THE JADE MASK (1945)
Article #1386 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-30-2004
Posting Date: 5-29-2005
Directed by Phil Rosen
Featuring Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Edwin Luke

A scientist who was developing a gas to make wood as hard as steel is murdered, and Charlie Chan is called in to investigate.

It’s another Charlie Chan movie, but this one was made nine years later than CHARLIE CHAN’S SECRET after the title role had changed actors (Warner Oland to Sidney Toler) and the series had moved from 20th Century Fox to Monogram. In terms of its fantastic content, it has a fair amount; the gas in question (though it is never really used as such during the course of the movie), some of the lab scenes, and a trap room all have touches of science fiction to them, and there’s also a spooky feeling to some of the opening scenes. I also like the comic relief, with Edwin Luke as #4 son, and the great Mantan Moreland as the Birmingham the chauffeur. There’s also several interesting characters populating the story. I do have some problems, though. There are a number of unique elements to the story (the gas experiments, the trap room, the disappearing policeman subplot, the mysterious appearance of the body of a man downstairs who had just gone upstairs, a series of masks, a tire pump, a cast of an ear, and a set of ventriloquist dummies), but I don’t think the elements mesh all that well by the end of the movie. My other problem was with Sidney Toler, who for me never served as an adequate replacement for Warner Oland; whereas Oland always seemed totally involved in the story around him, Toler here comes across as distracted and somewhat bored, and he also lacked the authority that Oland brought to the role.

JUGGERNAUT (1936)
Article #1360 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-4-2005
Posting Date: 5-3-2005
Directed by Henry Edwards
Featuring Boris Karloff, Joan Wyndham, Arthur Margetson

A doctor desperate for funding to complete a project before he dies is propositioned by a scheming heiress to murder her husband.

This is one of the few of Karloff’s genre movies from the thirties that I had yet to see. It’s often overlooked and rarely discussed, and there are reasons for this. Despite the fact that the plot involves a scientist killing people so he can continue his experiments (which makes it similar to several other Karloff vehicles which are indisputably horror), it’s not a horror movie. What’s missing is the experiment itself; if they mentioned the nature of his experiments, I missed it, and it really doesn’t play any role in the proceedings. Karloff’s murders are either for the money, or to cover up evidence. So it’s not really horror; it’s more of a crime movie, and not a very good one. The script is weak, the set-up is confusing, talky and protracted, and the whole affair comes across as rather silly. Karloff does the best he can, but for some reason he hunches over during the whole movie and it’s distracting. However, Mona Goya (who plays the second wife of Sir Charles Clifford) overacts blatantly. Incidentally, Nina Boucicault is the daughter of Dion Boucicault, who was the first Irish playwright to have his work produced in England.

JACK ARMSTRONG (1947)
(Serial)
Article #1287 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-22-2004
Posting Date: 2-19-2005
Directed by Wallace Fox
Featuring John Hart, Rosemary La Planche, Joe Brown Jr.

Jack Armstrong and the members of the Fairfield clan attempt to rescue Vic Hardy, who has been kidnapped by thugs. Their search takes them to a distant island, where they deal with suspicious natives and scheming criminals.

It’s nice to take a break from the Republic serials every once in a while and watch one from Columbia; though I don’t think near as much of Columbia’s fight choreography, they do on occasion give their serials more interesting storylines. This one is pretty good, and it has a lot of science fiction elements, including a couple of trips into outer space, and an annihilator ray gun. Granted, it does leave me with a few questions. Here they are.

1) How heavy is a rock about four feet long, three feet high, and three feet wide? I’m guessing that a rock that size would be too heavy for almost any man to shift easily; however, to judge the ease by which one of our heros casually pushes it on the head of one of the villains as a distracting tactic, I’d say this one weighs about two ounces. The villain wasn’t hurt, either.

2) Why are Charles Middleton and John Merton not listed in the credits? They only play the primary villains. Still, it’s nice to see familiar face Wheeler Oakman and Gene Roth, even if I have trouble recognizing the latter through his beard.

3) Who designed the outfits of the natives? The men wear patterned shirts AND patterned skirts. Not only that, they skirts and shirts don’t match. I’m guessing it must have been the villains who provided their clothing; no hero would be so unkind as to dress natives that way. And I certainly hope it wasn’t the intention of the villains to make us all dress that way if they took over the universe.

