty minutes of the film, where we get a great scary zombie played by Noble Johnson. It’s not my favorite horror comedy, but it’s certainly not an embarrassment by any means, and it’s a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half; I just wish it were a little more than that.

THE GORILLA (1939)
Article #52 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-7-2001
Posting date: 9-20-2001

A man finds himself threatened by a mysterious killer known as the Gorilla. He hires three bumbling detectives to protect him.

As a horror movie, this is a pretty conventional old-dark-house type of movie, enlivened by the presence of Lionel Atwill and Bela Lugosi. It even has a twist at the end that catches me a little off guard, so I give it points for that.

As a horror comedy, I consider it an atrocity; not merely lame, as I find most other horror comedies, but painfully frustrating. The Ritz Brothers are IMHO the worst of the movie comedians, but not because I think their timing is bad or their jokes are lame; it’s because I don’t think they have any jokes. With most comedians, I can at least point to where the joke is and say “That was supposed to be funny.” With these guys, I see only big empty spaces where I sense jokes should be. The comic relief maid doesn’t help any, though I think she’s a little better than the Ritzes. As it is, the best comic performance comes from Bela Lugosi, who, as an obvious red herring, walks around with a slight grin on his face as if he’s fully aware that everyone in the audience already knows he’s not the main villain.

To paraphrase my wife’s description of the movie, in most bad comedies you don’t laugh; in this one, you feel you may never laugh again.

GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS (1956)
Article #51 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-6-2001
Posting date: 9-19-2001

A series of mysterious disappearances leads to the discovery of a huge radioactive monster living in the depths of the ocean.

This, the first of the Japanese giant monster movies, is reputed to be even better in its original Japanese edition, which I have yet to see. The American version adds footage of Raymond Burr talking to Asian actors, only interacting with the characters from the original movie if they could find an actor or actress who resembled them from the back, or if he talked to them on the telephone. There is a certain amount of dubbing, but it is kept to a minimum; the scenes without dubbing are handled by having another actor explain to Burr (whose Japanese is a little rusty) what the other characters are saying. Despite the fact that these tactics to Americanize a movie rarely work, this is one of the more successful examples along these lines; the movie is not ruined by them.

As for the Japanese footage, it’s pretty impressive stuff; the model work that went into the making of these movies was much more effective in black and white, and one really gets the feeling that the entire city of Tokyo is being destroyed by the monster, not just a street here or there. It is also one of the few monster movies of this sort to emphasize the human suffering as well as the physical destruction caused by the monster; since Godzilla is at least partially a metaphor for the A-Bomb, this is unsurprising, as Japan remains the only country to have actually been attacked with such a weapon. The scene where a childrens’ chorus sings a hymn to the dead and dying is quite moving.

Many other Godzilla movies have been made; none of them have had this impact.

THE GHOUL (1934)
Article #50 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-5-2001
Posting date: 9-18-2001

An Egyptologist has a scarab jewel wrapped onto his hand when he is dying, because with it he hopes to attain eternal life. When the jewel is stolen after his death, he rises from his tomb to seek for the jewel.

This British horror movie has an impressive cast: Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Ralph Richardson are all on hand; unfortunately, the movie is a bit of a disappointment. There are too many characters, which serve to clutter up and confuse the storyline. It finally picks up in the second half of the movie when Karloff starts hunting for the jewel, and gets fairly exciting (and even a bit gory) from this point onwards. The print I saw was none too good, but I’ve heard that this was from the only print in existence; the film had been considered lost for years until a print was unearthed in Prague. This may be untrue; I’ve heard claims from people that there are other prints, but I suspect that a really good print of this movie does not exist.