THE MIRACLE OF MARCELINO (1955)
aka Marcelino pan y vino
Article 2605 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-23-2008
Posting Date: 9-30-200
Directed by Ladislao Vajda
Featuring Rafael Rivelles, Antonio Vico, Juan Calvo
Country: Spain/Italy

A baby is left at the gates of a monastery. The monks attempt to find a home for it, but end up deciding to raise the boy themselves. However, in the process, they end up offending a high-ranking official in the local town, who resolves to have the monks evicted. Several years later, the boy inadvertently causes chaos at the town fair, and the official (now the mayor) uses the event to force the eviction. With only a month left in their home, the monks need a miracle. And it is then the boy discovers a crucifix in an upstairs room in the monastery…

As far as I can tell, this movie was not based on a true story, but on a novel by Jose Maria Sanchez Silva. This is a bit of a relief to me, as I can feel free to call it a fantasy without offending anyone, and I can avoid tiresome discussions about whether the events really happened. All in all, I found the movie quite moving, though at times it’s a little odd (it’s hard to understand why the monks would choose to frighten the boy away from a crucifix) and definitely unsettling at points (there’s a definite streak of darkness when you consider just what the boy is asking for when he makes his final request). The movie alternates comedy and drama for the first half of the movie; the miracle doesn’t start happening until the final third of the movie. It’s nice to see a movie like this that doesn’t bother dwelling on the “proof” of the miracle, which is the usual direction of stories of this kind; instead, it just lets the miracle happen, and it really manages to capture the sense of what it might be like to witness a miracle, an event that you experience vicariously through the character of Brother Cookie (the boy himself takes it all for granted). If anything, the movie demonstrates that a story doesn’t have to be true to be inspirationally moving. The main downside to the movie is that the dubbing is not quite as good as it could have been.

MISTERIOS DE LA MAGIA NEGRA (1958)
aka Mysteries of Black Magic, Return from the Beyond
Article 2601 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-19-2008
Posting Date: 9-26-200
Directed by Miguel M. Delgado
Featuring Nadia Haro Oliva, Carlos Riquelme, Aldo Monti
Country: Mexico

A female hypnotist/magician is actually a witch who sets her sights on the destruction of a professor and his family.

The movie is in unsubtitled Spanish, so I’m naturally a little weak on precise plot details, though, overall, it looks like pretty familiar stuff. The low rating on IMDB (2.3) seems to say that it isn’t a very good movie, but until I see a copy I can understand fully, I can’t say myself. I will say this, though; the hypnotist/magician act that opens the movie is very striking; the hypnotist at one point drives a nail through the hand of one man while another subject feels the pain and shows the wound, and she also gets the husband of a scoffing couple to threaten his wife with a knife. There’s also a voodoo sequence involving blindness that is fairly memorable. On the side, we have the magicians not-quite-human assistant (check out the ears), and an eerie secret behind a secret panel with the number 4 on it. Quite frankly, I liked what I saw.

MARY POPPINS (1964)
Article 2597 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-15-2008
Posting Date: 9-22-2008
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Featuring Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson
Country: USA

A magical nanny brings joy to the home of a stodgy banker.

MARY POPPINS has long had the reputation of being one of Disney’s undisputed classics. It’s easy to see why; much of the movie is brilliant, Julie Andrew’s singing, Dick Van Dyke’s dancing, and the special effects machine at Disney are all in top form here. Still, the fact of the matter here is that I emerge from watching it feeling a little emptier than I think I should. I first start getting antsy when they all go to the animated fantasy world, and the kids go one way while Andrews and Van Dyke go another, Van Dyke singing a song about how wonderful Mary Poppins is. Now, I have a cardinal rule about songs like this; they’re unnecessary, as we should be able to tell a character is wonderful by their actions rather than having someone sing to us how wonderful they are.

That’s not the only scene I have problems with. Overall, I think the movie, despite its truly great moments, is overlong, and somewhat bloated with whimsy. When I first saw it years ago, I thought the movie was plotless. Watching it again, I know it isn’t, but I do feel the plot is given short shrift in order to make way for more whimsy. Practically every big musical number goes on too long, and I get tired of the way the movie constantly regurgitates certain themes, especially the “spoonful of sugar” philosophy. In short, I don’t place this one the same level as Disney’s early animated features, which seem to be more enjoyable on a broader level than this one.

