THE GOLDEN TOUCH (1935)
Article 5227 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-13-2016
Directed by Walt Disney
Featuring the voice of Billy Bletcher
Country: USA
What it is: Disney Silly Symphony

A greedy king is given the ability to have everything he touches turn to gold by an elf, but he discovers the power is a curse.

Here’s a musical cartoon version of the famous story of King Midas, and if you’re familiar with it, there’s not a whole lot of surprises here in the plot. The opening song about gold is fun, though, and the story even has some touches of horror when he begins to see visions of death surrounding him when he discovers he is unable to eat. It’s also quite well animated; in fact, this short would be the last time that Walt Disney would hold the directorial reins himself. However, Disney himself hated the short and refused to talk about it, which is probably why it was his last one as a director. It’s a decent enough cartoon, but not one of the studio’s best.

LE GRAND MELIES (1952)
Article 5225 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-9-2016
Directed by Georges Franju
Featuring Jeanne d’Alcy, Francois Lallement, Andres Melies
Country: France
What it is: Biography / Homage

The life of film-maker Georges Melies is shown.

This short in and of itself isn’t genre, but any exploration of the work of Melies is bound to have some fantastic content, if for no other reason than it would probably have to feature footage from his most famous film, A TRIP TO THE MOON. It’s a lovely homage to the pioneer film-maker, and it has the novelty of featuring his wife and star Jeanne d’Alcy as herself. Melies is portrayed by his own son, Andres Melies, who bears a striking resemblance to his father and gives a good performance here. There’s a nice lyrical magic to the piece, especially during a sequence where Melies performs magic tricks for a couple of youngsters visiting his toy shop. The main limitation of the movie is that it’s really too short to give the full story of his life, but the main points are covered, and the movie is quite lovely.

THE GOLD RUSH (1925)
Article 5224 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-7-2016
Directed by Charles Chaplin
Featuring Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Tom Murray
Country: USA
What it is: Chaplin comedy

The little tramp goes prospecting for gold in the Klondike, and ends up encountering a fellow prospector who had discovered a mountain of gold as well as a dance hall girl with whom he falls in love.

You know, if I had to do this whole movie-watching project over again, I would institute a rating system. This would not be to gauge the quality of the movie, but rather to gauge the degree to which the movie belongs to the fantastic genres which I’m covering. When I began, almost every movie I saw fully belonged to the given genres, but now I find myself frequently encountering movies where the fantastic content is slight or confined to a single scene of the movie. A rating system would have served as a quick, easy indicator of the movie’s status in this regard. In the case of the movie, it’s clearly not a fantasy when taken in its entirety; it’s just for a single scene of the movie, it takes a turn into the fantastic when two starving prospectors are trapped in a cabin during a raging storm, and one begins to hallucinate that the other is a giant chicken; the hallucination is displayed visually. Again, it’s a single scene, but you have a giant animal as well as flirtations with madness and cannibalism.

That being said, I’ve ended up encountering a lot more of Chaplin’s work than I expected I would have (and I have yet to cover the one that most prominently qualifies, which would be MODERN TIMES). However, this one is near and dear to my heart. It is not only the first Chaplin movie I ever saw, but the first silent film as well. Chaplin is in fine form here, and the movie contains several famous sequences. There is the scene where Chaplin is forced to eat his own shoe, the dance performed with potatoes and forks, and the scene where a cabin teeters over the edge of a cliff. I love his work here; I’m especially impressed with how he shows such a grasp of human nature to get us to feel the elation and disappointment when an attractive person of the opposite sex seems to be trying to catch your attention only to discover they’re intending the attention for someone behind you. I think that this still rates as my favorite Chaplin movie.

GOLD DIGGERS OF ’49 (1935)
Article 5223 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-6-2016
Directed by Tex Avery
Featuring the voices of Billy Bletcher, Joe Dougherty, Bernice Hansen
Country: USA
What it is: Early Warner Brothers Cartoon

Beans the Cat discovers gold and the Gold Rush is on. However, when a villain steals a bag belonging to Porky Pig, Beans must catch him if he wants to marry Porky’s daughter.

