THE MAD GENIUS (1931)
Article #751 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-5-2003
Posting Date: 9-2-2003
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Featuring John Barrymore, Marian Marsh, Donald Cook

A puppeteer with a clubfoot has dreams of becoming a dancer, and decides to experience it vicariously by taking a young man under his wings and making him a great dancer.

A basic rule of movie-making in Hollywood is that if it worked once, it will work twice. This is why the above plot has more than just a little resemblance to SVENGALI, in which Barrymore also played a mad genius trying to make a woman a great singer. It’s less of a horror movie this time, as the hypnotism angle of that movie plays no role here, and the main character’s clubfoot is used less for horror effect and more for plot development; it is his deformity that made the Barrymore character unable to become a dancer himself. Boris Karloff is also on hand in a small role, but you would be excused if you didn’t notice him; not only is he speaking with an accent, but the camera never gives us a close look at him. In fact, I found it curious that Barrymore talks about Frankenstein at one point in the proceedings.

Barrymore does a great job, but the movie is stolen by Charles Butterworth as Barrymore’s comic sidekick; his dialogue is absolutely priceless, particularly when he narrates the story of the ballet he’s written. I also thought it was odd that whereas Barrymore’s role in SVENGALI made me think of Bela Lugosi in DRACULA, his role here reminds me of Lionel Atwill’s in THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM; seeing as how both this movie and THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM were directed by Michael Curtiz, this may be more than just a coincidence.

Sadly, the movie is marred by a contrived ending; it comes out of left field, and though it does add one real horror element to the mix, it’s also a deus ex machina of the worst kind. This is a shame; despite the fact that it’s largely a retread of SVENGALI, it was a very good movie up to that point.

MIDNIGHT WARNING (1932)
Article #733 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-18-2003
Posting Date: 8-15-2003
Directed by Spencer G. Bennet
Featuring William Boyd, Claudia Dell, John Harron

A doctor discovers an ear bone in the fireplace of his hotel room, and then mysteriously collapses. The detective who is visiting him investigates these strange events.

As I was watching this horror-mystery unfold, my wife recognized several of the plot elements as belonging to an urban legend about a vanishing lady. If you’re familiar with that legend (or with the 1919 movie, UNHEIMLICHE GESCHICHTEN), you’ll have an idea of how this story will turn out. Granted, the movie throws in plenty of other additions to the story, including a sniper subplot and a sequence in which a woman is wandering through a morgue of dead people; it’s the latter sequence that really adds the horror element to this forgotten horror. The plot elements do help to keep this one a bit interesting; otherwise, it’s creakiness and stiff acting may turn you off. The detective is played by William (“The Lost City”) Boyd.

MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN (1939)
(Serial)
Article #729 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-14-2003
Posting Date: 8-11-2003
Directed by Sam Nelson, Norman Deming
Featuring Warren Hull, Doris Weston, Don Beddoe

A scientist who has developed a radium machine is kidnapped by an evil villain known as The Wasp, and Mandrake sets out to catch him.

I had reached episode ten of this serial when the tape I was watching broke, and I had to set it aside until I could get a replacement. In the interim, I watched THE CLUTCHING HAND, an experience which made me appreciate this one a lot more than I did at first, if for no other reason than the relative clarity of the storytelling. On the plus side, Warren Hull makes for a somewhat charming hero, particularly during the magic act in the first episode. However, I didn’t care much for the fact that this serial seemed way too familiar; several serials I’ve seen lately all had the same plot set-up; scientist with a new invention and a beautiful daughter is captured by a masked villain who largely sits at a desk and communicates to his minions via a two-way TV set, who go out and have fistfights with the hero until the last episode. All right, all serials aren’t like this, but that whole plot has become just a little too common for my tastes. I’m also disappointed that the serial barely uses the most obvious gimmick of the story; outside of occasionally throwing a smoke bomb, Mandrake rarely uses his magician’s tricks throughout the course of the story, and this is where a lot of the fun should have been. And the movie gets a big demerit for the narrator’s blatant lie at the end of episode eleven (he makes a claim about the nature of a car accident that appears in the preview for episode 12 that turns out to be totally false); it’s the type of deception that makes cheating cliffhangers look fairly benign.

LE MORT QUI TUE (1913)
(a.k.a. THE DEAD MAN WHO KILLED)
Article #702 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-15-2001
Posting date: 7-15-2001
Directed by Louis Feuillade
Featuring Rene Navarre, Edmond Breon, Georges Melchior

A man is framed for murder, arrested, and then killed in prison, and his body vanishes. Then when a pearl necklace is stolen, fingerprints identify the dead man as the culprit.