THE MIND OF MR. SOAMES (1970)
Article 2588 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-6-2008
Posting Date: 9-13-2008
Directed by Alan Cooke
Featuring Terence Stamp, Robert Vaughn, Nigel Davenport
Country: UK

A man who has been in a coma since birth is revived after a successful operation on his brain. However, the revived man has the mind of a baby. Two doctors try to raise him, but they differ sharply in their beliefs and methods. The revived man eventually escapes from the institute where he’s being held, but he isn’t ready to deal with the real world…

This movie is an excellent combination of science fiction drama, character study and tense thriller. It’s anchored by an excellent performance by Terence Stamp in the title role, and also features top-notch performances from Robert Vaughn (this is the finest performance I’ve seen him give) and Nigel Davenport. Though the characters are specific “types”, they never become stereotypes; Nigel Davenport’s somewhat cold and overly disciplined Dr. Maitland could have easily been a cliche, but he remains a very real person. The movie underplays and uses subtlety, and we grow very attached to all of the characters. This is especially powerful when Mr. Soames gets loose in the real world; we feel both how he feels as well as the feelings of those he meets, and this gives rise to a lot of tension. The scene in which Mr. Soames ends up sharing a train car with a very scared young woman who doesn’t understand the man she’s dealing with is one of the tensest scenes I’ve encountered in a long while. Many people feel unhappy with the ending which neither offers easy answers nor resolves all the issues, but I found the final actions of the doctors’ assistant in the ambulance to give me the satisfaction I desire. Personally, I like it a lot better and and find it more honest than the somewhat similar CHARLY.

THE MYSTERIOUS BOX (1903)
aka The Trick Box, La Boite a malice
Article 2550 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-30-2008
Posting Date: 8-5-2008
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France

A magician and his assistant cause a woman to disappear and reappear in a tiny box.

No plot here; just another of Melies’s demonstrations of the magic of movie-making. Yet, somehow, it seems fitting that my Melies-a-Thon should end with one of his simpler magic films; after all, it was magic that drew him to the invention of all of the special effects he pioneered. I just want to take a moment here to thank all of the individuals and companies responsible for making these films available to the public once again, and let us hope they continue onwards in bringing us the forgotten and rarely seen wonders of the early cinema.

MR. PEEK-A-BOO (1951)
aka Le Passe-muraille
Article 2544 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-23-2008
Posting Date: 7-30-2008
Directed by Jean Boyer
Featuring Bourvil, Joan Greenwood, Gerarud Oury
Country: France/Italy

A mild-mannered clerk discovers he has the ability to walk through walls. When he meets a beautiful English woman who has embarked on a life of crime, he decides to use his power to save her and to win her heart.

This is what happens if you take the idea of THE 4D MAN and make it French comic fantasy rather than science-fiction thriller. There are actually two versions of this movie, a French language version and an English language version, both directed by the same man and with partially different casts. I’m not yet sure which one I’ve watched, but I’m guessing I may have seen the English version. It’s quite amusing, largely because of the likable performance by Bourvil as the clerk and Joan Greenwood as the object of his affections. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed by the ending, as he manages to pass on the ability to someone else without giving us any real internal logic as to how he got it in the first place or as to how he was able to pass it on. Still, this is a fun little movie.

THE MAD EXECUTIONERS (1963)
aka Der Henker von London
Article 2518 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-25-2008
Posting Date: 7-4-2008
Directed by Edwin Zbonek
Featuring Hansfjorg Felmy, Maria Perschy, Dieter Borsche
Country: Germany

A secret society captures, tries, and executes criminals who have somehow managed to evade punishment by the law. A Scotland Yard inspector is on the case. He also must contend with a serial killer who decapitates his female victims.

For those interested in trying out the German Edgar Wallace thrillers of the early sixties but aren’t sure where to start, this is a good one to begin with. I don’t quite rank it with the best ones, but it’s one of the most straightforward and least confusing of the bunch, and it manages to keep the comic relief down to a minimum. Even the subplot about the serial killer weaves nicely into the main plot, and it’s this subplot that adds a goodly portion of the fantastic content to the story, with both the horror element of a serial killer and a science fiction element that manifests itself when you understand what the serial killer is trying to accomplish. Granted, the group of hooded executioners adds its own horror element as well. There are some very nice moments in this one, including a sequence where we witness two mock trials concurrently, and the moment where we discover how the executioners are able to get the noose from a locked safe. Again, it’s not the best of the genre, but it’s perhaps the most accessible.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
Article 2477 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-13-2008
Posting Date: 5-24-2008
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Featuring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh
Country: USA

A Korean war veteran receives the Medal of Honor for having rescued nine men from his platoon. However, when a Major in the military begins to suffer nightmares that seem to contradict this event, he tries to find the truth. He discovers that the war hero has actually been brainwashed by communists to assassinate someone – but who, when and where?

