RETURN OF THE FLY (1959)
Article #630 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-5-2002
Posting date: 4-30-2003

The son of a scientist who was transformed into a half man/half-fly follows in the footprints of his father by continuing his experiments.

I’ve always had a fondness for the original THE FLY; the movie had strong characters, a compelling sense of mystery, and an emotionally resonant story. This immediate sequel retains some of the basic plot elements, but throws out the above qualities and replaces them with stock situations; there is no mystery, the characters are ordinary, and the story is routine. Vincent Price is the only actor returning from the original, but he’s consigned to a fairly uninteresting role. The acting and the effects aren’t bad, there are some memorable images, and those who prefer more conventional and predictable stories may even prefer this one to the original. Me, I miss the inner conflicts that fleshed out the character of the monster from the first movie; this one is just a typical marauding monster once it cuts loose. It’s not a bad movie by any means, but it is several steps down from the original.

REPTILICUS (1961)
Article #629 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-4-2002
Posting date: 4-29-2003

A reptilian monster with the ability to regenerate itself attacks the beautiful city of Copenhagen in Denmark, where tourists can hear beautiful songs like “Tivoli Nights” and enjoy the nightlife and…sorry, I seem to have gotten off the track.

Some thoughts on Reptilicus.

1. Big, bulky monsters are scarier than weedy stringbeans with tiny arms.

2. There is a point in this movie where people are urged not to panic. This is followed by a succession of montages in which giant guns are pointed straight at the viewer’s eyes. This is not the best way to quell panic.

3. The janitor in this movie is proof positive that every country has its own Jim Varney.

4. The most impressive scene in the movie involves a huge crowd of people (every extra in Denmark?) running across a drawbridge.

5. The least impressive scene is any scene with special effects.

6. Most enduring lesson to be learned from this movie; never give in to the temptation to observe your lunch under a microscope.

7. The Danish speak a lot slower than the Japanese, which makes dubbing them a little clunkier. Also, you would have been able to tell this movie was dubbed even if the words had matched the movement of the mouths; it just never sounds like the words were being spoken in the place where you see them being said.

8. Despite a long travelogue sequence, I still have no real desire to see the beautiful city of Copenhagen.

9. AIP removed all scenes of Reptilicus flying because they weren’t convincing. Instead, they added animation of green acid slime spewing out the mouth of Reptilicus. If this is more convincing than the flying sequences, then I want to see those flying sequences. They also cut a scene of the Janitor singing a song with a bunch of children.

10. Reptilicus dies at the end of this movie, though the janitor and that idiot who runs the drawbridge are left alive and breathing. Is there no justice?

And finally, despite a plot element that promises otherwise, there was no sequel.

Yet.

THE RAVEN (1963)
Article #627 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12/2/2002
Posting date: 4/27/2003

A meek magician finds himself drawn into a battle with an evil sorcerer.

This is the third movie I’ve covered supposedly based on this Edgar Allan Poe poem. Three more different movies you couldn’t find; the first was a partial biography of Poe himself, the second a nasty horror movie with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and this one, a fantasy/comedy (with horror elements) with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and (again) Boris Karloff. This is one of Corman’s Poe movies that I quite like; not only is it great to see three masters at work together like this, but by being more of a work of fantasy than one of horror, it doesn’t borrow overly much from Corman’s other Poe movies (there’s not a single premature burial subplot to be found). The nice thing is that all three stars have roles of equal weight and interest, and they are all excellent. In fact, it’s hard to pick a favorite; I lean towards Karloff, but Lorre is great, too, and Price (in the atypical role of the hero) equally so. The special effects aren’t quite up to the ambitions of the story, especially during the final sorcerer’s duel sequence (though a sequence involving a spear is quite effective), and the comedy isn’t quite as funny as it could have been, but the charm of the movie overrides these problems. Hazel Court also looks quite stunning here, and Jack Nicholson is also here, giving a much better performance than he would in THE TERROR. If this movie were in public domain and in release by cheapie video companies, I’ll leave it to you to guess who would be given top billing on the package.

THE ROCKET MAN (1954)
Article #589 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-25-2003
Posting Date: 3-20-2003

An orphan comes by a magical space gun that helps him in a fight to save the local orphanage.

