THE MIRACLE OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA (1952)
Article 2124 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-8-2007
Posting Date: 6-6-2007
Directed by John Brahm
Featuring Susan Whitney, Sherry Jackson, Carl Milletaire

Three young children encounter a vision of a lovely lady in a cloud just outside of Fatima. People gather from all around when it is rumored that the children have seen the Virgin Mary.

During the forties, movies with religious themes became very common, and one of the surprising things I discovered was that most of them were quite good, thanks mostly due to the excellence of the scripts, which took the trouble to develop memorable characters to undergo these experiences. The trend continued into the fifties, but the quality went downhill; characters lost their dimension, and the stories become simplistic. To illustrate my point, compare this movie with THE SONG OF BERNADETTE from a decade earlier; whereas that movie gave us a startling array of memorable and complex characters, this one settles for far less. Yes, Gilbert Roland’s likable but cynical hero (he protects the children even if he doesn’t believe in their vision) is fun, but he’s pretty much meant to serve one dramatic purpose which you should see coming long before the movie ends. The villainous administrator is far too close to being Snidely Whiplash for a movie that purports to be realistic, and of the three children, the two young ones are differentiated only by their sexes, while the older one’s main function is to tug on our heartstrings by having people be mean to her so she can break into tears every ten minutes or so. If THE SONG OF BERNADETTE was true drama, this is very much simple melodrama. Still, some of the spectacle is good, I like the fact that the vision is never clearly seen, and Max Steiner’s score is lovely. The acting in the crowd scenes is fairly lame. The director of this one also gave us THE LODGER and HANGOVER SQUARE, and personally, I prefer his work when he’s dealing with serial killers.

MATANGO (1963)
aka ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE
Article 2122 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-6-2007
Posting Date: 6-4-2007
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Featuring Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Hiroshi Koizumi

A group of shipwrecked people are stranded on an island with little hope of rescue and with little food. The most common foodstuff on the island are mushrooms, which turn out to have a dangerous and grotesque effect on those that eat them.

This much-maligned Japanese horror movie is looked down upon by those that mistake a silly title for a silly movie. However, even if in its dubbed state, it’s an original and unsettling movie, eerie and frightening, and with some dark messages about human nature. For years I was only familiar with it through the dubbed version, but for this review, i got a chance to see the Japanese language version with subtitles and a beautifully restored and letterboxed print, and it simply makes it that much stronger. Probably the two most surprising things about watching this version were a) discovering that the rather silly “La La La La La” song actually had those lyrics in the original version, and b) that, if the subtitling is truer to the actually dialogue than the dubbing was, the final revelation is significantly different, and possibly more unsettling. It’s very effective and quite satisfying, but I always have problems with one sequence; the sequence where the castaways first encounter one of the inhabitants of the island ends both abruptly and ambiguously, and I wish it had ended a little more clearly.

MISSILE BASE AT TANIAK (1966)
Feature Version of the serial CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS. ATOMIC INVADERS
Article 2114 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-29-2006
Posting Date: 5-27-2007
Directed by Franklin Adreon
Featuring William Henry, Susan Morrow, Arthur Space

A mountie is on the trail of foreign agents intent on building a missile base which would destroy American cities in preparation for an upcoming invasion.

On a purely technical level, the later serials were easier to adapt into features, largely because the episodes were so short to begin with that once you removed the beginning and closing credits and duplicate cliffhanger footage, you were probably fairly close to feature length already. As a result, this one doesn’t jerk as quickly from one sequence to another, and has a better flow. The downside is that the later serials were usually pretty tired and dull to begin with, and the feature version can’t really hide that. As I did with the serial itself, I found the first half more interesting, as it dealt with the mountie joining an expedition of farmers in the Yukon Territory; simply by having most of the action in snow-covered settings, and by having a group of other people in the mix (other than just the good guys and bad guys), it upped the novelty value of the proceedings. The second half is a bore, and consists almost entirely of one chase after another. The fantastic content is non-existent; there are no gizmos, the missile base never gets built (which, considering they only had three men on the job, is no surprise), and, quite frankly, the spies’ plot never gets off the ground. Forgettable.

MEET ME IN LAS VEGAS (1956)
Article 2091 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-6-2006
Posting Date: 5-4-2007
Directed by Roy Rowland
Featuring Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Agnes Moorehead

A cowboy with a bad losing streak comes to Vegas, and he wins for the first time when he grabs the hand of a ballerina for luck. He soon discovers that she is his lucky charm, and that he can’t lose when he’s holding her hand. They begin to fall in love.

This slight musical with fantasy overtones (the amazing good luck when they hold hands is the fantastic element) works well enough for the first half of the movie, thanks to a likable cast and some truly colorful characters (in particular, the Hungarian blackjack dealer played by Oskar Karlweis who can’t stand to see the cowboy gamble away his money is a favorite). but it starts to wear thin in the second half, partially due to some odd musical choices (the Sleeping Beauty ballet sequence feels out of place, in particular) and to the fact that the story takes some fairly glum twists towards the end. There are some really fun moments, though; I especially like Dan Dailey’s duet with Mitsuko Sawamura. It has a fun little cameo from Frank Sinatra, and another from Peter Lorre (his sole line is “Hit me, you creep!”). Mel Welles has an uncredited appearance in here as well.

THE MYSTIC SWING (1900)
Article 2090 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-5-2006
Posting Date: 5-3-2007
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
Cast unknown

Two magicians have a competition in making women appear and disappear on a swing.

There’s not much of a plot to speak of in this early Melies imitation. One magician makes ’em appear, the other makes ’em go away. That is, until a skeleton appears and foils the abilities of one of the magicians. That’s about it. One question; given that the skeleton steals the show here, why doesn’t he take a bow with the others at the end?

