NIGHT WATCH (1973)
Article #1742 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-21-2005
Posting Date: 5-20-2006
Directed by Brian G. Hutton
Featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Billie Whitelaw

A woman sees a murder take place in an abandoned house across from her home, but the police find nothing when they investigate. She begins to think that she is going crazy.

In some ways, this movie is inevitable; ever since the movie GASLIGHT set up a template for a specific kind of thriller, It would only be a matter of time before someone took the template and added the twist ending that can be found in this movie. And, to be honest, the twist is pretty good; it’s the best thing about the movie. Still, in order to use this twist, you pretty much have to follow the GASLIGHT template for most of the movie’s running time, and I’ve never been particularly fond of that template: I get annoyed with its predictability and its shrillness. You’re always treated to endless scenes of a hysterical woman screaming at people to believe her, and they don’t (because she’s hysterical), and this just makes her more hysterical, etc. etc. etc. The fact that it’s Elizabeth Taylor providing the hysterics doesn’t really alleviate the fact that the movie spends most of its time walking an overused path. In short, I didn’t find that the final twist really compensated for the over-familiarity of most of the movie.

NIGHT IN PARADISE (1946)
Article #1741 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-20-2005
Posting Date: 5-19-2006
Directed by Arthur Lubin
Featuring Merle Oberon, Turhan Bey, Thomas Gomez

When a sorceress is swindled by King Croesus, she vows revenge. She uses her magic powers to get Aesop to steal away Croesus’s bride-to-be, Delarai.

Hollywood ventures into sword-and-sandal territory with this costume picture, and if it takes itself way too seriously half the time, the other half of the time it’s aggressively courting silliness. Still, it has some good performances; I barely recognized Turhan Bey in what amounts to a dual role (let’s just say that Aesop is not quite what he seems), Thomas Gomez, Gale Sondergaard and Merle Oberon do fine jobs, but Ray Collins steals the show as Leonides, adviser to the king. It gets a little racy at times; in particular, a gag involving a statue being cleaned must have slipped by the censors somehow. It also has some of the worst crowd acting I’ve ever seen; notice how whenever a crowd gathers together, they’re all saying the exact same thing?

NO SURVIVORS, PLEASE (1964)
(a.k.a. DER CHEF WUNSCHT KEINE ZEUGEN)
Article #1689 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-29-2005
Posting Date: 3-28-2006
Directed by Hans Albin and Peter Beneis
Featuring Maria Perschy, Robert Cunningham, Uwe Friedrichsen

Aliens wishing to destroy the people on Earth do so by killing and taking over the bodies of noteworthy people, and using them to try to set in motion a nuclear holocaust.

Alien invasion and alien possession movies are nothing new; in some ways, this movie is covering the same ground as THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH. However, this one takes things several steps further; in fact, I find something frighteningly logical about aliens destroying us by getting us to destroy ourselves, rather than using their own resources and putting their own expense into it. The movie is a mixed bag of sorts; the direction is indifferent and the story is often confusing. At times it seems like a comedy; certainly the scene in which an alien pilot preparing to crash an airplane starts quizzing his copilot about his insurance coverage is amusing. This is balanced out by the occasional grimness, and if at times the thematic elements become downright corny, at others they are truly unsettling. This is not a perfect movie by any means, but it’s one of those in which so many of the elements are fascinating, it’s worth catching. It’s fascinating to sort out the good guys from the bad guys, and to try to follow when they switch sides. I also like the ambiguous stalemate of an ending.

NEUTRON VS. THE AMAZING DR. CARONTE (1963)
(a.k.a. NEUTRON CONTRA EL DR. CARONTE)
Article #1634 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-4-2005
Posting Date: 2-1-2006
Directed by Federico Curiel
Featuring Wolf Ruvinskis, Julio Aleman, Rosa Arenas

Neutron must do battle with the resurrected Dr. Caronte, who is still trying to get his hands on the Neutron bomb.

Yes, it’s more fun with Neutron, and this one is a direct sequel to NEUTRON VS. THE DEATH ROBOTS. Dr. Caronte is back, with his dwarf sidekick and his hairy faceless robots to help him. It’s more of the same, with musical numbers instead of wrestling matches for filler (actually, this movie is fairly light on them), a foreign agent who is also after the neutron bomb, the use of magic spells from the great Merlin, and a scene where Nora finally has to choose between her three suitors. The latter scene is a hoot; all three men give lame proposals, and, of course, she picks the man who gives the lamest of the lot. Neutron is called “The Masked Avenger” at the end of the movie, an appropriate if rather hackneyed title, but I’m still trying to figure out why he’s referred to as “The Atomic Superman” during the opening titles – he’s not atomic (though I will admit that neutrons are parts of atoms) and he’s not super (though I will agree that he’s a man).

