THE LIVING DEAD (1933)
(a.k.a. THE SCOTLAND YARD MYSTERY)
Article #732 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-17-2003
Posting Date: 8-14-2003
Directed by Thomas Bentley
Featuring Gerald du Maurier, George Curzon, Grete Natzler

Scotland Yard investigates possible insurance fraud when a series of unexpected heart attacks occur among recently insured people.

The one title, THE SCOTLAND YARD MYSTERY, has to be one of the more generic film titles I’ve seen; don’t most British mysteries involve Scotland Yard at one point or another? So let’s check out the other title, THE LIVING DEAD. Are they zombies? Vampires? Ghosts? Something even more scary? No, something even less scary; it’s our old friend, the drug-that-makes-people-seem-to-be-dead-but-they-really-aren’t. This one definitely shows its age, but it has some nice performances, some novel ideas, and a smartass villain with a real sense of chutzpah; it’s not great, but it’s an entertaining little diversion in its way, with a great last line.

LADIES IN RETIREMENT (1941)
Article #661 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-5-2003
Posting Date: 6-4-2003

A servant with two dotty sisters murders her employer when she threatens to throw them out of the house.

With a title like LADIES IN RETIREMENT, I wouldn’t be surprised at anyone passing the movie by under the belief that it was some sort of woman’s comedy. It is actually a gothic thriller; it’s not a horror movie, though it does have a certain touch of horror in the plot (involving a “ghost” at one point in the proceedings), but gothic thrillers do have certain similarities with horror movies; in fact, the opening scene of the decrepit house surrounded by ground fog would be perfectly in place in a horror film. In some ways this movie reminds me of NIGHT MUST FALL, with many similar characters and situations and based on a stage play as that one was. However, I find this one less self-consciously poetic; in fact, I was enthralled by it. The key is in the characters; they are an interesting and at times an unpredictable bunch. Ida Lupino is great in the lead role, but her two sisters (one dotty, the other hostile played by Edith Barrett and Elsa Lanchester respectively) steal the movie; they are definitely loose cannons, and when Lupino gets them to swear on a bible (a great scene), you know for sure that any secret they’ve promised to keep will come out before the movie is over. Yes, it is a bit stagey and talky, but the acting and the characters make it work, and I found myself really caught up in the whole thing. Chalk this one up as another find.

LAUGHING AT DANGER (1924)
Article #645 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-20-2002
Posting Date: 5-15-2003

A lovelorn man accidentally happens upon a missing piece of a death ray machine, and becomes the target of criminals intent on using the machine.

This silent action/comedy with science fiction elements (the death ray) has a fun idea at the center of it; our hero laughs at danger not because he’s so brave, but because he believes he’s in the middle of an elaborate practical joke set up by his father to raise his spirits after he is rejected by the woman he loves. Therefore, he never really believes he’s in danger, and that is the joke of the situation. The movie is amusing enough, but it never really takes this premise to its ultimate possibilities; it’s never quite as funny as it could be. However, it works well enough in its short running time, though I’m sure the idea could be resurrected again with better results.

LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1927) – Stills Restoration
Article #595 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-31-2002
Posting date: 3-26-2003

A murder may have been the result of vampires.

This marks the second time I’ve covered a movie that I haven’t actually seen, though unlike THE MIRACLE MAN (1919), at least the still recreation of the movie makes a better substitute than merely the five-minute clip that I used as an excuse for that one. It’s only a partially satisfying experience, but it’s probably as close as we’re going to get to it, and even if it gets a little dull and confusing at spots, I’m very glad it exists. Granted, the confusion that sets in towards the end may be as much a result of the story itself as the fact you’re watching a series of stills; its remake, MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935), gets quite confusing itself before it’s all over. Still, if you’ve watched that movie, you’ll be pretty well prepared for this one, as the story is largely the same. Still, I applaud the effort, and I do admire how well they manage some of the sequences with only stills, particularly a hypnotism sequence that shows how creative editing can bring a scene to life, even if that scene consists of nothing more than a series of stills.

THE LOST CITY (1935)
(Serial)
(a.k.a. THE LOST CITY OF THE LIGURIANS)
Article #584 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-20-2002
Posting date: 3-15-2003

The center of Africa seems to be the source of bizarre natural disasters, and a team is sent out to investigate the cause. They discover strange experiments being performed in an underground city.

Now this is some serial; I spent the first couple of episodes giggling over the ripeness of both the script and the acting (William “Stage” Boyd practically steals the movie as the main villain), and then settled down for the rest of the serial to just enjoy the story. Despite the fact that a certain amount of cheating does come into play into resolving some of the cliffhangers, it’s handled in such a clever way that I didn’t feel cheated in seeing how the heroes escaped their perils. In fact, there’s an immense sense of fun and energy in this one, and I sense for the first time really just what many of the other serials I’ve seen seem to be missing. Not only that, but there are plenty of science fiction and horror elements this time around, rather than a single one that barely comes into play at all. This may be my favorite serial to date.

LADY IN A CAGE (1964)
Article #575 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-11-2002
Posting date: 3-6-2003

A woman becomes trapped in a personal caged elevator in her own home, and finds herself being victimized by psychotics intent on robbing the place.

