RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (1944)
Article #396 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-15-2002
Posting date: 9-8-2002

When a vampire’s body is unearthed by a bombing raid on England during WW2, his stake is removed and he is reburied. He rises from the dead, and with the help of his werewolf compatriot, begins a reign of terror.

The fact that the movie takes place in contemporary England, and the fact that the vampire’s assistant is a werewolf are the primary novelties of this movie, which in other respects is pretty much your typical vampire movie with all the usual trimmings. Still, the primary emotion I felt about watching the movie was quite simple and unexpected; I found myself charmed by the whole thing. It almost ODs on atmosphere (that low-lying ground fog is everywhere, including indoors at times) and the surprises are few, but there is plenty of energy and fun in the proceedings, with even the comic relief being sharper than usual. Though I wouldn’t call it a great movie, it is a lot of fun, and features a good strong performance by Lugosi to add to the mix.

THE RAVEN (1915)
Article #395 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-14-2002
Posting date: 9-7-2002

The life and times of Edgar Allan Poe, plus a rendition of his most famous poem.

This movie was based on a stage play, and it appears to be more or less a biography of Poe. As such, it seems arbitrary and often pointless, with fantasy elements that seem curious but unenlightening. The centerpiece is a visual retelling of “The Raven”, but I don’t find it particularly interesting. In fact, the whole movie just seems a bit of a mess, frustrating and unfocused, though I suspect the movie may not be complete, as there are some plot elements that make no sense to me at all, particularly a part near the end involving an old man. As it is, I award the movie the Confused Shrug award.

ROOM TO LET (1950)
Article #265 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-6-2001
Posting date: 4-21-2002

A mysterious lodger moves into the home of a reporter’s girlfriend at about the same time as a fire at an asylum that was covered by the reporter. His story involved a missing patient of the asylum, but was censored from the paper, and he sees evidence of a cover-up on the matter.

This is basically a variation of THE LODGER, and a very effective one. Valentine Dyall steals the movie as the truly creepy lodger, Dr. Fell, and one can’t help but be frightened of what this man may be capable of doing. Those expecting a mere replay of THE LODGER are in for a surprise, however; towards the end it takes the damnedest of left turns when you least expect it (without giving too much away, it turns from a horror thriller to, of all things, a locked room murder mystery), but still manages to steer to a quite satisfying ending. Hammer fans may notice the name of the producer (Anthony Hinds), and the assistant director whose name is more familiar as that of a screenwriter (Jimmy Sangster).

ROCKETSHIP X-M (1950)
Article #213 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-15-2001
Posting date: 2-28-2002

An expedition is planned to the moon, but technical problems with the fuel cause the spaceship to end up going to Mars instead.

This movie was quickly made to try to cash in on the hype surrounding DESTINATION MOON, and actually beat that movie to the theatres. It’s actually quite fascinating to compare the two, as this movie does aspire to be a science fiction adventure drama like DESTINATION MOON. The characters seem a little more human in this one; in fact, overall this is the better acted of the two movies, with a number of familiar faces (Lloyd Bridges, Osa Massen, Morris Ankrum, John Emery, Noah Beery, Hugh O’Brian). It’s also the more downbeat of the two movies, though at the same time I think it is somewhat more conventional, and its social commentary is a bit on the obvious side. Still, it did attempt to be a serious entry in the genre of SF, and avoids being a mere rip-off of its inspiration, and for that it certainly deserves applause.

It also set some of the cliches for this type of movie. It has the first “spaceship caught in a meteor shower” sequence. It also has the sole female member of the crew which paved the way for romance as well as the blatant sexism prevalent at the time. Still, the movie doesn’t fall into the trap of backing up the sexism. Osa Massen’s character doesn’t just go around serving coffee; she is a vital member of the crew who knows her stuff about the fuel being used. In fact, it’s important to note that after the scene where there is a discrepancy between her calculations and those of John Emery, and John makes the decision to use his and discard hers, that it was his mixture of the fuel that threw them off course and sent them to Mars; could it be that the woman had been right? An interesting movie.

THE RAVEN (1935)
Article #212 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-14-2001
Posting date: 2-27-2002

A surgeon is denied the love of the woman he desires and gets revenge by devising horrible tortures for his victims.

This is something of a companion piece to the earlier THE BLACK CAT, also featuring both Karloff and Lugosi. For the most part, it lacks that movie’s style, wit, and sense of poetry, though it does a nice job of defining some common horror themes. Karloff certainly has a less interesting role, though it doesn’t start out that way; unfortunately, after the operation, the character just becomes rather predictable, and if you took away his dialogue, Tor Johnson could have played him. Lugosi’s Dr. Vollin is better, but still not as interesting as his Vitus Verdegast in THE BLACK CAT. In fact, I find THE RAVEN to be rather humdrum and immemorable, though it actually has more to do with Poe than THE BLACK CAT. There is, however, one really great moment for Lugosi when he tries to explain what Poe means to him; this soliloquy is one of Lugosi’s finest moments and shows just how wonderful an actor this man could be.

REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955)
Article #198 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-30-2001
Posting date: 2-13-2002

Scientists remove the Gill Man from his native habitat and place him in a tank in an aquarium.

