THE MAN FROM YESTERDAY (1949)
Article 2856 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-3-2009
Posting Date: 6-8-2009
Directed by Oswald Mitchell
Featuring John Stuart, Henry Oscar, Gwyneth Vaughan
Country: UK

The head of an English country estate invites an old friend from India to stay with him and his family for a few weeks. The friend, who claims to be an advocate of spiritualism, exudes a baleful influence over the family. Could he be digging up a skeleton in the family closet?

Henry Oscar gives a strong performance as the odd friend from India, and he has one of those faces that is fairly brimming with character. He was the force that held my interest in this movie; I wasn’t sure if he was a force for good or a force for evil, and the movie remains purposefully vague about the extent of the man’s powers (for one thing, a seance that is central to the plot is only talked about, not shown). Unfortunately, there’s the rest of the movie to reckon with; the script has some weak points, the direction is stodgy, the revelations (when they come) are disappointing, and the movie has a twist ending that will have you reaching for a rubber brick to throw at your TV set. Furthermore, Gwyneth Vaughan gives one of those mannered, snippy performances that makes her character incredibly unlikable, and she’s supposed to be the love interest. The uneven script is by John Gilling, who certainly has an interesting track record as a writer; he’s given us THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS and THE GORGON on the plus side, and TROG and THE MUMMY’S SHROUD on the other. All in all, this one was definitely a mixed bag, but, given it’s been on my hunt list for nearly seven years and only manifested itself recently, I’m glad to have seen it.

MUSEO DEL HORROR (1964)
aka Museum of Horror
Article 2852 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-27-2009
Posting Date: 6-4-2009
Directed by Rafael Baledon
Featuring Julio Aleman, Patricia Conde, Joaquin Cordero
Country: Mexico

Someone is killing women and covering them with wax. Grave robbers are also on the loose. People are also being killed by poison darts with curare. Who is the culprit?

Sometimes I rise to the challenge of enjoying a movie in its native language without the benefit of subtitles or English dubbing, and sometimes it just seems a bore to even try. I’m afraid this one falls into the latter category. It should be easy to follow, given that it’s largely a clone of HOUSE OF WAX, but there are other elements here not from the movie (grave robbers, a room of decaying corpses, the curare darts, etc.), and not only was I never able to quite figure out how they all fit into the story, I never quite worked up the ambition to really put my mind to it because of the predictability of the basic plot. It has some striking scenes; a woman has a dream of the dead coming to life that is quite effective, and there’s a scene of a policeman being buried alive, his hands reaching through the dirt, that is very striking. It’s good it has these scenes, because it omits the most striking scene from its source movie; there’s no unmasking sequence, in short. I’m afraid this one left me cold, but it also might just have been a bad day for it. Perhaps I’ll give it a try another time…

I MARZIANI HANNO DODICI MANI (1964)
aka The Martians Arrived, The 12-Handed Men from Mars
Article 2850 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-25-2009
Posting Date: 6-2-2009
Directed by Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia
Featuring Paolo Panelli, Carlo Croccolo, Enzo Garinei
Country: Italy

Martians arrive on Earth to plan an invasion. However, they find themselves seduced by the residents of the planet…

This movie has a rating of 4.5 on IMDB. It also gets a good review in ‘The Motion Picture Guide’. Given the fact that my print is in unsubtitled Italian, I can’t really make a call, especially as it seems that much of the humor seems to be verbal in nature. I do know that the Martians’ initial appearance on Earth in Nazi garb doesn’t go well. I also know that three of the Martians find themselves seduced by women, while the other is seduced by a jukebox. I also know that one of the Martians has an encounter with Italian comedians Franco and Ciccio (actually, my recognizing them from the photograph given to the Martian sent on the mission gave me the biggest laugh I had). There’s also a Martian dance craze, and the requisite number of jokes concerning the Martians’ interaction with inanimate objects. I have to admit it looks amusing enough, but only understanding the dialogue will tell me for sure.

