MARTA (1971)
Article 4466 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-4-2014
Directed by Jose Antonio Nieves Conde
Featuring Marisa Mell, Stephen Boyd, George Rigaud
Country: Spain / Italy
What it is: Psycho thriller

A disturbed man who murdered his own mother takes in a murderess who bears a strong resemblance to the man’s estranged wife. This does not sound like the beginning of a healthy relationship…

This is one of those movies that I thought I had pegged early on; it’s made of so many familiar elements (a disturbed man with sexual hang-ups that involve his mother, a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to the man’s first wife, sinister secrets in mansion) that I expected very little in the way of surprises in the way it would unfold. I was wrong; there are indeed surprises, things didn’t quite pan out the way I expected, and everything was just a little more complicated than I expected it would be. Yet, for all that, I can’t really say I like the movie. The characters seem to undergo too many jarring mood swings, parts of it seem very contrived, and there are other moments that strike false notes. In fact, despite some very definite horror trappings, it doesn’t feel like a horror movie, and when I look over the movie as a whole, the main point of it seems to be to reveal the precise nature of the man’s mental illness. It’s an interesting movie, there’s no doubt, but I would have liked it a lot more if it had rang true more often.

MAN IN OUTER SPACE (1962)
aka Man from the First Century, Muz z prvniho stoleti
Article 4465 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-3-2014
Directed by Oldrich Lipsky
Featuring Milos Kopecky, Radovan Lukavsky, Anita Kajlichova
Country: Czechoslovakia
What it is: Science fiction comedy

A repairman accidentally launches himself into space on a rocket. He returns to Earth 500 years into the future to find a Utopian society, which he seeks to exploit with the help of a space alien who is capable of turning himself invisible.

I like Czech science fiction, and I really enjoyed Lipsky’s I KILLED EINSTEIN, GENTLEMAN when I saw it. This one isn’t quite up to that level, though I know the substandard dubbing on my copy of the movie is probably a big stumbling block in appreciating the movie. Most of the humor is quite obvious; a greedy con man tries to take advantage of his unique position as a relic from an earlier time and his secret involvement with a scientifically superior extraterrestrial entity to amass a fortune, but finds that not only is the world not designed for him to take advantage of, but that he himself is eventually considered insane. More interesting is the alien himself, who sees things only in patterns and attempts to gain an understanding of this thing the humans call love. The ideas are interesting, and there’s a lot of imagination in the set design and special effects, but (in the dubbed English version at least), the laughs aren’t there. Still, it manages to have some points of interest, and it does have a great ending line.

MAN FROM ATLANTIS (1977)
Article 4464 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-2-2014
Directed by Lee H. Katzin
Featuring Patrick Duffy, Belinda Montgomery, Dean Santoro
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction TV pilot

When an amphibious man is found washed up on the shore, the military takes control of him and makes his existence a national secret. He is then sent out on his first mission: to locate a submarine that has gone missing.

I’ve already seen other episodes of the “Man from Atlantis” TV series; this, the pilot episode, is easily the best of what I’ve seen so far. Part of the reason is that the script is much stronger than the ones I’ve seen in the other entries of the series, particularly during the opening scenes of the movie. The other reason is the appearance of Victor Buono as the villain in the second half of the movie. Now, I’ve seen Buono as a villain many times, but his performance of Mr. Schubert here as a man brimming with folksy affability is a brilliant move; based on this performance alone, his character has catapulted to my list of all-time favorite TV villains. My other feelings about elements of the series remain the same; Patrick Duffy is much more interesting under the water than he is on dry land, and the show in general handles the underwater scenes very well.

MADAME SIN (1972)
Article 4463 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-28-2014
Directed by David Greene
Featuring Bette Davis, Robert Wagner, Denholm Elliott
Country: UK
What it is: Supervillain story

A CIA agent who has left the agency is kidnapped by a powerful supervillainess known as Madame Sin, who recruits him to help her to steal a Polaris submarine.

This movie actually has a decent rating on IMDB (at the time I write this, 7.0), but the user comments seem to be largely negative, which makes me suspect that the movie is one of those that splits its audience. I wonder if what many people don’t like about it is what I do like about it. It’s working in a very familiar genre (the supervillain/superspy story), but it jettisons many of its conventions. It’s stylishly directed, but in a totally different way than the other ones I’ve seen, though it does remind me a little bit of the Dr. Phibes movies. The movie is full of interesting and curious scenes, such as the one in which the hero, temporarily deaf, tries to get a tourist to make a phone call for him. And because it’s defying, bending and playing with conventions, it’s somewhat unpredictable; there are several plot surprises along the way. Those who love the conventions of the supervillain genre may feel put off, but I personally liked to see something really different done with the ideas. There’s plenty of gadgetry to add the fantastic content, and I like all three central performances in the movie. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.

MESSALINA AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1964)
aka L’ultimo gladiatore
Article 4449 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-13-2014
Directed by Umberto Lenzi
Featuring Richard Harrison, Lisa Gastoni, Marilu Tolo
Country: Italy / France
What it is: Sword and Sandal

The captured Briton slave Glaucus becomes embroiled in the plans of an evil woman intent on becoming the empress of Rome.