Look at the title. Be aware that the cast features John Agar, Anne Francis and Beverly Garland in it. Know that the script was co-written by Lenny Bruce. Read that plot description again. Know that the movie is one of those small-town, feel-good, light comedies about nice decent folk being manipulated by a corrupt politician who not only engages in fraud, but also drives drunk and almost runs over a child. Then you can do as I did as I watching this one; scratch your head a lot.

Not that the movie itself is all that strange; once you’ve got its number, it’s fairly easy to figure out. It’s just that (after considering the cast and the writer) I went into it expecting—well, I’m not sure what, but it wasn’t this. Not that it’s awful; there are a couple of good laughs in it, but I just wasn’t adaquately prepared.

What I found most interesting about this one is that more than any movie I’ve seen, this one confounds the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy. The ray gun used by the kid and the appearances of a ghostly spaceman are the only fantastic elements in the movie, but despite the science fiction trappings, these things work in a purely fantasy way; the gun is used only four times in the movie; the first two lead you to believe that it stops time for a short period, but the last two indicate that it has powers of a much more varied variety. At one point, the spectral spaceman describes it as a kind of Aladdin’s Lamp, and that’s probably a key clue to classifying this one. Despite the SF trappings, this movie is pure fantasy. If you know that, you’ll be better prepared for handling this movie when it comes your way than I was.

Actually, it’s movies like this that keep this project interesting.

REPEAT PERFORMANCE (1947)
Article #588 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-24-2003
Posting Date: 3-19-2003

A woman who has just committed a murder wishes she could live the last year of her life over again and is granted that wish.

The idea of someone going back over a bad year in her life and trying to change things is a potentially interesting idea, but the second I heard the word “destiny”, I had a pretty good idea of what the upshot of the whole thing was going to be, and though the story does have its share of novel twists, it really never veered off the course of what I ultimately expected. It’s not this aspect, though, that really made the movie difficult for me; it was the fact that the whole story is done in that pure soap-opera style that I find almost nauseating, where everyone is so high class and polite, and where everyone engages in chattery small-talk merely to fill in the dead spaces in the soundtrack (which is one way of saying that practically every character in the cast is painfully shallow and obvious), and where our heroine repeatedly tries to be nice and happy with her husband (who hates her) merely so we can watch him snub her and then so we can feel sorry for the poor woman—I’m sorry, but I just find this type of movie unbearable and tedious. It reminded me of a Douglas Sirk movie like THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION; pretty, proper and reverent, but mannered, artificial and soulless. This is the type of movie that needs some teeth in order to effectively inflict the bite of the premise.

REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES (1943)
Article #533 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-31-2002
Posting date: 1-23-2003

A scientist plans to supply his country with an army of zombie soldiers.

Near as I can tell, this movie was intended as a follow-up to KING OF THE ZOMBIES, and they start out on the right foot by taking the crucial step of getting Mantan Moreland back. The presence of John Carradine is also encouraging, and the wonderful opening scene in which the zombies are summoned forth on a windy night is an effective, moody, and promising beginning, marred only by the minor problem that the zombies walk a little too much like tin soldiers. Unfortunately, the movie goes down the tubes after this; they may have gotten Mantan back, but they forgot to give him any good comic lines or situations; there’s nothing here to match his moments in KOTZ. Carradine himself seems to spend much of the movie in a torpor; I don’t know if he was trying to underplay, but he looks bored half of the time, and it could have really used some energy on his part. Between these problems and the confusing plot, this is probably the least satisfying of the Monogram horrors I’ve seen.

THE RETURN OF DRACULA (1958)
Article #494 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-22-2002
Posting date: 12-15-2002

Dracula goes to a small California town and begins his search for new victims.

On the surface, this low-budget vampire story seems nothing more than the basic Dracula story transplanted to California, and on the level of plot, that’s pretty much what it is. But there’s a lot of creativity at work here; the whole movie seems oddly paced, but this ends up making it just seem all the more unsettling. There are also a lot of touches that flesh out the vampire cliches and draw the viewer into the situations; the way that the men getting ready to stake the vampire wait until the rays of sunlight actually start coming over the horizon, the rather startling detail that the vampire’s victims hear his voice talking to them while we viewers don’t hear a thing, and the way the immigration man twiddles his cigarette lighter all fascinate and draw us into the story. The best touch though is Francis Lederer’s performance in the title role; his character has a very natural, offhand old world charm that seems totally unforced and easily explains how he can exude such a fascination over others; it has all the elements of Bela’s performance of Dracula without once feeling like an imitation of Bela, and he is absolutely hypnotic. All of which comes together in a movie that shows just what can be done with thought, care and creativity in lieu of a large budget.