THE MAGIC SWORD (1901)
Article 2827 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-2-2009
Posting Date: 5-10-2009
Directed by Walter R. Booth
Cast unknown
Country: UK

A knight’s girl is kidnapped by a witch who uses magic. The knight acquires a magic sword which will help him to rescue his love.

Or does it? Unlike yesterday’s movie, this one purports to have a plot, but once he starts using the sword… well, I’m not sure if it’s actually helping him much or just serving as a springboard for more special effects. Which is not to say that the special effects don’t have a charm; they do. I especially like the giant who appears and performs the actual kidnapping. The effects do come fast and furious, though, and it remains quite entertaining.

MY BROTHER HAS BAD DREAMS (1972)
aka Scream Bloody Murder
Article 2791 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-28-2008
Posting Date: 4-4-2009
Directed by Robert J. Emery
Featuring Paul Vincent, Marlena Lustik, Paul Ecenia
Country: USA

A man, traumatized and disturbed by having witnessed his mother’s murder by his father when he was a child, is under the care of his older sister. When he brings home a motorcyclist he’s befriended, his sister strikes up a romance with his new friend. However, this leads to the brother’s disturbance bubbling to the surface…

First of all, let’s clear up a bit of confusion. This movie entered my hunt list under the title SCREAM BLOODY MURDER. The plot description my source gives involves a boy who becomes a killer after losing his hand when he ran over his father with a tractor. Now, this movie certainly exists (I have a copy of it), but my source then lists the cast for THIS movie rather than for that one, and since I use the cast credits to help decide which movie to pick when there’s some confusion, it is this one I added to my list. I just wish to point out that there are two movies from the early seventies that carry this title.

As for this movie… well, it’s one of those movies that you can see where it’s going fairly early on, and then takes far too long to get there. So unless you’re really fascinated by some lame nightmare footage, or find the incestuous desire for his sister or his fetishistic fascination with mannequins or his desire to keep his mother’s wheelchair around or his relationship with the mailman to make for compelling cinema, you’re in for a long, tiresome stretch ahead. And once the event you know is going to happen happens, the movie doesn’t have anywhere to go and it takes a good stretch of time getting there, thanks to a gratuitous and dull police chase and a head-scratching ending. There’s a plot twist about the murder of the mother as well, but it’s hardly an earth-shaker. All in all, this is a fairly lame psycho killer movie.

THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (1959)
Article 2784 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-21-2008
Posting Date: 3-28-2009
Directed by Terence Fisher
Featuring Anton Diffring, Hazel Court, Christopher Lee
Country: UK

A doctor who also is a sculptor has a secret; he’s more than a hundred years old thanks to operations on his glands. Unfortunately, he has to kill others to get the glands. However, he’s due for another operation, and the surgeon who performed has suffered from a stroke and can no longer operate. He must find another doctor to operate or face certain death…

It seems an odd choice on Hammer’s part to do a remake of THE MAN ON HALF MOON STREET, but you can rest assured of one thing; they were quite willing to take this talky story and give it the the horror elements they wanted for their movies. Therefore, we get a new twist involving a fluid that can extend his life for four weeks but also turns him into a homicidal maniac, and the subplot about the missing women and the art pieces. I suppose it passes muster all right, but when I found out that Peter Cushing was originally slated for the title role, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed at Anton Diffring’s performance; his Teutonic intensity gets tiresome, and causes him to emphasize phrases and situations that would be best underplayed, and I would just love to see how Cushing would have handled the cliched scene in which the doctor/sculptor has a final confrontation with his former surgeon (it’s one of those doctor-talks-to-another-character-that-serves-as-his-conscience scenes). Hazel Court is lovely as always, and Christopher Lee somehow makes the best job he can with a rather thankless role. Hammer did better before, and they would do better again.

