ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT SCARY (1979)
aka Once Upon a Midnight Dreary
Article 5073 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-7-2016
Directed by Nell Cox
Featuring Vincent Price, Rene Auberjonois, Severn Darden
Country: USA
What it is: Biblio-propaganda

Vincent Price serves as host and narrator to a trio of horror stories based on famous books – “The Ghost Belonged to Me”, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “The House With a Clock in Its Walls”.

This was originally an episode of a TV series called “CBS Library”, the purpose of which was to foster interest among the young to read. Given this as its intended purpose, it should be no surprise that the adaptations of the three stories are rather threadbare; they were never meant to be full-blown adaptations of the stories and shouldn’t be judged as such. However, all three of the stories do feel complete within their own respective arcs, and as far as the only one I’m familiar with (“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”), what is mostly missing is background and setup, while the climactic scene is on display. Incidentally, “Hollow” is my favorite of the bunch, largely because I like the way the segment mounts the chase between Ichabod and the Headless Horseman; it’s low budget but fun. Vincent Price adds some flavor as host and narrator, and the other stories (or what there is of them) are passable. However, it is important to keep the expectations within the limits of what was intended by the show.

ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (1969)
Article 5029 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-25-2015
Directed by Peter R. Hunt
Featuring George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas
Country: UK / USA
What it is: James Bond film

James Bond saves the life of a troubled woman, an act which eventually puts him on the trail of his old nemesis, Blofeld from SPECTRE.

This was the first movie of the Bond series that did not feature Sean Connery as Bond, and his replacement, George Lazenby, was so poorly received that he did not return to the role. Having watched this one again, I can understand why; though I don’t think his performance is bad, there’s a certain quality to Bond that I can’t quite define, but which I don’t think Lazenby possessed. However, I think this particular entry in the Bond series makes good use of him; this is, in many ways, one of the least typical entries of the series. For one thing, it’s one of the only ones I’ve seen where Bond’s emotional attachment to a woman plays a profound role in the proceedings; I find it interesting that this seems to be the series entry where none of the female characters has a sexy double-entendre name (unless Irma Bunt qualifies). It’s also less sprawling than the others; most of the action takes place in Switzerland in or around Blofeld’s fortress there. Most of the action sequences take place in this snow-covered location, with the sled chase my favorite one of these. It runs on a bit too long, but its ending is genuinely moving, and truth to tell, I’m not sure I would have bought into it quite as completely if Connery had been playing him in this one. Besides, Connery wouldn’t have been given Lazenby’s funniest line in this one (the one right before the opening credits). Some Bond fans don’t care for this one, but I have real fondness for this one. Besides, it has Diana Rigg as well. And furthermore, given that there’s a Christmas scene in this one, this is one of the few times where my movie for Christmas day actually could be called a Christmas movie.

OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1982)
aka La tumba de los muertos vivientes, Grave of the Living Dead
Article 4990 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-16-2015
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Manuel Gelin, Eduardo Fajardo, France Lomay
Country: France / Spain
What it is: Zombie movie

A company of Nazis with a shipment of gold is slaughtered in an oasis. Visitors find themselves attacked by the zombies of these men.

Franco has his defenders, and even I will admit that he is capable of good work on occasion. But even his defenders don’t seem to have much good to say about this one, and I certainly don’t see much treasure to be found here, either. I did get to the point where I felt the best way to appreciate the movie was to try to enjoy discrete visual moments that show a little evocative poetry. But that was only after I realized that nothing interesting was going to happen in the story, none of the characters were memorable, there was no quotable dialogue (except for the line about about the zombies coming out of “the sand which is there” which amused me because it could be heard as “the sandwiches there”), and the same musical motifs, though effective when used sparingly, would drone on and on until you were sick of them. I got really tired of Franco’s style here; he relies so much on close-ups of everything and everybody that it’s impossible to get any sense of the physical location of anything; it’s really hard to work up any suspense during a zombie attack when you don’t where the victims are in relation to the zombies. You shouldn’t come out of a horror movie feeling not much of anything, but that’s the case here. It’s Franco at his worst.