NYOKA AND THE TIGERMEN (1942)
(a.k.a. PERILS OF NYOKA) (Serial)
Article #1591 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-23-2005
Posting Date: 12-20-2005
Directed by William Witney
Featuring Kay Aldridge, Clayton Moore, Lorna Gray

A team of scientists are looking for the lost tablets of Hippocrates because they contain a cure for cancer. They run up against the villainous Vultura, who wants the tablets for herself because they lead to a priceless treasure.

Given the fact that I’m not a big fan of knock-down drag-out fistfights (even the Republic warehouse-destroying ones wear thin after a bit), I tend to gravitate to serials with a greater degree of novelty value. That’s a big reason I like this one. Nyoka is one of serialdom’s rare female heroes; she takes an active part in the fight scenes, and is sometimes the rescuer rather than the rescuee. Clayton Moore is also on the side of the good guys, though I have trouble recognizing him without the mask. The villainness also keeps a pet man-in-a-gorilla-suit named Satan (would he have been so mean if she had named him Cuddles?). The cliffhangers are entertaining and creative, and I prefer serials like this that get me out in the open air than the more city-bound ones. Of course, my question about the whole setup is this; just how dependable is a cure for cancer from an ancient Greek? Yes, Hippocrates was one of the most advanced physicians of his time, but I still keep envisioning his cure being something along the lines of rubbing the cancerous area with a liniment made up of crushed herbs and goat’s dung and then making a healthy contribution at the altar of Apollo (or whoever the Greek God of medicine was). I also wondered if the tablets would prove to be tablets not in the Ten Commandments sense, but in the Tylenol sense.

NON-STOP NEW YORK (1937)
Article #1576 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-8-2005
Posting Date: 12-5-2005
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Featuring John Loder, Anna Lee, Francis L. Sullivan

When a mob lawyer is murdered in New York, the authorities arrest and convict an innocent man. The only person who can save him from the electric chair is an English actress who can prove his innocence, but the mob has whisked her away to England in the hopes that she will be unable to clear him.

When I appeared in a production of “Witness for the Prosecution” a few years ago, I remember the director telling all of us who played the trial witnesses that he wanted each one of our characters to be little gems of character acting. Someone must have given that same note to the actors in this thoroughly delightful thriller; it is packed to the gills with fun and offbeat characters. As a result, this makes for one of the most engaging thrillers this side of Hitchcock; in fact, writer E.V.H. Emmett (who is credited with ‘additional dialogue’) had previously worked on Hitchcock’s SABOTAGE. The fantastic content appears only in the latter half of the movie, when most of the interested parties board a new luxury airplane (with cabins, observation decks, dining rooms and no seat belts), but it provides a truly memorable setting. The performances are uniformly excellent, but special notice should go to Anna Lee as the English actress who knows too much, Francis L. Sullivan as the mob boss who disguises himself as a Paraguayan general and who has a novel way of lighting his cigars, and Desmond Tester who takes a potentially annoying role (as a precocious and sassy musical child prodigy) and makes it hilarious. Fans of DR. STRANGELOVE will immediately recognize actor Peter Bull as a man who has the presence of mind to save a torn-up letter to sell to a blackmailer. This one is definitely recommended, especially to fans of Hitchcockian thrillers.

THE NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS (1974)
(a.k.a. LA NOCHE DE LOS BRUJOS)
Article #1575 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-7-2005
Posting Date: 12-4-2005
Directed by Amando de Ossorio
Featuring Mario Kosti, Simon Andreu, Kali Hansa

An exploration team in Mumbasa find themselves victims of the curse of the leopard people.

This movie opens with a bunch of African natives performing a sadistic ritual on an unwilling white woman. They have just completed the ritual when a surrounding military force opens fire on the natives and kills them all. Then there is a startling twist that would have worked a lot better if it had been edited well, but in some ways, this moment is indicative of the whole movie; one hand giveth, while the other hand taketh away.

To give an example of what I mean, some of the horror scenes here are really eerie and effective, particularly when the dead natives pull themselves out of the cairns built for their bodies. Other moments are unintentionally hilarious; any sequence with the fanged leopard women cavorting around in their fur bikinis in slow motion is more likely to elicit snickers rather than shudders. At least one thing both of these types of scenes have in common is that they’re still better than scenes of conversation between the main characters; for some reason, director Amando de Ossorio just can’t bring these scenes to life.

