The Phantom in the House (1929)
Article 5546 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-29-2018
Directed by Phil Rosen
Featuring Ricardo Cortez, Nancy Welford, Henry B. Walthall
Country: USA
What it is: Crime drama

An inventor takes the fall for a murder committed by his wife. When he is paroled fifteen years later, he discovers his wife has made a fortune from his patents and changed her identity so as to avoid the stigma of having been married to a convict. His plan to keep out of her life changes, though, when she decides to keep their daughter from marrying her true love, and he stays around to defend his daughter.

Of all the words in movie titles that conjure up visions of the fantastic, I’d have to pick “phantom” as the most deceptive; there are quite a few movies with that word in the title which contain little or no fantastic content, and this is one of them. Here the word is metaphorical; the convict’s decision to hang around makes him an unwanted “ghost” of the past. Here is another one I wouldn’t be covering if it weren’t on my suggestions list. On its own terms, however, it’s actually pretty decent, especially considering its creakiness as an early talkie. Walthall is the convict, and he should get top billing because he’s the main character, and he gives the best performance here. The thing I admire most is how concise the story is; the plot is pretty involved for a movie that runs only about 58 minutes. In fact, when the movie throws in a major plot turning point with only about three minutes left to go, I found myself wondering how in the world they were going to resolve it all with the limited time left. Still, this is one of those movies where the primary plot motivation throughout involves people trying to keep the truth from being known, and I always find such stories to be a little suspect.

Petrol (1957)
Article 5517 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-3-2017
Directed by Enrico Cocozza
Featuring Jack Smith and Eddie Cairns
Country: Scotland
What it is: Very short horror movie

A man whose car has broke down has an encounter with a psycho.

This short little experimental runs just under two minutes, and was added to my suggestion list as an example of one of those obscure little movies that has fallen through the cracks. It’s probably only marginally horror due to the fact that it’s so succinct it doesn’t provide us any motivation for why the killer does what he does. Still, one does have to admire the efficiency of telling a miniature little cinematic story without sound. It makes for an enticing little curiosity.

The Phantom Creeps (1949)
Article 5501 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-23-2017
Directed by Ford Beebe and Saul A. Goodkind
Featuring Bela Lugosi, Robert Kent, Dorothy Arnold
Country: USA
What it is: Feature version of serial

The evil Dr. Zorka plans to take over the world with his giant robot, his invisibility belt, his meteorite with secret powers, and his crawling spiders that put people in suspended animation.

For some reason, I never got around to covering this feature version of the serial of the same name, but there’s a reason for that. Most feature versions of serials had different names from the serial themselves, so when you saw it listed, you could tell from the title alone whether it was the feature version or the serial. This one used the same title, and my sources rarely specified if it was the serial or the feature version, so I assumed the former.

Actually, as far as these things go, this is one of the better ones insofar as it feels more like a feature than a condensed serial, and there are reasons for that. For one, unlike the many Republic serial features of the mid-sixties, it wasn’t obsessed with capturing every single action sequence at the expense of the plot, so it doesn’t short-change the plot or inundate you with abrupt scene changes. However, this serial itself was much easier to adapt. All you had to do was concentrate on the plot development in the first two episodes and the climax from the last episode, and then have just enough of the middle episodes to capture the flavor of the three way struggle for the meteorite between the spies, the law and Zorka that makes up the rest of the serial. The ugly robot and Lugosi’s presence are the main attractions here. It’s no classic, but for what it is, it’s passable.

Porky’s Garden (1937)
Article 5496 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-9-2017
Directed by Tex Avery
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc, Earl Hodgins, Charles Judels
Country: USA
What it is: Porky Pig cartoon

Porky gets into a competition with his Italian neighbor as to who is going to win first prize at the county fair for the largest product.