THE MYSTERIOUS RETORT (1906)
aka ALCHIMISTE PARAFARAGAMUS OU LO CORNUE INFERNALE
Article 2089 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-4-2006
Posting Date: 5-2-2007
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies

An alchemist is tormented by a succession of creatures that emerge from a glass vial.

I’m not sure where the retort comes into play in this Melies fantasy, but I suppose it’s mysterious enough. The bizarre snake that emerges first steals the show here, as it grows and shrinks in size before transforming into a tumbling imp. There may be a plot here, but it’s not much of one. Overall, it’s fun enough, but it’s fairly minor Melies.

PS: I’ve been informed that the glass vial is called a retort. That explains the title. You learn something new every day.

MURDER AT MIDNIGHT (1931)
aka THE MONSTER KILLS
Article 2088 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-3-2006
Posting Date: 5-1-2007
Directed by Frank R. Strayer
Featuring Aileen Pringle, Alice White, Hale Hamilton

When a game of charades results in the murder of a rich man’s secretary, the police are called in to investigate, only to find several more murders being committed in succession.

A spooky opening sequence gives it a touch of horror, and a couple of murder gimmicks add a bit of science fiction to this mystery, giving it its only fantastic elements. You know, this early talkie is so stiff and so stagey that it almost exudes a certain fascination, and this will hold you about fifteen minutes before the dreariness sets in. Well, even if the production is creaky, the story does have some good things about it to help you along. Here are four good things about this movie.

1) The presence of Brandon Hurst as the butler. Brandon Hurst appeared in a number of early horror movies, and though his name isn’t well known, his presence is always felt and appreciated by me.

2) After the butler finds the will, he hides it one of the better hiding places I’ve seen in a movie like this.

3) The identity of the murderer is a definite and unexpected treat.

4) The comic relief character has one simple but annoying (and amusing) bad habit. One of the better laughs I had in this movie was that this bad habit was also used to give murder suspects the third degree.

THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU (1967)
Article 2086 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-1-2006
Posting Date: 4-29-2007
Directed by Lindsay Shonteff
Featuring Frankie Avalon, George Nader, Shirley Eaton

A secret agent tries to take on Sumuru, the head of a female cult that intends to use assassination to take over the world.

Poor George Nader! Not only is he saddled here with some of the lamest comic one-liners ever written, but he also receives lower billing than Frankie Avalon, who plays what amounts to (for all practical purposes) his sidekick. Not only that, most of the audience is probably too busy ogling the beautiful women to pay any attention to him, and then Klaus Kinski comes along in a cameo and outacts the rest of the cast. Well, at least he doesn’t have a line as bad as Frankie’s about whether it’s time to sing a song now. I found it very hard to take this movie seriously due to the nonstop barrage of one-liners, and the fact that the one-liners were pretty bad only made it worse. Still, I think it’s a little better than its sequel, FUTURE WOMEN; yes, it’s a much more conventional movie than that one was, but at least when it’s time for the action sequences, you get action sequences, and there’s a good surprise moment in the first couple of minutes. Beyond that, this is faux Fu Manchu at its lamest.

THE MUTATIONS (1974)
Article 2074 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-18-2006
Posting Date: 4-17-2007
Directed by Jack Cardiff
Featuring Donald Pleasence, Tom Baker, Brad Harris

A scientist experiments with crossing animal and plant life on human beings; he dumps his failures into a freak show, one of whose members (a sufferer from acromegaly) he enlists as a henchman by promising him he will cure him of his deformity.

Perhaps the oddest thing about this cross between FREAKS and any number of mad scientist movies (for some reason, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE came to mind while watching this) is that it seems somewhat out of its time for the year it was made; most horror movies of the mid seventies were more interested in witchcraft and demonic possession, and an old-fashioned monster movie (which this primarily is) was an anomaly. It borrows heavily from FREAKS for the subplot about the freak show, and, like that movie, it uses real freaks for most of the movie’s freaks; the main exceptions are the monsters produced by the scientist, and the acromegalic Lynch (played by “Doctor Who’s”‘ Tom Baker, wearing a costume that looks actually fairly close to the one he wore in the series). Somehow, I think it’s rather interesting that the freak who rejects the fellowship of his comrades is the one played by an actor in make-up (it looks somewhat similar to that used by John Hurt in THE ELEPHANT MAN) rather than a true-life freak. The movie manages to work up a decent amount of pathos for the freaks, though much of it is due to the its borrowings from FREAKS, though the scene where Lynch seeks out a prostitute and has to pay her extra to get her to tell him she loves him is original to this one. The mad scientist plot is standard, but the movie benefits from an interesting cast; outside of the aforementioned Baker, the movie also features Donald Pleasence as the scientist (who lovingly strokes his rabbits before feeding them to a hokey carnivorous plant with a really big chin), sword-and-sandal star Brad Harris, Norwegian bombshell Julie Ege, and the great Michael Dunn, who leads the freaks but is bullied and intimated by Lynch; he was a great actor, and his facial expressions are sometimes heartbreaking. This would be one of his last roles.

THE MONSTER (1903)
Article 2068 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-12-2006
Posting Date: 4-11-2007
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies

An Egyptian watches a magician make a skeleton dance, grow and shrink. When the magician invites him to dance with the skeleton, he refuses, so the magician transforms the skeleton into a beautiful woman. But now, the woman will have nothing to do with the Egyptian.

This is another early Melies short, and a fairly entertaining one. It’s one of his shorter trick films (only two minutes long), so it’s somewhat at the opposite spectrum of his all-stops-pulled-out extravaganzas (like A TRIP TO THE MOON or THE MERRY FROLICS OF SATAN), and if you’ve seen enough of his work, there are no real special effects surprises, but it’s quite entertaining in its modest way.