L’ODISSEA (1911)
aka Homer’s Odyssey
Article 4801 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-16-2015
Directed by Francesco Bertolini, Giuseppe de Liguoro, Adolfo Padovan
Featuring Giuseppe de Liguoro, Eugenia Tettoni Fior, Ubaldo Maria Del Colle
Country: Italy
What it is: Epic Greek poem

Ulysses encounters many perils on his voyage home from the Trojan war.

The Italians were the first to take their hands at truly epic cinema, and they produced some amazing work during the early days of the movies. This one, though it has some nice special effects and impressive moments, is a little bit disappointing however. The problem is that they use what I think of as the “Classics Illustrated” approach to the story. By this I mean that, instead of trying to make the story flow in a cinematic fashion, they use the title cards to describe which famous scene you’re going to see, and then you see it. The effect is somewhat like flipping through an illustrated book, and rather than capturing the excitement of the story, it just makes it feel distant and stodgy. The print I saw ran about 45 minutes, but I’ve heard it’s incomplete. Still, given the episodic quality of the story, it’s hard to tell; the only major thing I noticed missing is the encounter with Circe. Nevertheless, the somewhat mechanical presentation makes this one a bit dull.

ORPHAN’S BENEFIT (1934)
Article 4782 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-15-2015
Date: Burt Gillett
Featuring the voices of Pinto Colvig, Walt Disney, Florence Gill
Country: USA
What it is: Mickey Mouse cartoon

Mickey Mouse hosts a benefit for orphans.

My last encounter with Mickey Mouse also featured orphans, but this isn’t a sequel to MICKEY’S ORPHANS; the orphans this time are all mice rather than cats. Still, they’re as rambunctious as the orphans in the earlier short, and since this is a revue-style animated short that features several different characters, it gives them the exact foil I’d suggested in my review of the earlier cartoon; they take on an early version of Donald Duck, and from what I gather, this was the first cartoon where he loses his temper. The revue numbers including recitations from Donald, a ballet featuring Goofy, Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar, and an aria by Clara Cluck. The gags are somewhat more creative this time, and this is much funnier than the early short; my favorite moment is the orphan’s final attack on Donald. This short would be remade seven years later with the characters redrawn; these early versions look somewhat different than their later incarnations.

THE ORACLE OF DELPHI (1903)
aka L’oracle de Delphes
Article 4780 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-13-2015
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Supernatural retribution

A cask is stored in the tomb of the Oracle of Delphi. A thief attempts to steal it, but must then contend with the ghost of the Oracle.

I always thought the Oracle of Delphi was someone who made ambiguous pronouncements about the future; here he’s just a ghost who curses would-be thieves. Maybe that’s what he does in his spare time. Unlike Melies’s magic shorts, this one actually has a story of sorts, though with a running time of a minute and a half, you can’t expect a complex story. Basically, a treasure is put in the tomb, a thief breaks in to steal it, the ghost appears and makes the thief return the treasure, and then the thief must endure a curse which transforms his head. There’s really not much here, but it’s efficiently told and fairly entertaining. Still, it’s pretty minor Melies.

ODOR-ABLE KITTY (1944)
Article 4777 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-9-2015
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Warner Brothers Cartoon

A put-upon cat hits upon a scheme to keep his nemeses from tormenting him; he disguises himself as a skunk to scare them off. However, complications arrive when he ends up attracting the amorous attentions of a real skunk…

This marks the cartoon debut Pepe Le Pew, and even though his name is Henry here and he’s given a backstory that would be abandoned in later entries (he’s already married with children), it’s pretty much the same character. He’s also a secondary character here; the main character is the cat who disguises himself as a skunk. Unlike the other Pepe Le Pew cartoons, the cat disguised as a skunk also emulates the smell of a skunk by rubbing himself with limburger cheese, and it is that smell that ends up attracting the skunk. Actually, the attraction by smell may explain one of the odder aspects of this cartoon; whereas the cats in the other cartoons of the series are clearly female, the protagonist in this one is definitely male, and it doesn’t say much for Pepe’s ability to discriminate that he mistakes him for a female, perhaps the smell threw him off. At any rate, it’s a pretty amusing cartoon, though I think some of the later cartoons in the series would nail down the routine better. Keep your eyes open for a fake cameo from Bugs Bunny in this one.

