MIRACLE IN MILAN (1951)
(a.k.a. MIRACOLO A MILANO)
Article #886 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-18-2003
Posting Date: 1-15-2004
Directed by Vittorio de Sica
Featuring Francesco Golisano, Paolo Stoppa, Emma Gramatica

An orphan has a magical effect on the lives of the homeless people in Milan.

The first scene in this movie has an old lady finding a baby in her cabbage patch. The next scene takes place several years later, when the old lady returns home to her son to find that the milk has boiled over on the stove and left a trail of milk on the floor; rather than cleaning it up, she gleefully sets up toy houses and trees around the spill to make it look like a river running through a village. It was at this point in the proceedings that I knew I was watching something special, and this brilliant, quirky, surreal comic fantasy is truly unique. Though there is a sense of magic in the proceedings, it doesn’t really go into sheer fantasy until the last half hour of the movie, but I think it best to leave that as a surprise to the viewer. What is truly amazing is how the movie remains thoroughly joyful throughout, even when a certain darkness creeps in around the edges, and there are times when you fear the movie will take the dark, sad turn into cynicism; after all, Vittorio de Sica is one of the pioneers of Italian realism, and his THE BICYCLE THIEF is a movie with very little joy in it. Most of all, though, I’m grateful for this movie giving me some of the best laughs I’ve had in months of watching these movies.

THE MACABRE TRUNK (1936)
(a.k.a. EL BAUL MACABRO)
Article #874 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-6-2003
Posting Date: 1-3-2004
Directed by Miguel Zacarias
Featuring Ramon Pereda, Manuel Noriega, Rene Cardona

A madman is kidnapping women from the hospital in order to use them to restore the health of his wife.

Yes, we’re back in “Spanish-no subtitles” mode here, but this time I was helped by a hint that it was somewhat similar to THE CORPSE VANISHES, and that gave me something of a handle on it. Despite the fact that I didn’t always know what was going on, I found myself quite entertained; the story involves a sinister-looking assistant, a suspicious beggar, a pigeon-toed nurse, an intentionally bad music performance, a comic relief cop, and the trunk of the title. It also shows more skin than a Hollywood film would have done at the time, and even throws in a gag involving a severed limb that wouldn’t have made it past the Hays office here. All in all, the movie has the feel of a forties Monogram cheapie, which is interesting, because it predates them by a few years. It uses an interesting editing technique by which scenes are switched via the use of props that appear in both scenes, which is impressive at first, but ends up being overused. However, the movie’s most memorable moment involves one of the most glaring editing gaffs I’ve ever seen in my life, and though I don’t want to give it away completely, I’ll say that it occurs about twenty minutes into the film (during the song), and it offers proof positive that Mexican filmmakers used clapboards.

THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG (1939)
Article #865 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-28-2003
Posting Date: 12-25-2003
Directed by Nick Grinde
Featuring Boris Karloff, Lorna Gray, Robert Wilcox

A scientist who is experimenting with an artificial heart is arrested by the police when he kills a student in order to bring him back to life with the heart. He swears revenge on the judge and jury who condemn him to be executed.

Title check: Actually, the title is not true; though he does come back to life, they certainly were able to hang him. Still, the title has a nicer ring to it than THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T STAY DEAD.

This was the first of the Columbia Mad Doctor movies Boris Karloff made for the studio. It’s pretty standard, starting out as fairly ordinary mad scientist fare and then turning into a sort of ‘old dark house’ variant where people trapped in a room are picked off one by one. Nevertheless, it’s not bad; Karloff gives a strong performance, and there are several touches here and there (particularly near the end) that I quite like, especially a moment where Karloff’s daughter gambles on her father’s affection for her in a bid to save the trapped people. Though I don’t think the story is as interesting as the one in THE DEVIL COMMANDS, I did find it somewhat more compelling than BEFORE I HANG.

MEN MUST FIGHT (1933)
Article #861 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-24-2003
Posting Date: 12-21-2003
Directed by Edgar Selwyn
Featuring Diana Wynyard, Lewis Stone, Phillips Holmes

A woman becomes pregnant by a man who then dies during World War I. When a new war begins in 1940, she tries to prevent her son from going to war.

Title check: The title is quite appropriate in its way, considering the way the story works out.

As far as anti-war movies go, I prefer ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT or J’ACCUSE (the sound version of this one also falls into the category of fantastic cinema); this one has its points, but it is endlessly preachy. It falls into the category of science fiction as it takes place seven years after the year it was made; the Euroasian war of this movie bears a much greater resemblance to WWI than it does WWII, starting off as it does with an assassination. It does explore something of the difficulty of standing up against a war when patriotism runs rampant and pacifism is interpreted as cowardice. There is some footage of New York getting bombed, but it takes up no more than a minute or so of screen time; the rest is stagebound talk. The ending is even a hair ambiguous; we do not learn the ultimate fate of the son, for example. Nevertheless, this movie could be used as an effective starting point for discussions on the nature of war, pacifism, courage and other related issues.

MAN WITH TWO LIVES (1942)
Article #858 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-21-2003
Posting Date: 12-18-2003
Directed by Phil Rosen
Featuring Edward Norris, Marlo Dwyer, Eleanor Lawson

When a man dies from shock after a car accident, he is brought back to life by a scientist; however, since he was revived at the same time a criminal was executed, the criminal’s soul has taken over his body.

Title check: It’s an appropriate enough title for this one.