I think it’s kind of odd that the only episode of the Fantomas serial that is available in the United States is JUVE VS. FANTOMAS, the second of the series. Not only is it the most episodic of the first three episodes, it ends with a cliffhanger, whereas episodes one and three do not. This one is the third episode of the serial, and it runs an hour and a half, which qualifies it as a movie in its own right. It also has title cards in French, and though I don’t speak French, I am grateful for the little time I’ve spent comparing French movie titles with their English translations; it gives me at least some grounding in certain words. Take the word “Mort”, for instance; if you compare the French title of this movie with the English title, you should figure out that “Mort” stands for “Dead Man”; since the word “Mort” pops up very often in the titles of this movie, it is a useful word to know.

The small smattering of French does indeed help in this one, which is more complicated than the first episode. The story concentrates on the investigation by Juve’s assistant Fandor (Juve’s absence from the proceedings is explained in an early headline), and the story does get a bit involved, so it pays to pay attention. It does end with a couple of whopping plot twists, which really go a long way to making this episode a lot of fun.

MANOS, THE HANDS OF FATE (1966)
Article #666 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-10-2003
Posting Date: 6-9-2003

A family gets lost on the road and stays at a strange house with a demonic master.

Eleven thoughts on this one.

1. This movie, like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, has gained a reputation in certain circles as the worst movie ever made.

2. Unlike PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, I would never recommend the movie to a bad film fanatic looking for a good laugh. Not that it’s not bad; it is. It’s just not bad in a laughable way.

3. Part of the reason it’s not funny is that it gets under your skin in ways that make it hard to laugh off. Like it or not, the movie does get to you on certain levels.

4. One of the ways it gets to you is through the character of Torgo. His twitchy, big-kneed character with the bizarre speech patterns gives such an unsettlingly strange performance that you wonder whether it is actually a performance at all; you get the feeling he may have been like that in real life. I don’t know one way or the other, but the very fact that the question arises is enough to make me a little queasy.

5. The ending of the movie has a plot point (concerning the couple’s child) that also has impact. It may also leave you with the feeling that you’ve just seen the sickest movie ever made.

6. Imagine that your most boring neighbors insist on showing thirty hours of vacation footage shot while they were driving through the dullest section of the world. Imagine they’ve decided to enhance these cinematic endeavours with the most appallingly tepid elevator music they’ve been able to find. This will give you a good idea of the first fifteen minutes of this movie.

7. I don’t consider this movie the worst I’ve ever seen. What is? Don’t get me started…

8. Even if I don’t consider it the worst movie ever made, it certainly has the most awesomely bad post-production tinkering I’ve ever heard; it is rife with missed sound effects, stupid editing, and horrendous dubbing, and it’s already in English.

9. There is a scene here where several women have a catfight while wearing see-through negligees that allow you to see their bras and panties. It doesn’t help.

10. It’s merely a coincidence that this movie came up in the numerical order it did (check the number above).

11. I’m not entirely sure about number 10.

MASTER OF THE WORLD (1961)
Article #608 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-13-2002
Posting date: 4-9-2003

In the nineteenth century, several balloonists become prisoners of a madman who is determined to end war in the world by destroying warships with his flying air fortress.

American International Pictures didn’t quite have the financial wherewithal to really pull off a Vernian epic; the special effects sequences are less than convincing. The story itself is largely a rehash of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, only taking place in the skies instead of in the ocean. Nonetheless, it is a sturdy story that bears repeating, and the script by Richard Matheson is solid, and avoids the cutenesses that made the Disney movie a bit of a trial at times; there’s nary a cute animal nor a cute song to be found. Though Henry Hull’s performance as the armaments manufacturer is too one-dimensional, there are strong performances by both Vincent Price (as Robur) and Charles Bronson (as Strock). In fact, the Strock character is one of the most interesting in the story; though he serves the function as the main hero of the story, he is a pragmatic strategist who abjures noble cant in favor of quiet logic, and who is not afraid to look like a villain if it should increase the chances of making a more effective move later on. He is in his own way as strong a character as Robur, and Robur rightly recognizes him as the only one of the characters who is a real threat to him, and Bronson (whose silence can speak volumes) is well cast in the role. If anything, this movie may actually do a better job of giving us a complex array of characters, and bringing out many of the moral dilemmas inherent to the situation. Though not a completely successful movie, this one is worth a watch.