OVERLORDS OF THE UFO (1976)
Article 4637 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-24-2014
Directed by G. Brook Stanford
Featuring W. Gorden Allen, Trevor James Constable, Juan Fava
Country: USA
What it is: UFO documentary

Who are the overlords of the U.F.O.s? Could they be beings from another dimension which our science cannot comprehend? Have the governments of the world engaged in a massive cover-up of the truth? Can they bend keys like Uri Gellar?

I found this on YouTube with the big claim that the movie was “banned” and “suppressed”. My own gut feeling is that the word “ignored” would probably be a more accurate assessment of the movie’s fate. All I know is that if I wanted to make a convincing documentary about UFOs, I’d try to keep things focused, ordered, and somewhat realistic. I wouldn’t engage in wild speculation as they do here; nor would I plaster headlines from “The National Enquirer” across the screen as part of my evidence. Yet, perhaps it’s fair to say that the wild speculation heightens the entertainment value of this one somewhat, though it gets boring when the speculation descends into mystical gobbledygook as it does on occasion. The movie feels like it’s several films edited into one at times, with the “Space Voyage from Ummo” sequence in the middle as the part that feels most tacked onto the movie. As for it being in any way convincing? Well…let’s just say that its theory for the cause of cattle mutilations is that it was done by invisible flying predatory critters. If that seems like a convincing theory to you, you’ll find the movie revelatory; the rest of us are more apt to see it as a comedy, especially when you realize that the movie sounds like it was written by Ed Wood and the narrator is as convincing as Criswell.

OLIVIA (1983)
aka Taste of Sin
Article 4636 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-23-2014
Directed by Ulli Lommel
Featuring Suzanna Love, Robert Walker Jr., Jeff Winchester
Country: USA / West Germany
What it is: Erotic thriller

As a child, a woman saw her prostitute mother being killed by a john. Now she’s married to a mean-spirited husband and is haunted by the voice of her mother; under her influence she takes up prostitution and kills a customer. Then she meets a man she really loves, but neither her husband nor her mother would approve…

As far as the story goes, I will give Ulli Lommel some credit with the story, which has some truly unexpected plot twists; it’s a bit of a shame that the biggest plot twist is tied to the most ridiculous murder in the movie. Still, that’s not the worst problem I have with Lommel in this movie. My issue with the movie is that Lommel seems unable to help us connect with his characters; they all remain somewhat distant and unreal, and most of the scenes strike false notes or fail to convince. It can still be enjoyed somewhat from a distance, but it really fails to generate much suspense, and for someone who is trying to borrow a bit from the Alfred Hitchcock playbook, that’s a big problem. Nor do I feel that the movie really gels; the various plot elements never quite come together in a satisfying way. I do sense that Lommel is trying here, but I also sense that he’s just not a very good director, and the movie suffers.

AN OPTICAL POEM (1937)
aka Color Poem
Article 4631 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-15-2014
Directed by Oskar Fischinger
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Abstract animation

Shapes dance while Liszt’s “Second Hungarian Rhapsody” plays.

I’ve encountered Fischinger before, and will most likely encounter him again before I’m all through. This exercise in experimental animation was actually commissioned by a major studio, namely MGM. In it, he did an abstract illustration of the above musical piece using paper shapes hanging on wires and shot in stop-motion fashion. Most of it is fairly abstract, but there are a few sequences which make it look as if we’re watching planets and stars dancing through outer space, and there’s one sequence that looks like a rocket passing through the cosmos, so on top of the abstract fantasy content, it might be possible to look at this one as having some science fiction content as well. Abstract animation is a matter of taste, but I did find certain sequences in this short to be quite hypnotic, and it feels like one of the more solid examples from this genre. Incidentally, the title entered my hunt list as COLOR POEM, but no IMDB search yielded that title; however, a little research on the credits pointed me to its proper title.