This was one of the horror movies featuring older actresses (Olivia de Havilland in this case) that came in the wake of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? However, in place of that movie’s decayed gothic wittiness, we are given jarring, ugly, decidedly modern and alienating nihilism. The movie is violent, sadistic, painful, and just plain cruel, and this might have been more bearable had it not also been self-conscious (the woman’s comment about her tormentors being the human offal on which her tax dollars are being spent is such an artificial piece of dialogue that if the movie was capable of causing laughter I would have been on the floor) and pretentious (the final scenes with the woman crawling out of the house and being ignored by the passing traffic is so “fraught with meaning” that it’s hard to endure). The psychos are quite scary, but they aren’t exactly convincing, either; I find it impossible to believe that they’re real people. There are many familiar faces here; James Caan in an early role, Ann Sothern, Scatman Crothers, and Jeff Corey as the wino; it is for these that the movie is worth watching. It’s probably going to be a long long time before I slip this one back in my VCR.

THE LIVING DEAD (1932)
(a.k.a. UNHEIMLICHE GESCHICHTEN)
Article #525 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-22-2002
Posting date: 1-15-2003

Several different stories are tied together by the pursuit of a murderer.

UNHEIMLICHE GESCHICHTEN has several alternate titles on IMDB; I’ve chosen the title that matches the listing in the book that supplied the title for me. It’s a remake (by the same director) of the 1919 movie UNHEIMLICHE GESCHICHTEN, and even though there are several instances of directors remaking older movies, this is the only one I know of that involves remaking an anthology. It’s not a strict remake; only two of the stories return from the original movie, and the linking mechanism has been changed entirely. In fact, this time it plays out like one long story with certain distinct episodes, a very curious way to handle this sort of movie. In fact, it’s a little hard for me to tell where one story leaves off and another begins, partially because my print is in German without subtitles. Nonetheless, I found it fascinating viewing; visually, it is quite strong, and the acting is good enough throughout that they hold my interest even if I didn’t know what they were saying. This one is played more for comedy, and this comes through at times. Of the stories, I definitely recognize “The Black Cat” and “The Suicide Club” (I think that’s the correct title; it was one of the holdovers from the first movie). The best scene is a fight sequence held in the middle of a museum of life-size ambulatory puppets.

THE LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST (1971)
(a.k.a. VENOM)
Article #493 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-21-2002
Posting date: 12-14-2002

An artist becomes obsessed with a strange woman whose lovers turn up dead.

By all indications, the story of this movie is fairly straighforward, yet I had the worst time following the plot. The problem was that it was directed in a jagged, busy style that makes it hard to figure out what’s going on at any one point. In fact, it relies so much on extreme close-ups that it starts to get really annoying after a bit; you see so many shots of the artist’s face and the big red scar that runs down his cheek in the second half of the movie that you think the make-up person was on the set complaining how long it took him to do that scar and insisting that it appear in close up once every three minutes. Important plot points get lost in the muddle, you lose sense of place and time, the fight scenes are impenetrable, and you just get tired of trying to keep track of things. The movie wears out its welcome long before its over.

LAKE OF DRACULA (1971)
Article #492 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-20-2002
Posting date: 12-13-2002

A woman encounters a vampire who she remembers from a childhood incident many years earlier.

Vampire movies are probably the most common horror theme. If I recall, Videohound has a whole book which consists of nothing but vampire movies; the fact that there are enough to fill a book says quite a bit. At any rate, out of curiosity, I made a rough count of what percentage of movies I’ve covered so far could be called vampire movies, and it comes out to roughly seven percent of them; that is actually a pretty respectable percentage.

Quite frankly, I’ve never been a particular fan of vampire movies, and I’ve always wondered why they are so common. Maybe it’s because that they are fairly easy monsters to make; just add fangs and white makeup and you have a vampire. Maybe it’s because they lend themselves to some strong metaphorical uses; I’ve heard people talk about vampires in relation to sex, drugs, and any other number of themes. There’s no doubt that the vampire concept has a wide appeal. On the other hand, the fact that there are so many also makes me wonder how many fresh ways are left to tackle the theme.

So here I am winding up to talk about LAKE OF DRACULA, another vampire movie. I kind of like it, but it may be nothing more than that it hit me in the right mood; I might have just been a little charmed to see a Japanese Dracula movie, for one thing. It doesn’t really add anything new to the vampire mix, though there are some nice touches here and there. But I know for a fact that I slept well the night before and was in a pretty easygoing mood on the day when I watched it; in other circumstances, I might have liked it less. So you might consider this one a bit of a toss-up, and someday when I give this another viewing, we’ll see how it holds up then. For now, it was a pleasant and somewhat enjoyable time-filler.

LOVE WANGA (1936)
(a.k.a. OUANGA/DRUMS OF THE JUNGLE)
Article #470 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-28-2002
Posting date: 11-21-2002

A light-skinned voodoo priestess falls in love with a white plantation owner, and vows to get rid of the woman he loves.

I thought this movie seemed very similar to THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER, and it turns out that the later movie was a reworking of the script for this one. I found this out from the “Forgotten Horrors” book by Turner and Price, which also includes the background story for the movie which would make a movie in itself; apparently, the makers of the movie went to Haiti to observe actual voodoo ceremonies, but angered the natives when they wanted to capture them on camera. From that moment onwards, the movie was plagued with bizarre production problems; it was eventually shot in Jamaica. If the one voodoo priest in love with the main character looks a lot like Sheldon Leonard, that’s because it is. The story is pretty ordinary, but there are some interesting visual moments, some nice atmosphere here and there, and some very nice editing every once in a while, particularly one that contrasts the dancing of the white characters with those of the blacks.