The movie opens with a dog’s heart being kept alive, which I thought was amusing since I had just seen LIFE RETURNS before this. The basic idea is interesting enough, and the movie seems well acted throughout, though it is somewhat reminiscent of BLACK FRIDAY. It’s pretty standard stuff, though; entertaining, but a bit predictable. And someone should have had the good sense to cut out the last two minutes of the movie, in which a hoary old plot twist is trotted out that is doubly bad since the story was already over at that time.

THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG (1934)
Article #839 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-1-2003
Posting Date: 11-28-2003
Directed by William Nigh
Featuring Bela Lugosi, Wallace Ford, Arline Judge

An oriental criminal tries to recover the twelve coins of Confucius so that he will become a powerful ruler.

Title check: There is nothing Wong with this title (okay, you can slap me for that).

What we have here is your typical low-budget yellow peril potboiler with an evil archcriminal and a wise-cracking reporter (look at the cast and figure out who plays who). It starts out well with a creative montage of death scenes, but it bogs down all too quickly afterwards once the plot shifts to the reporter who spends more time romancing the girl than hunting the criminal. Both Lugosi and Ford can be fun in their respective parts, but you have to be in the mood for this sort of thing, and I really wasn’t; maybe I just watched it at the Wong time (okay, you can slap me again). The dark side of coin collecting.

MR. WU (1927)
Article #790 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-14-2003
Posting Date: 10-11-2003
Directed by William Nigh
Featuring Lon Chaney, Louis Dressler, Renee Adoree

Troubles arise when an American boy romances the only daughter of a chinese Mandarin.

Title check: No problem here; there is a character called Wu, (though I don’t know if he’s ever referred to as “Mr.” Wu.)

Lon Chaney does a wonderful job in two roles (he essentially plays the main character and his grandfather), and the movie is quite entertaining, but as I was watching the movie, I really began wondering why it was included in a book that listed fantastic movies, despite the fact that the plot takes some dark turns in the last third of the movie. Actually, it does qualify in the last moments, primarily due to some ghost-like figures. Still, this does remain marginal, if entertaining, and Chaney gives one of his most restrained performances, one that emphasizes subtlety rather than grotesque makeup; no one has a physical deformity in this one.

MACISTE IN HELL (1926)
Article #779 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-3-2003
Posting Date: 9-30-2003
Directed by Guido Brignone
Featuring Bartolomeo Pagano, Franz Sala, Elena Sangro

Maciste is tempted by the devil, and ends up trapped in hell when he elects to fight him.

Bartolomeo Pagano played Maciste in the 1914 movie CABIRIA; he must have liked the character; he ended up playing him repeatedly in a variety of movies over the next twenty years. I do wonder about the character’s position in time; CABIRIA took place in ancient Rome, but even if I’m not sure when this movie takes place, it’s certainly a much later period of time; Maciste wears a suit and tie through most of this, and at one point he is tempted with some shots of very modern cities indeed. Nonetheless, the fantasy element is very strong; the scenes in hell are great, with a huge cast of demons and fiends, including a couple of giant demons, a flying dragon, and some great special effects. It’s based at least partially on Dante’s “Inferno”, and it includes both Lucifer, Pluto and Proserpine as characters. I would love to have seen some of the other early Maciste movies just to see what the character’s story was, but this one and CABIRIA are the only ones I know exist for sure. It’s definitely worth a look for people interested in creative visions of hell; the movie apparently served as an inspiration both for Mario Bava and Federico Fellini.

MAID OF SALEM (1937)
Article #772 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-26-2003
Posting Date: 9-23-2003
Directed by Frank Lloyd
Featuring Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Harvey Stephens

A woman in Salem falls in love with a refugee from the law, and then gets caught up in the Salem witch trials.

Though technically this doesn’t fall into the realm of fantastic film, any movie about the Salem witch trials must by its very nature align itself marginally with the genres. The first half of the movie is necessarily a bit slow, as it’s setting up a lot of the events that come into play in the second half of the movie; it’s at the halfway point that the witch hunt begins, and the next quarter of the movie does a strong job in capturing the almost claustraphobic terror of the situation. Unfortunately, in order for a movie to handle this situation honestly, it really needs to take a hard look at human nature at its ugliest, and a movie made in Hollywood under the restrictions of the Hays Office simply can’t work up the candor to really take a good, hard look at these things; the last quarter of the movie seems convenient, doctored, and fairly unconvincing. Nonetheless, it’s still worth a look for those interested in the subject, and a sequence where a storm arises during the first announcements about witchcraft is very effective, even if the metaphor is a little too obvious.

MURDER BY THE CLOCK (1931)
Article #753 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-7-2003
Posting Date: 9-4-2003
Directed by Edward Sloman
Featuring Lilyan Tashman, William Boyd, Regis Toomey

An old woman is strangled, and the primary suspect is her brutish but dim-witted son.

These early talkies can be a bit of a chore; in order to ensure decent sound, the films were shot in a fairly static way, the pace was often quite slow, and actors were required to be slow and careful in the way they articulated their lines, and this was not conducive to good acting. Between these elements and the rather obvious dialogue in the screenplay, one might be tempted to completely dismiss this forgotten horror that initially seems like your standard “Old Dark House” murder mystery. However, the story starts taking an unusual direction when you realize that in place of the usual romantic leads, you have a weak, drunken man and his manipulative wife who eventually proves to be a femme fatale of the first degree. In short, this forgotten horror may actually be an early form of film noir, and plotwise it plays out as such, which gives it a higher degree of interest value than it might otherwise have. That’s Irving Pichel as the dimwitted brother, and Regis Toomey actually manages to land some good comic lines as an Irish cop.