I HAVEN’T GOT A HAT introduced Porky Pig to the world. However, he wasn’t the one originally pegged for cartoon stardom; the powers that be thought that Beans the cat, also introduced in that cartoon, would be the big star, and he gets top billing here with Porky in a secondary role. The title is a parody of a series of musicals from the era with similar titles; gold diggers were women trying to marry rich men, but here, they’re prospectors. For an early Warner Brothers cartoon, this one is not too bad; a couple of the early gags did make me laugh, though some of the later ones fall flat. It also has a couple of politically incorrect gags, including one in which a couple of Oriental stereotypes are turned into black stereotypes after being covered with smoke. I attribute some of the success to the creativity of director Tex Avery, who keeps the action moving at a brisk pace. Talking animals make up the main fantastic content, though we do have a bit of science fiction; assuming the cartoon takes place in 1849, what’s the automobile doing here? There’s also some bizarre experiments in cross-breeding or genetic manipulation as well, unless you can think of another explanation as to why Porky Pig has a kitten daughter.

THE GAUCHO (1927)
Article 5219 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-1-2016
Directed by F. Richard Jones
Featuring Douglas Fairbanks, Lupe Velez, Eve Southern
Country: USA
What it is: Swashbuckler

A holy shrine finds itself threatened from two sides. From one, it is being oppressed by the tyrannical Ruiz. On the other, it is the target of a roguish swashbuckling outlaw known as The Gaucho. But perhaps there is hope…

You know, this plot is so neatly and conveniently set up, it’s hard to be surprised what happens. We have an innocent group of people being oppressed by the unambiguously evil yoke of political tyranny, a charismatic but self-serving anti-hero who opposes the oppressor, but is only prevented from being a full hero by the fact that he needs to be spiritually awakened, and a location in which the Virgin Mary inspires faith healing that is the ideal site for bringing about a spiritual awakening… if you don’t know how this is going to play out, than you can’t connect the dots. That’s not to say it doesn’t work; with the charismatic Douglas Fairbanks as the title character, you’ll be having too much fun watching him in action to bother about the story. Furthermore, he’s supported by Lupe Velez who plays his willful and appealing girlfriend, and who matches him and challenges him at every turn. If you haven’t figured it out, the fantastic content consists of miracles (with the Virgin Mary mystically appearing several times). Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, and the spectacle of some of the scenes is also truly appealing. You know, it may be a predictable cliche, but I don’t think they really do make movies like this anymore.

GALATHEA: DAS LEBENDE MARMORBILD (1935)
Article 5218 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-31-2016
Directed by Lotte Reiniger
No cast
Country: Germany
What it is: Animated legend

A sculptor falls in love with one of his creations, and wishes the statue would come to life. When she does, the sculptor is overjoyed… until she discovers that his creation has a will of her own.

This is another example of Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette animation. One interesting touch here is in the scene where the statue comes to life. In the short, the backgrounds are fully rendered and only the animate characters are silhouettes, but when the statue comes to life, it turns into a silhouette at that point, and, from the looks of it, spends almost the entire short naked (in silhouette). This causes a sensation when she escapes from the sculptor’s studio and begins wandering around town, much to the delight of the male residents and the contempt of the female residents, who force the sculptor to find a way to control his creation. The short is both bittersweet (the sculptor’s lover is scorned by him after he creates the statue) and comic, and it pretty much ends the way you’d expect it to end. Still, it’s a delightful short, and is a good example of Reiniger’s skill in silhouette animation.

G-MEN NEVER FORGET (1948)
Article 5184 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-17-2016
Directed by Fred C. Brannon and Yakima Canutt
Featuring Clayton Moore, Roy Barcroft, Ramsay Ames
Country: USA
What it is: Action serial

An escaped gangster gets plastic surgery so he can imitate a police commissioner, thus getting access to information for his gangster activities. Can a government man see through the disguise and capture the gangster?