THE MAGIC VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1953)
(a.k.a. SADKO)
Article #600 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-5-2002
Posting date: 4-1-2003

An adventurer decides to make a voyage to find the bird of happiness to bring to the town of his birth.

This is the third of the Alexander Ptushko fantasies that I’ve covered here; unfortunately, despite the fact that this one has a certain charm to it and boasts an epic-sized cast, it lacks the robust vigor of THE SWORD AND THE DRAGON or the focused storytelling of THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE; instead, the movie resembles more than anything else THE BLUE BIRD, and though it replaces that story’s childish whimsy with epic grandeur, it remains just as mushy and obvious on the inside. And without a solid story to back it up, all the spectacle becomes little more than a tempest in a teapot, only coming to life in the last fifteen minutes in an underwater sequence that wins out through sheer goofiness. (Did you know that Neptune’s wife is called “Neptuna”?)

I do think it is important, however, to point out at this point that the comments I’ve made are based on the English-dubbed version of the movie, which most probably takes massive liberties with the original film. The only reason the hero of this movie is called Sinbad is that the name is familiar to American audiences; there isn’t a shred of Arabian Nights feel to the movie. I suspect the characters real name is Sadko, but I can’t say for sure. At any rate, I would have to rate this one the least of Ptushko’s fantasies, giving myself the out that I may change my mind if I ever see the original version of the movie.

MY SON, THE VAMPIRE (1952)
(a.k.a. OLD MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE)
Article #586 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-22-2003
Posting Date: 3-17-2003

A mad scientist known as “The Vampire” ends up getting shipped the wrong crate; his real shipment (which contains a robot) was shipped to Mother Riley.

Bela appeared in a horror comedy with Abbott and Costello. He also appeared in movies with the Bowery Boys, the Ritz Brothers, Abbott-and-Costello wannabes Brown and Carney, and Lewis-and-Martin wannabes Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo. On top of all this, he tops it off by appearing in one with Arthur Lucan, a British drag comedian who played Old Mother Riley in a series of very lowbrow comedies. It does make you wonder what Bela had in mind, but I actually think that he liked doing comedies; in fact, he seems to be having an immense amount of fun here, especially in a scene where he flirts with Mother Riley and tempts her with steak and liver. Sure, the movie is silly and stupid, but it’s done with a fair amount of energy, and a few of the gags do come through all right, though some will just leave you scratching your head, especially if you’re not attuned to British humor. Still, if you like to see Bela have fun, this isn’t a total waste, and the curiosity value is strong enough that I think it’s worth catching at least once for Lugosi fans. Incidentally, the “MY SON, THE VAMPIRE” title was for a sixties rerelease of the movie in which an Allan Sherman novelty song of that title was grafted onto the proceedings in the opening scenes.

THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1942)
Article #585 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-21-2002
Posting date: 3-16-2003

Kharis is transported out of Egypt to wreak vengeance on the defilers of Ananka’s tomb.

The final ten minutes of this movie isn’t too bad, even if it is all too similar to one of an earlier Universal classic (substitute a mansion for a mill) and uses crowd footage from some of those earlier classics. It’s the first fifty minutes of this one that was hard for me to get through; despite a fairly decent size cast, there is hardly a single interesting character in the lot, and the dialogue they are given is utterly forgettable. The character I was most interested in (George Zucco’s ancient priest) is dead fairly early on. It’s impossible to gauge Lon Chaney Jr.’s performance in this one; the mummy is such a characterless threat, and little is done to make him anything more than that here. At any rate, it makes me appreciate how lively THE MUMMY’S HAND was in comparison.

THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD (1957)
Article #583 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-19-2002
Posting date: 3-14-2003

An insect-like monster is let loose on the world as a result of an underwater earthquake.

For some reason, this fifties monster movie doesn’t get much respect, but I think it holds up extraordinarily well. For one thing, I think the characters are unusually well drawn for this type of movie, and they’re given a dimension and a sense of realness that adds a lot to the proceedings; I actually feel real sadness in the scene where the secretary can’t bring herself to try to comfort her pregnant friend on the loss of her husband because she herself has never quite recovered from the loss of her own. In fact, all throughout, the characters are treated as if the screenwriter and the actors really cared about them, rather than just seeing them as means to an end or plot devices. The monster itself is a little mechanical, but considerable skill is used in setting up the monster attack scenes, particularly in the one near the canal that always makes me jump. Tim Holt, Casey Adams and a surprisingly restrained Hans Conreid are all on hand for this one. And even if the monster never really does get around to challenging the whole world, this is one of my personal favorites of the era.