Still, I think I’ll cut the movie a bit of slack. It’s a lot better than MALENKA, for one thing. For another, I have the short dubbed-in-English print, and this of course drags down the quality a little. Still, this one just doesn’t hold a candle to Ossorio’s Blind Dead movies.

NIGHT AFTER NIGHT AFTER NIGHT (1969)
Article #1574 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-6-2005
Posting Date: 12-3-2005
Directed by Lindsay Shonteff
Featuring Jack May, Justine Lord, Gilbert Wynne

A series of ripper murders are being committed by a repressed judge, but the policeman handling the case believes the culprit is a young womanizer.

When faced with a title like that, the first word that comes to mind is repetition. Unfortunately, that word ends up applying all too well to this psycho-killer movie. Though I appreciate the fact that the relaxing of standards of censorship opened up opportunities for movies to be more explicit, there is such a thing as excess. You see, our slasher here is determined to put an end to the evil in the world by killing those evil temptresses, women. Then, to illustrate these temptations, the movie embarks on an endless array of scenes of scantily clad women, leering perverts, double entendres, make-out sessions, voyeurism, etc. etc. etc.. Now, I can appreciate how some of this may be essential to understanding the characters and the situation, but this movie is so incessant with it that it comes fairly close to soft-core porn. For example, we know that the judge has a secret room full of pin-ups of naked women; do we need the camera to pan endlessly across the pinups every time we enter the room? There are a couple of good ideas in the mix; I especially like the fact that the man arrested for the murders finds himself being tried under the judge who is actually guilty of them. But the blatantly exploitative approach to the story puts me off and starts to grate after a while.

NEUTRON VS. THE MANIAC (1962)
Article #1573 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-5-2005
Posting Date: 12-2-2005
Directed by Alfredo B. Crevenna
Featuring Wolf Ruviniskis, Gina Romand, Rodolfo Landa

Neutron tries to catch a knife-wielding maniac who films his victims.

Break out the party hats—it’s another Neutron movie! You remember Neutron, don’t you? Well, if you don’t, the title cards will remind you that Neutron is the Atomic Superman. This is all well and good, except for the fact that he’s not atomic (though you could have a lively debate about just what makes someone atomic or not) nor is he a superman (no superpowers, average strength). In short, he’s a masked Mexican wrestler, except he doesn’t wrestle. So how does the movie compensate for the lack of wrestling scenes? It substitutes musical numbers, all of which have been left in their native Mexican language (though I really wish I could follow the lyrics of the novelty doo-wop number).

Neutron is trying to figure out the identity of the maniac. The only person who has seen him is a blind pianist (who isn’t blind, though he plays the piano). All the pianist really knows is that the killer made his escape to an asylum. The question is—which person in the asylum is it? Is it the suspicious doctor? One of the thuggish attendants? The battle-fatigued soldier? The mystic? The Russian royalty with the gout (who doesn’t really have the gout)? Or is it the unbeatable wrestler who loses every match (I take it back; the movie does have wrestling scenes)? The famous actress who is neither famous nor an actress?

Of course, the dubbing is atrocious and the translation feeds us a number of hilarious lines. Taken as a whole, the story is pretty muddled as well. Nonetheless, the setup for the mystery is pretty amusing, and the revelations in the final scene are very entertaining, though it has more twists than you can shake a stick at. I also have some fondness for the comic relief character; his encounter with the maniac is really memorable. In short, this one is dumb, but fun.

THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS (1966)
Article #1570 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-2-2005
Posting Date: 11-29-2005
Directed by Michael A. Hoey
Featuring Mamie Van Doren, Anthony Eisley, Billy Gray

A small navy outpost on an island finds themselves contending with strange monsters that were brought over from the Antarctic on an airplane.

As an exercise in nostalgia, I have a certain fondness for this movie; I saw it on my local Creature Feature as a kid, and two things stuck in my head. It was the first movie I ever saw to feature a man’s arm being torn from its socket (the fact that it’s badly done doesn’t make it less memorable), and the title is hard to forget. I saw it again years later with full knowledge of its low reputation, but as a campy laugh-a-minute stinker, it really doesn’t satisfy. The acting and direction is poor throughout, but it’s consistent and it’s almost all on the level of “let’s just get through this to get our paychecks” bad. Also, the script is singularly lacking in real howlingly funny lines. So I think this movie works best as inconsequential timekiller; the movie avoids being actively annoying, the soundtrack does a good job of letting you know when you should be paying attention, and even though there are a number of dull stretches, it does manage to prod itself to a higher level of interest (just barely) to get you through with only occasional trips to the fridge. I find it a lot easier to take than most Jerry Warren movies. Incidentally, it was based on a novel by Murray Leinster.