JASSY (1947)
Article #1009 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-19-2003
Posting Date: 5-17-2003
Directed by Bernard Knowles
Featuring Margaret Lockwood, Patricia Roc, Dennis Price

A gypsy girl loses her father when he’s killed by the drunken lord of an estate, and then, when she falls in love with the son of the former owner of the estate, is sent away to serve as a servant at a girl’s school.

The thumbnail plot description above certainly doesn’t tell you much, but that’s because this is one of those movies that goes on for quite a bit before the various story threads come together and you can see the actual direction of the plot. It’s essentially a period drama / soap opera, and if you have a fondness for that sort of thing, this might fit the bill for you; the story itself is pretty ordinary, but it’s in lovely technicolor, is well-acted throughout, features Dennis Price and Ernest Thesiger, and does manage to have a few affecting scenes. On the other hand, since this review is part of a survey of fantastic films, you would be entitled to ask just why I’m including this one in the mix. The reason is that the gypsy womans exhibits a psychic power on occasion to see events that are taking place away from her eyes. Its main function appears to be twofold; a) to occasionally allow her to know certain pieces of information she wouldn’t otherwise know, and b) to play a role in the final trial scene. In truth, it would have been simple enough to write this story without the psychic power, so I’m afraid this one really gets consigned to the realms of marginalia.

JOHNNY DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE (1944)
Article #1005 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-15-2003
Posting Date: 5-13-2004
Directed by Joe May
Featuring Simone Simon, James Ellison, William Terry

A woman spills salt on a train and ends up being plagued by a gremlin who plays tricks with her love life.

You know, at heart the basic premise of this movie isn’t too bad, but it has major problems in execution. However, it’s somewhat difficult to say exactly what the problem is. The performances are all right, and it is fun to see Simone Simon play a comic role after having been only familiar with her work in the Val Lewton films. But the comic rhythm of the movie seems off, it never really focuses itself on the main conflicts, and it’s very difficult to figure out just what the gremlin is trying to do in most of his scenes. The movie also clutters up its storyline with a subplot about the woman occupying an apartment whose previous resident had given out duplicate keys to any number of people, so the first half of the movie consists of a succession of gags about people unexpectedly walking in on her; this gets tiresome very quickly. But I think the worst problem is that everyone is so intent on playing for laughs that they fail to give the characters any sense of central reality; they don’t seem to react consistently to anything, and their every action comes out of left field. It’s not an awful movie; it’s just badly muddled and unfocused. However, it is fun to see a young Robert Mitchum giving one of the better performances in the movie, and those with sharp eyes will want to keep them open for a cameo from Rondo Hatton.

JOURNEY BENEATH THE DESERT (1961)
(a.k.a. L’ATLANTIDE)
Article #1003 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-13-2003
Posting Date: 5-11-2004
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
Featuring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Haya Harareet, Georges Riviere

Several mineral experts make a forced landing during a storm and end up in the underground city of Atlantis.

This makes the fourth adaptation of the Pierre Benoit novel that I’ve encountered, and it’s also the one that departs most consistently from the basic story (as far as I can tell; the other three adaptations are fairly similar). Edgar G. Ulmer’s script makes a definite attempt to update the story, tossing out the foreign legion
background and giving us helicoptors, machine guns and atomic bombs to fill out the story. The end result is not unlike a sword-and-sandal movie in some ways (didn’t we just encounter Atlantis in one of those?), except for the absence of a muscle-bound hero to round out the proceedings. All in all, it’s not too bad; it looks like Ulmer had a better budget than usual to work with on this one. It lacks the lyrical sense that pervaded the very early adaptations of the story, though, and except for the odd ending, it’s a fairly ordinary foray into exotic fantasy / adventure.

JUNGLE MANHUNT (1951)
Article #975 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-15-2003
Posting Date: 4-13-2004
Directed by Lew Landers
Featuring Johnny Weissmuller, Bob Waterfield, Sheila Ryan

Jungle Jim helps a woman filmmaker track down a missing football star, and helps natives deal with a hostile tribe that has been attacking the other tribes.