This one is pretty marginal when it comes to the fantastic content, but when the cartoon came up with three moments that pushed the envelope a bit, I went ahead and decided to review it. The first moment has Porky using hair tonic to make his garden grow huge vegetables. The second moment has a baby chick eating spinach and getting super-strength; yes, I know that I rejected that in the Popeye cartoons themselves, but I was amused enough by the fact that the chick turns into a miniature version of Popeye (thereby having the cartoon parody a character from another studio) to let it pass in this case. The third item is when a huckster hawks weight loss pills that are powerful enough to turn an elephant into a mouse. On a side note, I can’t help but notice how the neighbor looks like a big version of Mario. It’s nice to see one of Tex Avery’s earlier works here, but he didn’t really hit his stride until he moved to MGM. All in all, this is an okay Porky Pig cartoon.

Porky’s Cafe (1942)
Article 5494 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-6-2017
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Porky Pig cartoon

At Porky’s cafe, Porky has to cater to the dining needs of a hungry little man, and his cook has to deal with an ant that has gotten loose in the pancake batter.

For the record, the sequence which qualified this one for review is a scene where Porky prepares eggs and toast for his customer by using an elaborate machine that performs all the necessary functions, which throws the cartoon at least partially into the realm of science fiction. That being said, I’m glad to be dealing with a Chuck Jones cartoon here; I’ve seen several early ones recently, and I’ve noticed a certain pattern that sets him apart from some of the other animators, and that is that he seems to feel very comfortable with scenes with little or no dialogue. Most of the ones I’ve seen recently have featured long scenes in which characters interact without saying a word; most of the scenes with the cook and the ant in this one have no dialogue. Which is not to say that he’s not comfortable with dialogue; there’s plenty of talk in the scenes with Porky and the customer. At any rate, this trend would continue with Jones throughout the years; after all, the Coyote and Road Runner cartoons were almost wordless. It took years for Jones to really master his craft, and some of the gags in this cartoon fall flat. There are a few good moments, though; my favorite is the scene with the aforementioned toast and egg machine.

Paper and I (1953)
Article 5482 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-23-2017
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Educational short

A young boy is about to pop a paper sack when it comes to life and takes him on a journey to discover how paper is made and what the world would be like without paper.

This is an example of film ephemera, a term for those movies that are made not for showing to a general audience in a theatrical setting, but for a select audience in a different environment. This is most likely an educational film to be shown in the classroom. It uses a common approach to teaching its subject by having a supernatural visitor appear to someone and instruct them on the ins and outs of its subject; in this case, a talking paper bag teaches a little boy about paper – where it comes from and its various uses. This one is a little more entertaining than most in that it delves into some subplots that most other movies of its ilk would ignore; the family of the little end up being very concerned about their little boys’ strange attachment to his paper bag, and, in a darkly comic twist, the paper bag’s face ages as the short progresses and he eventually requests that the boy perform a mercy killing on him, a sequence which proves hilarious even with its dark undertones.

PHANTASM (1979)
Article 5420 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-10-2017
Directed by Don Coscarelli
Featuring A. Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Banister
Country: USA
What it is: That’s a good question.

Two brothers find themselves contending with bizarre events at a mausoleum involving a sinister tall man, a gaggle of hooded dwarfs, and a murderous metal sphere.

I’ve actually been looking forward to seeing this one for years. What intrigued me about it was that I was mostly hearing about the various elements of the film, and rarely hearing anything that sounded like an explanation for them. So how did I react? Well, as the end credits rolled, I found myself…. laughing. IMDB classifies the movie as horror, science fiction and fantasy (and it falls within all three categories), but I would also add comedy as well. Why? Because there’s something here that gleefully makes hash of logic and expectations; like an Ed Wood movie, it breaks rules that you didn’t even know existed, and it seems to be doing it on purpose. The dialogue often engages in ridiculous-sounding overwrought cliches, and at other times it obsessively overlooks the elephant of the room. The plot seems to keep looping back on itself (how many times do people go back and investigate the mausoleum?) and even flatly contradicts the action you’ve seen up this point. The end result is a movie where almost everything in it feels unreal and outside the normal rules of the universe. To my mind, the movie is a joke on the audience and its expectations, but, to my mind, it’s a good and funny one. I’m not surprised the movie has an uneven reputation, but I’m also not surprised that it’s a cult film, and I think I’ve joined the cult.