ROBOT MONSTER (1953)
Article #474 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-2-2002
Posting date: 11-25-2002

Ro-man of the planet Ro-man devastates the Earth with his calcitronic death ray.

This is one of the most ludicrously awful movies ever made; it’s also one of the most interesting bad movies I’ve ever seen. It’s not a movie that is merely boring; it’s a combination of INVADERS FROM MARS-style boy’s nightmare (though why this boy’s dream spends so much time on his sister’s honeymoon may leave you scratching your head a little), extreme cheapness (tons of stock footage, Bronson canyon exteriors, and of course, the gorilla-in-diving-helmet robot), and truly eccentric dialogue (Ro-man’s dialogue does indeed sound like an English translation of some obscure difficult language with a bent towards technological idioms) gives this movie the feel of a surreal carnival ride, though one that is less likely to inspire chills and thrills than a rather giddy nausea. Yet there are definite ideas here, especially in Ro-man’s dialogue; as laughable as his “I must, but I cannot!” speech is, one can see the grains of an attempt at real emotion and conflict. One can only wonder what this movie would have been like had it achieved coherence. And, of course, I find it impossible to entirely dislike any movie that gives the spotlight to my old slurpasaur friends Rumsford and Ignatz, who this time are given two scenes to recreate their famous battle amid stock footage from LOST CONTINENT. I’d rather watch this than either SATELLITE IN THE SKY or THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD.

THE ROGUES’ TAVERN (1936)
Article #407 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-26-2002
Posting date: 9-19-2002

A detective and his ex-detective girlfriend go to an out-of-the-way inn to meet a justice of the peace who will marry them. There they run into a mysterious group of people who are being murdered by what is believed to be a wild dog.

This is essentially an old dark house movie, but it’s the most brightly lit old dark house movie I’ve seen. There are some interesting characters and some novel ideas, but it’s badly written; it’s loaded with bad jokes and cliches, with one character actually saying “It’s getting dark!” as he dies. The editing is also pretty bad, with pointless cutting back and forth on certain scenes, and way too many shots of people looking suspiciously at each other without a real purpose or point. Still, it does leave you guessing as to the identity of the real culprit, and if you make it through, you will be treated to one of the most maniacal speeches you’ve ever encountered in the cinema. There are some really fun moments here, but it’s a mixed bag, to be sure. Wallace Ford plays the detective.

RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE (1967)
(a.k.a. LE VIOL DU VAMPIRE)
Article #403 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-22-2002
Posting date: 9-15-2002

Let’s see, there are these four vampire women, one of whom is blind, and some strangers show up and try to cure them and then villagers show up and kill them and everyone dies. Then, in part two, the queen shows up and everyone comes back to life, and…

This is the first feature length film by cult film director Jean Rollin, a name that meant nothing to me when I started this project; it means something now, but I can’t say what. He specialized in arty, erotic, and gory films about vampires. This particular arty, erotic, and gory film about vampires was originally an arty, erotic, and gory short about vampires to which he added fifty more arty, erotic, and gory minutes. The result is a (and I’ll let you fill in the adjectives from here on out) mess, as you might expect. I can’t exactly say I was bored, but I can’t exactly say I was entertained, or much of anything else either; ninety minutes passed and it was all over. That’s the trouble with films like this for me; I emerge from them without them having any noticeable affect on me other than having taken up time. I’m tempted to talk about its plotlessness, but that isn’t strictly true; it has a story (two stories, in fact; one for each half, and I don’t think they necessarily have much to do with each other), and I get a hint of some interesting ideas here, particularly in the second half, but the artiness has a way of forcing me to hold my distance and keeps me just bored enough to not want to bother to sort things out. I guess if I want to see an arty vampire flick, I’ll opt for VAMPYR.