This entry in the ‘Jungle Jim’ series starts with an exciting attack on a native village before it settles down in to the usual Jungle Jim style, which consists of wandering around from danger to danger until we reach the end of the movie, peppered with the liberal use of stock footage. In other words, this is business as usual. The lost football player is played by Bob Waterfield, a football player in real life, and he’s living with a tribe with which he has helped to develop football-shaped bombs; some of the movie’s funnier moments involve him tossing these things around. There are horror elements here (the invading tribe heralds its attack by having three men dressed as skeletons appear to frighten the natives) and science fiction elements (the creation of artificial diamonds and the appearance of a lost world) pop up, too. As far as the latter elements go, we get two fun little treats, namely 1) the actual recipe for artificial diamonds so you can make them at home (ingredients: melted igneous rocks and sugar) and 2) a surprise cameo appearance of those slurpasaurs of note, Ignatz and Rumsford. These guys should really get along; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had put bandages on poor Rumsford.

THE JUNGLE BOOK (1942)
Article #968 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-8-2003
Posting Date: 4-6-2004
Directed by Zoltan Korda
Featuring Sabu, Joseph Calleia, John Qualen

A boy is lost in the jungle where he is raised by wolves. He returns to his own village years later and tries to adjust to the human world.

I’ve never had the privilege of reading the Rudyard Kipling novel, but one of the very first movies I remember seeing as a child was the Disney version of this story. I can’t say whether either of them is particularly faithful to the book, but I do think it kind of interesting that they tell two different stories; in fact, this version feels something like a sequel to the later version, with the story really beginning in this one after Mowgli’s return to his own people, the event which marked the end of the later version. The two movies also come to different conclusions about Mowgli’s proper place in the world. This one is very colorful indeed, and Sabu gives a great and impassioned performance as Mowgli. The animal scenes are exciting, though you can tell the faked animals from the real one, but it works well enough anyway. Nonetheless, I’m always thrown off a little whenever I see John Qualen appear as something other than a Norwegian; here he is an Indian barber.

JUDEX (1916)
(Serial)
Article #966 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-6-2003
Posting Date: 4-4-2004
Directed by Louis Feuillade
Featuring Rene Creste, Musidora, Rene Poven

Judex fights against the evil banker Flavreux and his assistant Diana Monti.

Adventures in moviehunting: Feuillade’s LES VAMPIRES is a recently restored easy-to-find French serial that is available with English titles. Does this one appear on my hunt list? No. Instead, Feuillade’s preceeding serial FANTOMAS and his subsequent one JUDEX pop up on my hunt list, both of which are deucedly difficult to find, and when they are found, have French title cards. At least FANTOMAS (which consisted of five feature-length episodes) was in wonderful shape and fairly easy to understand; JUDEX is in pretty poor condition and is almost impenetrable if you don’t have command of the French language. Yet I feel fortunate to have even found it in the first place. Go figure.

In short, I haven’t been able to gleen what’s going on in this serial, though I have read a few things. Favraux is mentioned as the main villain, though he appears to have been captured by Judex in the first episode and spends most of the serial locked in a cell where Judex watches him over a television screen (the only real fantastic element of the plot); the main criminal activity seems to be from the Diana Monti character, and most of the time, I have no idea just what she’s up to. There are still some engaging sequences here and there; in particular, a sequence where Judex uses a gang of dogs to help him out is fairly memorable and quite amusing. Nonetheless, I will have little to say about this one until I can learn to read French. Maybe it’s time to do so…

LA JETEE (1962)
(a.k.a. THE JETTY/THE PIER)
Article #917 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-18-2003
Posting Date: 2-15-2004
Directed by Chris Marker
Featuring Jean Negroni, Helene Chatelain, Davos Hanich

In a post-apocalyptic world, scientists experiment with sending subjects through time in order to save the present.

I’ve always thought the trailers I’ve seen for the movies TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE and RAT PFINK AND BOO BOO were tacky, largely because they consisted in their entirety of stills; yet here I am watching a movie made entirely of stills (save for a few seconds of footage at one point) and I’m entranced. I’ve never seen Terry Gilliam’s TWELVE MONKEYS, which is a remake of this remarkable French short, but it’s easy to see why he was attracted to it in the first place; it’s a great story, haunting and memorable, but being a foreign short, it was also unlikely to have been seen by many people. The use of stills, narration and music to tell the story is pretty daring; it almost feels more like reading a story or a graphic novel rather than watching a film, but the impact of the story is not lessened in any way. This one is well worth hunting out for anyone interested in classic foreign science fiction.