ON BORROWED TIME (1939)
Article #1000 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-10-2003
Posting Date: 5-8-2004
Directed by Harold S. Bucquet
Featuring Lionel Barrymore, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Bealah Bondi

A crusty old man tries to save his grandson from being taken away from him by a scheming relative, and in order to stave off his own demise, traps Death (by the name of Mr. Brink) in an apple tree.

This movie racks up a few strikes against it fairly early on; Lionel Barrymore overplays his part somewhat in the first half of the movie (it is possible to be too cantankerous and crusty), the child actor who plays the grandson becomes actively annoying fairly early in the proceedings, and it takes far too long to set up its central moment when Grandpa traps Mr. Brinks in the apple tree. However, once this point is reached, the movie really comes into its own, and is helped immensely by the appearance of familiar faces such as Henry Travers and Nat Pendleton. It’s fascinating to watch the various strategems that Grandpa employs to not only stave off his death, but to save his grandson and keep himself from being committed to an asylum as well. It’s also helped by a quiet but supremely effective performance by Sir Cedric Hardwicke in the role of Mr. Brinks. The ending of the movie is particularly powerful, partially due to its inevitability, and partially due to the fact that it’s one of those endings that hovers in that strange gray area between a tragic ending and a happy one. This one is worth catching, but patience is necessary for the first half.

OLD MOTHER RILEY’S GHOSTS (1941)
Article #803 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-27-2003
Posting Date: 10-14-2003
Directed by John Baxter
Featuring Arthur Lucan, Kitty McShane, John Stuart

Old Mother Riley hooks up with an inventor and inherits a haunted castle.

Title Check: It’s a perfect title… for about two minutes of the movie. As for the rest of the movie, a better title would have been OLD MOTHER RILEY AND THE PORTRAIT OF HIS (pardon me; HER) DECEASED HUSBAND.

Back when I watched the admittedly quite bad MY SON THE VAMPIRE (a.k.a. OLD MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE), I actually managed to find a smidgen of charm in that bottom-of-the-barrel slapstick comedy. It must have been Lugosi; this is pretty much the same, only without the smidgen of charm. Arthur Lucan is truly annoying this time around in the title role; he is strident and frantic, and tries to get laughs chiefly through screeching, mugging and wild gesticulating; the small handful of funny lines (the best of which involves a comment about someone having “designs on her underwear”) are lost in the melee. The ghosts have about a minute of screen time (and we know ahead of time that they’re being faked), but since part of the plot involves the invention of a new fuel engine, there’s also a smidgen of science fiction in the mix. Not that it makes this particular recipe that much more inviting, but it is useful to know what’s in something before you ingest it.

I need to lie down.

ONE TOUCH OF VENUS (1948)
Article #735 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-20-2003
Posting Date: 8-17-2003
Directed by William A. Seiter and Gregory La Cava
Featuring Ava Gardner, Robert Walker, Dick Haymes

A decorator in a department store kisses a statue of Venus and it comes to life.

You know, I embarked on this project so I could see movies about werewolves, vampires, space aliens and giant monsters. But there’s a wide spectrum of fantastic creatures out there, and it includes angels, pixies, mermaids and Greek goddesses, so I suppose that’s the price you pay for trying to be comprehensive. Ava Gardner is certainly an appropriate choice to play the beautiful goddess of love, but Eve Arden has all the best lines and steals the picture. The movie also has some decent songs, and Tom Conway is on hand as a familiar face for horror fans. It’s all fairly amusing, but it never really becomes anything more than cute, and my cuteness threshold is fairly low. And I still maintain that one strategically placed werewolf could have brightened things considerably (IMHO).

ORGY OF THE DEAD (1965)
Article #614 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-19-2002
Posting date: 4-14-2003

A writer and his girlfriend become prisoners of creatures of the night who force them to watch striptease dances in an old graveyard.