The sequel is not up to the level of the original movie of the series, but it’s not too bad for all that. The only recurring character (outside of the creature himself) between the two movies is Nestor Paiva’s Captain Lucas, and he only appears in the first twenty minutes of the movie. There’s a lot of uninteresting romance to pad out the proceedings, but that was pretty much common for the period. It’s hard to actually feel much for the “heros” in this movie, as the tests that they make the creature undergo seem somewhat cruel and mean-spirited; my sympathy ends up very much with the creature, which is actually something the original never quite accomplished for me. Part of the credit goes to Ricou Browning, who plays the creature in the underwater scenes; he actually does some fine acting while holding his breath and wearing a costume that obscures his face completely.

John Agar and Lori Nelson lead the cast, but the real treat is the celebrity that appears uncredited in a small role; I am referring, of course, to Flippy, the educated porpoise, who would later make a name for himself on “Sealhide”, and then appear in several spaghetti westerns as the dolphin with no name, sitting astride his horse with no name and balancing a ball on the end of his nose. It’s fun to see him in his early years.

Oh, and Clint Eastwood makes an appearance, too.

RED PLANET MARS (1952)
Article #167 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-30-2001
Posting date: 1-13-2002

Scientists receive messages from Mars about the utopia that exists there, causing riots and economic collapse in the United States. However, the messages are actually being sent by a man being controlled by the Russians.

I hope you don’t go into this one expecting men from Mars, spaceships, or other SF paraphernalia; you’ll be disappointed. However, if you go in expecting tons of cold war pro-Christian propaganda, you won’t be disappointed. Now, cold war propaganda movies can have their charms, but I do tire of them quickly, and this movie is totally built around its message. It would still work if its criticisms of communism were pointed and convincing; instead, it merely takes the stand that what’s wrong with communism is that it’s not Christian, and that is a ridiculously narrow point of view on the matter. I don’t buy the premise that discovering a Utopian world on Mars would cause a collapse in our economy and destroy the United States; maybe I just have a little more faith in people than that. I also don’t really consider it at all likely that a collapse of the government in Russia would have resulted in a benevolent religious priesthood taking over the reins of the government (that’s fantasy wish-fulfillment of the worst kind). In fact, I just don’t buy this movie at all. It’s merely a curio of the era.

REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936)
Article #117 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-11-2001
Posting date: 11-24-2001

A timid student of dead languages loses the woman he loves to a friend with a much more aggressive philosophy. When he discovers an ancient technique to turn men into zombies, he adopts his friend’s aggressive technique and uses the power to try to gain the woman back.

After seeing a few of the Halperin Brothers’ movies, I really have to admire their ambition; while most of the other low-budget horror movies of the time were content with an “old dark house” and a few murders, the Halperins really tried to fill their movies with wonderful ideas and concepts. Yet, despite the novel ideas and the occasional atmospheric moment, the sheer creakiness of their directorial style drags them down, and never so badly as it did in this one; it is shot so uninterestingly and unfolds so slowly that everything that was potentially good about it shrivels up to nothing. And we’ve seen the floating eyes of Bela Lugosi too many times; they add nothing to this movie. Dean Jagger (who plays the lead in this movie) definitely went on to better things.

THE RETURN OF THE APE MAN (1944)
Article #116 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-10-2001
Posting date: 11-23-2001

While experimenting with suspended animation, a scientist revives an ape man found in the polar regions, and decides to give it half a new brain in order for him to communicate with it.

For me, this was by far the goofiest of the Monogram horrors Bela Lugosi made during the forties. Despite the title, it has nothing to do with the earlier Monogram movie THE APE MAN. The fun starts with the opening newspaper headline, which talks about the disappearance of a “noted wino” (those may not be the exact words, but you get the gist), which makes me wonder just how slow a news day this was.

This also backs up my earlier claim that in the Monogram horrors, Bela Lugosi was apt to do things the hard way. In order to prove the effectiveness of his suspended animation process, he decides that he needs to find an ape man frozen in a block of ice for thousands of years; what is amazing is that he actually manages to find one. He replaces half the brain of the ape man with half the brain of John Carradine, and ends up with an ape man who not only murders, but can play the piano.

George Zucco was originally supposed to play the ape man, but Frank Moran took over when Zucco backed out; this was a wise decision for Zucco, because this is the movie with the infamous scene where, when the ape man exits the lab through a high window, you get a clear view of…uh…well, whatever is under his animal skin. There are some who believe he’s not wearing anything underneath (which would most likely have been historically accurate), but my print isn’t clear enough to verify this; let us hope, in this case, that historical accuracy was not in force here, and we’re seeing nothing more than the ape man’s BVDs.

THE RETURN OF DR. X (1939)
Article #115 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 7-9-2001
Posting date: 11-22-2001

When a reporter discovers a dead woman, he calls in the story to his newspaper. Unfortunately, the body vanishes and the woman later turns up alive. The reporter eventually discovers that the woman was treated by a mysterious doctor and his suspicious assistant.

The title would lead you to believe that this is a sequel to DOCTOR X, but ouside of the existence of synthetic blood to parallel the synthetic flesh of that movie, there is no real connection. This movie is notorious for being Humphrey Bogart’s sole foray into horror; reportedly, he was given the role as punishment by Warner Brothers, and he hated it. Actually, he doesn’t do a bad job in the role, but I’m glad he didn’t take to horror; if he had, it would have most likely denied the world his great performances in several classic movies. The movie itself is quite interesting; it was one of those movies that really keeps you guessing as to what explanation you’re eventually going to be given for the mysterious events. This one is worth a look.