The last movie for this series that I’ve seen from John Frankenheimer was THE EXTRAORDINARY SEAMAN; it’s hard to believe that the director of that stinker is the same man who brought us this brilliant and gripping political thriller. The story is simply amazing; it manages to combine a bizarre array of elements (such as games of solitaire, a woman’s garden club meeting on hydrangeas, a man jumping in the lake in Central Park, a dysfunctional (and possibly even incestuous) mother-son relationship, a faked hit-and-run accident, a snake bite, McCarthy’s list of “known communists”, and a magician’s trick deck of cards) into a nail-biting story about an attempted coup by communists to take over the United States. It takes a while before all the various elements start to come together, but the movie is fascinating every step of the way. The performances are all top notch, with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury in particular very strong. The movie is full of great scenes; the nightmare sequences, the moment when we discover the identity of the American operative, and (my personal favorite) the scene where Sinatra’s character attempts to undo the brainwashing of Harvey’s character. The only flaw in the movie is that Janet Leigh’s character and the subplot about her romance with Sinatra’s character is unnecessary. The fantastic content of the movie includes the brainwashing techniques and the fact that the overall political plot puts the movie into marginal science fiction territory. The cast also features Henry Silva (who engages in an early martial arts fight with Sinatra), James Gregory (as a drunken senator partially modeled off of Joe McCarthy), John McGiver (as a Senator), Whit Bissell, and Reggie Nalder. And, of course, that’s Paul Frees on narration.

MASTERS OF VENUS (1962)
Serial
Article 2476 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-12-2008
Posting Date: 5-23-2008
Directed by Ernest Morris
Featuring Norman Wooland, Mandy Harper, Robin Stewart
Country: UK

Two children are forced to launch themselves into space to escape saboteurs. Fortunately, they were able to save the lives of the two pilots, and they all head to the planet Venus.

This may be the only non-American sound movie serial I’ve seen for this series; I only added the word “sound” above when it occurred to me that I saw some early French serials. It’s a juvenile space adventure, made exclusively for Saturday Morning Cinema Clubs. Plotwise, it’s pretty standard stuff, with the kind of story that made for movies like FLIGHT TO MARS. Certainly, it isn’t up to the level of the Nigel Kneale science fiction TV serials of the era. However, it is interesting to compare them to the American serials of the previous few decades. When you do this, the plot feels pretty sophisticated; in each episode, something happens to advance the plot, whereas the American serials usually worked with the plot in the beginning and ending episodes and used the basic situation mostly to hang action sequences on. This serial is at its best at the beginning before they land on Venus; after that, it’s pretty cliched. According to one source of mine, this serial was edited into a feature, but that must be even harder to find than the serial itself.

LA MARCA DEL MUERTO (1961)
aka The Mark of Death
Article 2465 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-1-2008
Posting Date: 5-12-2008
Directed by Fernando Cortes
Featuring Fernando Casanova, Sonio Furio, Rosa Maria Gallardo
Country: Mexico

A mad scientist is executed because of his hideous experiments with immortality (which involve draining the blood of young women). Years later, his descendant discovers his experiments and resurrects him, thus reviving the old horrors.

It’s pretty sad. This movie is sitting on IMDB with a rating of 1.5. I get the sense that they’re not reviewing this movie per se, but the Jerry Warren re-edit known as CREATURE OF THE WALKING DEAD. This is understandable when the same listing serves for both movies (as it used to), but now IMDB has separate listings for both movies. To make it all the more embarrassing is that CREATURE OF THE WALKING DEAD is sitting with a 1.6 rating, which is even higher. I don’t care what anyone says; I find it beyond the pale to consider the possibility that Jerry Warren actually improved a movie by editing it into one of his snoozefests.

Not that this one is a classic; it’s moody, but utterly predictable. However, that very predictability is helpful when you consider that I’m watching an undubbed, unsubtitled version of this Mexican movie; with such a predictable plot, it’s easy as pie to follow. Still, the real question here is; what is the better way to watch this movie – in Jerry Warren’s edited version, or in a version in a language you can’t understand. The latter wins hand down; when you get to a scene you don’t understand, at least it doesn’t break the mood and the pace. When you get to one of Jerry Warren’s inserts, not only is the mood broken but you can’t understand what he’s talking about anyway, even if it is in English. You should only go for CREATURE OF THE WALKING DEAD over this one if you really want to see Bruno VeSota get a massage. Doesn’t that say it all right there?