The movie ED WOOD didn’t cover Wood’s declining years, when he ended up making pornographic movies, and finally couldn’t even find work there. This movie hovers somewhat between those two phases; it’s a nudie rather than full-blown pornography, and was directed by A. C. Stephens from a script by Wood based on a novel written by him. Criswell is on hand as the prince of darkness. The dialogue is hilarious and the acting is horrible, but what would you really expect? Yet ultimately, the story only exists as an excuse for an endless parade of striptease dances, and though this may sound like it might have a certain appeal, the sad fact of the matter is that a little goes a long way, and I found it hard to keep awake during this one. It doesn’t help that there’s so much fog that it obscures the “action” much of the time. Nor does it help that the music doesn’t sync up with the dancing; you can tell the strippers are dancing to something, but it’s obviously not the music you’re hearing. After a while, I just found myself waiting for the moments between the dances, when the characters (including a mummy with a fear of snakes and a werewolf) engage in their discussions of the action. A curiosity, to be sure, but you’ll need to keep some caffeine (or the fast forward) on hand. Incidentally, Criswell’s opening dialogue is the same speech that opened Wood’s NIGHT OF THE GHOULS.

OFFICER 444 (1926)
(Serial)
Article #512 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-9-2002
Posting date: 1-2-2003

A police officer is on the trail of an arch-villain known as The Frog, who is harboring a stolen chemical known as Haverlyite.

The opening episode of this Ben Wilson serial is quite thrilling; it involves our hero bravely saving people from a large warehouse on fire. However, from the second episode onward this serial gets incredibly muddled; I have the worst time just telling the characters apart. The Frog himself is hardly very threatening; he is hunched over, walks sideways, and swings his arms back and forth in a matter for more likely to elicit laughs than fear. There are also unnecessary characters; in particular one of the villain’s gang, a woman known as “The Vulture” is introduced in every episode and described as “subtle”; I find it hard to argue with that description, as I never once noticed her doing anything that caught my attention. The serial also claimed to be trying to show the various scientific methods used by the police to catch criminals, but outside of a short sequence of the villain going through several steps in the justice system in the last chapter, and the occasional use of a lie detector throughout, I see very little evidence of this. The serial’s saving grace is its sense of humor; there are a number of quite hilarious sequences and running jokes throughout this one; my favorite running joke is the nightclub being used as a hideout by the criminals, in which the patrons are so dedicated to the muse of Terpsichore that they effectively ignore everything else going on around them.

One other bizarre aspect of this serial is the lack of gunplay; instead of shootouts between the cops and the villains, we end up with fistfights and brawls; did cops actually fight this way in the twenties? This is a weird one, to be sure.

1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS (1959)
Article #487 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-15-2002
Posting date: 12-8-2002

An evil wazir tries to use a young lad to acquire a magic lamp with a genie, but fails to contend with the lads Uncle Abdul Azziz Magoo.

This UPA feature-length cartoon is your basic animated version of the Aladdin story with Mr. Magoo thrown in for good measure. It’s slight and not particularly hilarious, but I don’t think it’s trying to be; if it was any bigger, it might warp its charms. These include the stylish and bizarre backdrops (a UPA trademark) and the score, which is always slightly jazzy but never heavy-handedly so, which serves as a nice counterpoint to the visual style. Though it has songs, it never really becomes a musical; some of them are woven into the story so delicately you may not even notice you’re in the middle of one. All in all, though it can’t compete with Disney, it carves out its own unique little place in the animation pantheon.

OUTWARD BOUND (1930)
Article #378 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 3-28-2002
Posting date: 8-21-2002

Several people find themselves the only inhabitants of an ocean liner bound for unknown parts.

This movie was adapted from a successful stage play that opened in London in 1923, and went on to international success. It’s not giving away too much to tell you that they’re all dead and heading towards their final judgment. The movie is somewhat static and talky, but for what it’s trying to do, that’s somewhat unavoidable; what saves it is the excellent script and top-notch acting. It’s essential that the characters matter to you for this to work, and they do; I find myself drawn into their worlds, their hopes, aspirations, disappointments, failures, and tribulations. Beryl Mercer, Leslie Howard, and Dudley Digges all give fine performances, but I could just as easily pick another three names. And the movie makes very good use of its few opportunities to emphasize the visuals; some of the long shots of the boat are breathtaking. Yes, it’s old, and it creaks, but it’s definitely worth a look. It was remade about fifteen years later with Sidney Greenstreet in the Dudley Digges role and Edmund Gwenn in the Alec B. Francis role.

