SATANIS: THE DEVIL’S MASS (1970)
aka Satanis
Article 2653 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-15-2008
Posting Date: 11-17-2008
Directed by Ray Laurent
Featuring Anton LaVey, Isaac Bonewits, Diane LaVey
Country: USA

This documentary takes a look at Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan.

One of the aspects of the same year’s documentary on witchcraft, WITCHCRAFT ’70, is that it also features footage from Anton LaVey’s black masses; the commentator in that movie couldn’t help but notice how lifeless and dull these ceremonies were. This documentary gives us ample Anton LaVey black mass footage to chew on, and… well, I have to agree with the commentator of the other film. You’d think that a ceremony that involves naked women dancing with snakes would hold the interest, but, sadly, this sequence is interminable and interminably dull. Part of the problem is that everyone looks bored; the worshipers, the naked women, even LaVey himself, though I can’t speak for the snake. It also doesn’t help that the perpetually moving camera during these scenes seems unable to focus on anything, or that some of costumes are (in a word) silly, especially that devil-mask with the horns. In between, we get interviews with LaVey, the worshipers, and neighbors. To me, very little of interest was said by anyone; the most interesting part of the movie is when it turns to the subject of LaVey’s pet lion. With its plentiful nudity, it was no doubt a sensation in its day. Still, for a dull documentary on a potentially interesting subject, I will give the movie one big point; it saves the most telling comment made in the various interviews for the last line of the movie, as this one line manages to put into perspective much of what we’ve seen. It’s best viewed as a curio.

A STOLEN AIRSHIP (1967)
aka Ukradena vzducholod
Article 2651 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-10-2008
Posting Date: 11-15-2008
Directed by Karel Zeman
Featuring Hanus Bor, Jan Cizek, Jan Malat
Country: Italy/Czechoslovakia

Five boys fly off in an airship and land on a desert island.

Karel Zeman is such a visually inventive director that it goes a long way to make up for the fact that my print of this movie is in the Czech language. Oh, sure, it’s subtitled, but the subtitles are in Chinese (I think). At any rate, much of the plot is hard to follow, though I do believe that Verne’s “The Mysterious Island” is at least one of the sources for the story, and I suspect there are more. It’s a dizzying array of animation, stylized special effects, adventure, fantasy and surreal slapstick humor. The movie is full of strange images, such as a welter of strange airships (including one that can be rowed and one that harbors a set of can-can dancers), spies with fake arms, and a shark stranded on the bottom of the ocean for having eaten a too-heavy torpedo. The “Nautilus” and Captain Nemo show up for a short sequence as well. It’s a lot of fun, but I hope someday to see either a dubbed or English-subtitled version to clarify some of the plot points.

SINFONIA PER DUE SPIA (1965)
aka Serenade for Two Spies, Serenade fur zwei Spione, Sympathy for Two Spies
Article 2647 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-5-2008
Posting Date: 11-11-2008
Directed by Michael Pfleghar
Featuring Hellmut Lange, Tony Kendall, Barbara Lass
Country: West Germany/Italy

A spy attempts to get his hands on a laser device…

…or so the plot descriptions I’ve found seem to tell me. I couldn’t make heads of tales out of this one, but then, I watched it with the worst possible print. Apparently, the English language version is lost, so I watched it on a bootleg DVD in unsubtitled Italian with faded color, horrible pan-and-scan cropping, and a running time that is only slightly more than half of the length of the movie on IMDB (they say 87 minutes, my copy runs 45 minutes). Under these circumstances, I’d be surprised if it made sense. Apparently, it’s a comedy, but it’s hard to tell. It takes place in the United States, it has a soundtrack that sounds as if it were more appropriate for a cheesy travelogue than a spy movie, and it features what may be the most jaw-droppingly unconvincing underwater sequence in cinema history. Beyond that, the movie is a question mark.

SIREN OF BAGDAD (1953)
Article 2642 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-30-2008
Posting Date: 11-6-2008
Directed by Richard Quine
Featuring Paul Henreid, Patricia Medina, Hans Conried
Country: USA

The dancing girls in a magician’s troupe are kidnapped by thieves from Bagdad, where an evil grand vizier has usurped the throne from the true sultan. The magician combines forces with the deposed sultan to restore him to the throne and to get his dancing girls back.