PREDATOR (1987)
Article 5405 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-26-2017
Directed by John McTiernan
Featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Kevin Peter Hall
Country: USA
What it is: Action SF thriller

A team of commandos undertake a rescue mission in the jungle, but soon find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial sportsman.

I always considered Arnold Schwarzenegger a somewhat limited actor who became a star as a result of his shrewd choices for properties to work on; he didn’t really stumble until THE LAST ACTION HERO, but he never recovered from that one. This one I remember not being a big critical favorite, though it definitely was a popular one. Certainly, the compendium of action cliches that make up the first thirty minutes of this movie don’t really impress, but I do recognize the efficiency with which this part is handled (after all, there are some action movies that would have considered the story for the first third of this movie to be enough for a whole feature film), and I know that this section is just the setup for the main portion of the movie, in which the military team finds itself the target of an extraterrestrial hunter. The latter portion of the movie works very well indeed, as the team must discover the nature of their hunter and find strategies to defeat it before they’re all killed. Dialogue is kept to a very minimum during the very tense climax of the movie, though it could have been cut even further; at least once during this section, Schwarzenegger utters one of his trademark one-line quips that almost took me out of the movie. Still, the movie recovers quickly enough that no real damage is done. No, it’s not perfect, but it is very entertaining, and it serves as a good model for a science fiction / horror action thriller.

PEST IN FLORENZ (1919)
aka The Plague in Florence
Article 5388 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-8-2017
Directed by Otto Rippert
Featuring Theodor Becker, Karl Bernhard, Julietta Brandt
Country: Germany
What it is: Historical horror

The arrival of a beautiful seductress brings turmoil to the oppressed town of Florence. When her presence leads to the murder of the city’s ruler by his son, the town gives in to hedonism and debauchery. But there will be a price to pay…

The copy I found of this movie has German intertitles with French translations; in other words, no English. However, I didn’t have a lot of trouble following it for several reasons. One is that I managed to find a few useful plot descriptions. It also helped that with two sets of languages to choose from on the title cards, there were more clues I could follow to understand them. But an even bigger factor may be that the acting in this movie is… well, let’s just say it’s not subtle. Though this would normally count against a movie, it’s actually helpful when you’re struggling with a language problem; at the very least, you know how the characters feel about their experiences. If the horror content isn’t clear from the plot description, let me just say that the plot eventually centers around a plague in the city, and we have a skeletal female figure personifying the plague. We also get a short trip through hell as well as some mystical moments to add to the fantastic content. It’s all perhaps a bit over the top, but it is entertaining and effective. The final scene is definitely memorable. Incidentally, the script was written by Fritz Lang and is partially based on Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”.

THE PHANTOM HONEYMOON (1919)
Article 5374 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-18-2017
Directed by J. Searle Dawley
Featuring Marguerite Marsh, Vernon Steele, Henry Guy Carleton
Country: USA
What it is: Ghost story

A man who specializes in debunking ghosts decides to visit a castle that is believed to be haunted. There he meets an Indian manservant who tells him the story of the ghosts that haunt the castle.

I can’t say how many “old dark house” movies I’ve seen, and I’m a little surprised to realize how much more common they are than movies like this – good old-fashioned ghost stories. I really liked this one. The story with the ghost debunker is a framing story. The main story is in three parts. The first part recounts the central incident in the story in which a strange duel to the death is fought. The second part gives the backstory to that duel. The third part finishes off the action in such a way that the framing story is incorporated into the tale as well. One of the most interesting things about this movie is that it doesn’t quite go in the direction you’d think it would go, largely due to the fact that the movie shifts gears in the final act from being a full-blooded horror movie into the realm of whimsical fantasy, and to the movie’s credit, the shift works very well. But then, I sensed a shift when I discovered that not only did the movie feature human ghosts, but the ghost of a car as well. My favorite moment in the film is when the debunker has a “close encounter” with a ghost. Hopefully, I haven’t given away too much; this is one of those movies that is appreciated if you don’t know too much about what’s going on. This is another title that has been rescued from my “one that got away” list, and I’m very glad it showed up.