It seems like ages since I’ve covered a serial from the forties, but sadly, I have to admit this one didn’t impress me. Granted, I’ve always had a rocky relationship with the serial form. In theory, I love the idea – the episodic telling of a story over several weeks sounds like fun. However, in actual practice, I was disappointed, since most serials aren’t interested in telling a story as much as they are as using the bare bones of one from which to a hang and endless series of action sequences, and, not being an action fan, I get bored. What I most noticed about this one was how each episode seemed to be modeled on the same template. First, resolve the cliffhanger. Then, have an office scene where the heroes decide to investigate a place believed to be a haven of criminal activities. When they get there, they meet the main henchman and an assistant henchman. There is a fistfight, the main henchman gets away, and the assistant henchman is killed. Then there is another meeting, where another plan of action is discussed, and this leads us to the episode’s ending cliffhanger. In this serial, they hardly ever depart from this template. As a result, I felt it got rather dull and tired, and I was glad to put this one to rest. As for the fantastic content, one of my sources points to the operation that makes the criminal look like someone else, and I consider that to be very minor fantastic content. It does, however, delve into science fiction with a liquid that bursts into fire once it dries; this comes into play during a couple of episodes. This one is very ordinary at best.

GINGER NUTT’S FOREST DRAGON (1950)
Article 5180 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-10-2016
Directed by Bert Felstead
Voice cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Cartoon

Squirrel Ginger Nutt tries to impress his girlfriend by promising to defend her from a forest monster, but when some of Ginger’s animal friends dress up as a monster…

After having watched this short, I was wondering which of the American cartoon production companies made it. For some reason, it never occurred to me that another country might be also putting out series animated shorts like these, though I don’t know why that should surprise me. At any rate, this is part of a British series of shorts by David Hand known as his “Animaland” series, and on top of the anthropomorphic animals, we have some of them dressing up as a dragon to enhance the fantastic content. It has a bit of the feel of a Warner Brothers cartoon, thanks largely to the fact that musical director Henry Reed uses the same style as Carl Stalling in writing his scores. The story is well written and fun, and the cartoon is solidly animated. It’s not great, but it makes for a fun introduction to this series.

DAS GEHEIMNIS DER CHINESISCHEN NELKE (1964)
aka Secret of the Chinese Carnation
Article 5162 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-20-2016
Directed by Rudolf Zehetgruber
Featuring Paul Dahlke, Olga Schoberova, Dietmar Schonherr
Country: West Germany / Italy / France
What it is: Alternative krimi

Several parties try to get their hands on a microfilm that contains the secret of a new source of energy.

Though it’s not part of the series of Edgar Wallace movies that make up most of krimis of the time, this is part of that basic genre. Krimis are a bit hard to follow in the first place, and knowing that I was going into this one without the help of English dubbing or subtitles, I didn’t exactly anticipate having much luck following the story as is. Therefore, I just tried to enjoy what I could. This one is a bit on the talky side, but there is an amusing fight in a Chinese bar, a novel way to stop a ticking bomb, and a truly interesting place to hide a piece of microfilm. The fantastic content is the formula on the microfilm (a Gizmo Maguffin if ever there was one) and a bit of spy-oriented gadgetry. The cast also includes Brad Harris and Klaus Kinski to add to the star power. All in all, this one looks pretty ordinary. The director would go on to the Superbug movies.

GOONS FROM THE MOON (1951)
Article 5138 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-24-2016
Directed by Connie Rasinski
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Mighty Mouse Cartoon

A planet of outer space cats invades the mouse city of Terrytown and begins kidnapping all its residents. Can Mighty Mouse save the day?

Technically, the goons aren’t from the moon; they’re from some unnamed other planet and a gag at the end involving the moon makes that clear. That being said, this is one of the more energetic and ambitious Mighty Mouse cartoons from this era. It moves fast, the gags are decent, and they even have a bit of “out of the inkwell” fun because Mighty Mouse has to get drawn before he can come to the rescue. Mighty Mouse sings one line in operetta style, but this isn’t one of those cartoons; other than the reports of a radio journalist, there’s very little talk and mostly comic action. Mighty Mouse is very powerful here; he can even move planets if he needs to. I consider this one one of the more entertaining entries in the series.