MAROONED (1969)
Article 2778 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-15-2008
Posting Date: 3-22-2009
Directed by John Sturges
Featuring Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen
Country: USA

Three astronauts find themselves stranded in their spacecraft when the retro rockets fail. NASA must engage in a race against time in order to rescue them.

The cast is impressive (Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus and Gene Hackman) and the special effects are indeed special. But unless you find NASA engineers speaking endless jargon through microphones hypnotically compelling, or are fascinated by the space technology the camera lovingly caresses, you will probably find this overlong science fiction thriller to be really tough going. Though the lack of music (other than a kind of ambient outer space hum) does give the movie an interesting texture, it also leaves the viewer on his own to try to pick up any emotional resonances and to find the excitement therein. It also doesn’t help that the three astronauts, to save oxygen, must try their best to keep calm, a situation not conducive the building excitement. Hackman, as the astronaut who has trouble keeping calm, has the only really interesting role here; Peck plays a standard authority figure, Janssen plays Janssen, and Crenna and Franciscus are stalwart, stoic and little else. It gets more interesting towards the end, but it’s all too low-key, and many of the scenes go on way too long. A better script, livelier direction, and more merciless editing would have helped immensely here.

MANIAC (1963)
Article 2777 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-14-2008
Posting Date: 3-21-2009
Directed by Michael Carreras
Featuring Kerwin Mathews, Nadia Gray, Donald Houston
Country: UK

An American artist finds himself stranded in a small town in France, and ends up striking up a romance with the married owner of a restaurant. The owner’s husband is in an insane asylum after having killed a man with an acetylene blowtorch years earlier. The husband agrees to give up his wife if she and her lover help him to escape the asylum and depart the country. However, these plans are a cover for something else….

Generally, I like Hammer’s black-and-white thrillers, but this one really tests my patience during the first half; after the opening murder, the story bogs down in a long sequence that sets up a fairly obvious love affair; it takes forever for the story to even get around to mentioning the insane husband. Things do pick up once the escape gets underway, and there are a goodly number of surprising plot twists in the story. However, I’m not sure all of the plot twists were strictly necessary, and some of the sequences (the need to dispose of a dead body) are good for the moment, but don’t really lead anywhere satisfactory in the long run. It holds the interest, all right, but don’t look at it too close afterwards, as it begins to look pretty far-fetched. At least the method of murder isn’t one of those that’s overused in horror movies.

THE MAGIC SLIPPER (1948)
Animated Short
Article 2763 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-30-2008
Posting Date: 3-7-2009
Directed by Mannie Davis
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA

Cinderella, through the help of her fairy godmother, is able to go to the ball to meet the prince. Complications arise when midnight strikes, and she must leave before the spell wears off. The prince must find the person whose foot fits the glass slipper left behind.

This is a Mighty Mouse cartoon. So where does Mighty Mouse fit into this? I was asking myself that for the first third of the cartoon, which is mostly a rehash of the Cinderella story. It’s only when the wolf shows up and steals the prince’s clothing in order to pursue Cinderella herself do you know where it’s really going. Mighty Mouse himself doesn’t show up until the final third of the cartoon. This one is fairly ordinary on all levels, though it is nice when we get to take a break from the operetta for a little jazz during the ball sequence.

THE MUMMY’S SHROUD (1967)
Article 2746 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-12-2008
Posting Date: 2-18-2009
Directed by John Gilling
Featuring Andre Morell, John Phillips, David Buck
Country: UK

Archaelogists invade the tomb of Kah-to-Bey, and find themselves subject to the vengeful wrath of his mummified guardian Prem.

When I first saw this movie about twenty years ago, I found it utterly boring and thoroughly predictable. I like it a little better on reviewing; some of the characters and performers are interesting, and the disintegration scene at the end of the movie is nicely done. Still, it doesn’t change my feeling that the movie is routine; it takes way too long to get going, and the story is standard mummy’s curse fare. Furthermore, the mummy makeup is particularly weak in this one. Perhaps more than any of the other Hammer horrors I’ve seen, this one feels churned out.