Near the beginning of the movie, Glaucus is said to be an actual descendant of Hercules, which is a bit surprising, as most of the other “Sons of Hercules” movies tend to take the title more metaphorically than literally. There’s also a lot of talk of how Glaucus has the strength of ten men, but in action, the closest I can find to any show of super-strength is when he lifts a heavy door at one point; in all other cases, I see nothing that indicates he has super-strength. And that about does it for the fantastic content in this one, as it falls squarely into the historical camp rather than the mythological camp; it’s mostly about the political machinations of Messalina during and after the reign of Caligula. There’s lots of fighting, action, and sword-and-sandal cliches, but I found this one to be somewhat on the dull side. There’s probably a few more sword-and-sandal movies from this era that I’ll be watching, but I hope they have more fantastic content than this one does.

MIGHTY MOUSE IN THE GREAT SPACE CHASE (1982)
Article 4441 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-5-2014
Directed by Ed Friedman, Lou Kachivas, Marsh Lamore, Gwen Wetzler, Kay Wright, Lou Zukor
Featuring the voices of Alan Oppenheimer, Diane Pershing
Country: USA
What is it: Kiddie matinee nightmare

Evil space villain Harry the Heartless is pursuing Pearl Pureheart to find the location of a doomsday device that will make him master of the universe. Can Mighty Mouse save the day?

Reportedly, this feature film is edited together from episodes of the animated TV series “The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle”, which goes a ways toward explaining why there’s six directors. What it amounts to is about ninety minutes of limited animation full of bad jokes, strident voices, dumb storylines, broad animated slapstick and repetitive music. It might hold the imagination of an eight-year old, and I”m willing to bet that its 7.2 rating on IMDB comes from people who had fond memories of seeing it when they were about that age, but haven’t seen it in years. I found it witless and headache-inducing, and I pity the parents who had to sit through it with their kids. But then, I’ll watch anything for this series, won’t I?

MARVELOUS SUSPENSION (1902)
aka La femme volante, Marvelous Suspension and Evolution
Article 4429 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-24-2014
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Trick film

A magician turns a vase into a beautiful woman who can float in mid-air and do tricks while suspended.

This is one of those trick films that Melies made that seems to be more interested in pulling off a specific effect (in this case, the appearance of a woman suspended in midair with no visible support while she does gymnastics) than telling any sort of story. From that perspective, the short is a success; though it’s obvious that in some of the sequences the woman was filmed while lying down on the floor and rolling around, there are other sequences that can’t be sorted out that easily. There’s a bit of a plot involving a group of women who surround the one that appears, but I’m not really sure what that is all about. At any rate, this is fairly minor Melies.

MAKING SAUSAGES (1897)
Article 4426 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-21-2014
Directed by George Albert Smith
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: An expose of the meat industry

Several cooks use a sausage machine to make sausages out of animals (and other things) they find.

There seems to be a fair amount of early silent shorts involving sausage-making machines, and given how many I’ve seen, many of them seem extant, though not easy to find. This one is very short and pretty bare bones – three cooks work on the machine while a fourth keeps coming in with new animals to feed into it. There’s no real plot, and, outside of the fact that the sausage machine has an exit for the animals to get out (I assume), no real special effects. Let’s face it; there’s only so much you can do with an idea like this.

MY SCIENCE PROJECT (1985)
Article 4416 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-8-2014
Directed by Jonathan R. Betuel
Featuring John Stockwell, Danielle von Zerneck, Fisher Stevens
Country: USA
What it is: Offbeat science fiction comedy

In order to complete a school science project, a teenager discovers an artifact from an alien aircraft that was destroyed when it landed on earth in the fifties – an engine that can warp space and time.

I’m going to have say at the outset that I don’t think this movie really works; it’s one of those movies where I often don’t get a sense of how I’m supposed to feel about the events going on, and this is especially true in the big special effects-laden climax to the movie. Yet, despite this problem, I found myself rather liking the movie. Why? For one thing, it doesn’t seem like it’s trying to imitate or emulate any other movie I’ve seen, and I do admire that. There’s also an odd but fetching nonchalant quality to the whole affair; the movie has a casual, tossed-off feeling. I genuinely like the love affair between the car-loving teen and his bookish girlfriend; there’s something genuine there. And even the wise-cracking comic relief character manages to keep (just barely) on the right side of annoying, though he’s hardly as funny as the movie would like to make him out to be. Yes, the movie leaves me scratching my head a bit, but at least it was something of a pleasant itch. Incidentally, Dennis Hopper plays a sixties radical turned science teacher in this one.

THE MISTLETOE BOUGH (1904)
Article 4383 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-3-2013
Directed by Percy Stow
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Short tragedy

A bride disappears from her wedding party and hides in a crate. She can not be found by the other members of the wedding party. Then, thirty years later….

This macabre little silent short just recently popped up on the internet, thus allowing me to retrieve it from my “ones that got away” list. The short is not quite complete; it’s missing its final reveal, but given the action that leads up to it, it’s not that difficult to figure out what is seen, and I checked the Willis guide for a quick rundown to help. It’s based on a poem that I haven’t read, so I’m not familiar with the story. As such, the short leaves many unanswered questions for me; why was the woman hiding in the crate? How did it get sealed? Why didn’t anybody bother to open the crate for thirty years? And, perhaps most interestingly, why would someone have a premonition thirty years after it would do anyone any good? The story itself is rather compact, but I did find the short rather slow-moving, especially in the beginning; for me, a long dance sequence is no way to kick off a story. At any rate, I’m glad to have had a chance to cross this one off of my list.