ON THE BEACH (1959)
Article #312 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-21-2002
Posting date: 6-7-2002

Various people living in Australia await their eventual death by radiation after the rest of the world has been destroyed in nucleur holocaust.

Science Fiction drama is a rare enough commodity that I think it praiseworthy when attempts are made in its direction, and there are many scenes in this movie that are quite effective. However, I do have certain reservations about the movie; it’s overlong, for one thing. It’s also a little too much of a Hollywood movie for my taste, particularly in the romance subplot. And it’s so taken with its own seriousness that you find yourself longing for more moments of wit and humor, even if it does turn out to be gallows humor. That’s why two of my favorite scenes in the movie are ones that undercut the ponderousness of the proceedings by being slightly bizarre and amusing; a somewhat curious conversation between two wine connoisseurs bemoaning the fact that there’s not enough time to drink the 400 bottles of port, and the conversation between the crewman who stays in San Francisco and Gregory Peck who talks to him through the intercom of the submarine, a slightly surreal touch that adds dimension to the tragedy of the moment. Outside of that, the most interesting thing about the movie is seeing Fred Astaire essaying his first dramatic role after having been in motion pictures for nearly thirty years. Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins are also present.

ORLAK, THE HELL OF FRANKENSTEIN (1960)
Article #281 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-21-2001
Posting date: 5-7-2002

Frankenstein meets a convict in prison who helps him escape.The convict then uses the professor’s monster to take revenge on those who sent him to prison.

Considering that this movie only seems to exist in a unsubtitled Spanish language version, it’s a bit of a miracle that it’s as easy to follow as it is; sure, you miss a few details, but the plot is pretty straightforward, and the acting is such that even if you don’t know the exact words, you get the gist of what they’re saying. This may actually be an advantage when dealing with the comic relief in the movie; you can pretend the gags are funnier than they probably were. I also want to recommend the experience of watching a foreign film like this once in a while (unsubtitled and undubbed); it gives you an idea just how much is lost in the dubbing process. This isn’t a classic by any means, but it is a solid and fun Mexican variation on the Frankenstein legend.

ONE MILLION B.C. (1940)
Article #108 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-2-2001
Posting date: 11-15-2001

A member of the rock people is banished from his tribe when he tries to stand up to their dictatorial leader, and ends up meeting and staying with the more civilized shell people.

I’m not quite sure what to say about this movie, or about caveman movies in general. I could describe it as “Romeo and Juliet” with dinosaurs, but I wouldn’t be able to take myself seriously from that point on. I could draw comparisons between the rock people and the shell people in order to demonstrate the mechanics of a dysfunctional family, but I don’t see this movie becoming a favorite of therapists any time soon. instead, I’ve decided to put forth my suspicions concerning the motivations of people who want to see caveman movies; 1) They want to see dinosaurs, and 2) They want to see members of the opposite sex dressed in animal skins. As for the latter reason, yes, there are people dressed in animal skins here, but the skins may not be quite as skimpy as to suit the tastes of the viewer, though the presence of Victor Mature may satisfy the tastes of some. As for dinosaurs, don’t strain your eyes looking for the name of O’Brien in the credits under special effects; instead, prepare yourself for slurpasaurs (that is, lizards with fins). In fact, this may be the definitive slurpasaur movie; after all, it introduced us to those great slurpasaur superstars, Ignatz and Rumsford, whose immortal wrestling sequence would grace the footage of many a grade-Z flick to come. Oh, and Lon Chaney Jr. is in it, too.

I know as well as the next person that cavemen and dinosaurs didn’t exist in the same period of time, but I have to admit that I prefer my caveman epics with dinosaurs (or even with slurpasaurs) to those without. Why? They’re generally a lot more fun than the caveman movies without dinosaurs.