Arabian Nights epics must have fallen on hard times during the fifties; the last one I saw came from poverty row studio Monogram (and which also featured Patricia Medina), and this one was produced by budget-conscious Sam Katzman. To its credit, this one plays it for laughs rather than thrills. “The Motion Picture Guide” makes a comment that it bears a certain similarity to the Hope/Crosby Road movies, which is an observation I found rather shrewd; though this movie has far more of a plot than you’d ever find in a Road movie, there’s no doubt the Hans Conried’s character, lines, and shtick sound ready-made for Bob Hope. It also has that same sense of surreal non-reality that pushed the Road movies into marginal fantasy, though this one has lots of magic to qualify it for the genre. All in all, I found this one quite enjoyable, with Hans Conried’s comic battle with the fake sultan (in which each combatant seems reluctant to attack) a highlight.

THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH (1971)
aka Lo Strano vizio della Signora Wardh, Next!, Blade of the Ripper
Article 2629 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-16-2008
Posting Date: 10-24-2008
Directed by Sergio Martino
Featuring George Hilton, Edwige Fenech, Conchito Airoldi
Country: Italy/Spain

A woman finds herself threatened by a razor-wielding murderer. Is it her husband? Her lover? Her ex-lover? Or someone else…

Part of me really admires the DIABOLIQUE-level complexity of the story, and I do admire the editing here; it manages to keep the scenes moving in a fast and efficient manner, at least for the first two-thirds of the movie. It’s only towards the end where the movie starts slowing the pace down, a sure sign that it’s getting ready to launch a plot twist on you. But it is possible to O.D. on plot twists, and, in my estimation, this movie tries to sneak in one too many before it’s all over, so that the final effect is a bit more comic than intended. Of course, this being giallo, there’s style, gore, and sex to spare, though I do think they could cut back on the bathing scenes and some of the stylistic touches seem a bit forced. Still, this is perhaps the best movie I’ve seen from Sergio Martino so far.

THE SLAYER (1982)
Article 2627 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-14-2008
Posting Date: 10-22-2008
Directed by J.S. Cardone
Featuring Sarah Kendall, Frederick Flynn, Carol Kottenbrook
Country: USA

Two couples take a vacation on an island. A murderer begins killing them off. One of the women believes it’s something from her dreams.

The threat is not your average slasher villain and one of the death scenes is conceived (though not shot) with a certain degree of humorous irony. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is horror-by-the-numbers, with a plot stretched too thin for the movie’s length and augmented with padding; this is one of those movies where people spend lots of time searching for other people and calling out their names. Indifferent acting, a weak script, and an overabundance of overfamiliar horror cliches make this one a bore. Throw in a dumb ending and you have another reason to skip this one.

SANTO CONTRA BLUE DEMON EN LA ATLANTIDA (1970)
aka Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis
Article 2623 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-10-2008
Posting Date: 10-18-2008
Directed by Julian Soler
Featuring Santo, Jorge Rado, Alejandro Munoz Morena
Country: Mexico

An evil genius from Atlantis plans to take over the world, and he has the stock footage to prove that he can. It’s up to Santo to stop him, even if he has to use his own stock footage from HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN to do it.

It’s in unsubtitled Spanish, but, thanks to Robert Cutter’s “The Mexican Masked Wrestler and Monster Filmography” (which include a detailed plot synopsis), I was able to follow along. The main wrestling sequence in this one is a bout between Santo and Blue Demon, but, since they’re both heroes (despite the fact that Blue Demon is hypnotized by the villains to do their bidding at one point), the question is – who is going to be allowed to win the match? They get around this moral quandary by not finishing the match; after having won one round each, someone drugs Blue Demon’s water and he’s spirited away by Atlantean henchmen (you can tell they’re from Atlantis by the rings they wear). It’s another Mexican wrestler movie aping the James Bond movies; Santo even gets to make out with some females in this one. Nothing really special here; it’s just a moderately entertaining Mexican wrestler flick, though it does get some novelty points for being the first one I’ve seen that pairs Santo and Blue Demon.

THE STEPFATHER (1987)
Article 2606 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-24-2008
Posting Date: 10-1-2008
Directed by Joseph Ruben
Featuring Terry O’Quinn, Jill Schoelen, Shelley Hack
Country: USA

A single mother with a rebellious daughter marries a charming real estate salesman, unaware that the man has been married before and ends up slaughtering his families when they don’t live up to his dreams of “the perfect family”.

When this movie came to my town it played the art house circuit rather than in the multiplexes, which somewhat disassociated it from the other horror thrillers of the period. This is understandable; the movie emphasizes character, intelligence and believability rather than just gruesome thrills; what makes it so effective is that you can understand the feelings of the murderous title character, and he never descends to merely an evil bogeyman. Much of the credit goes to actor Terry O’Quinn, who makes his character very believable. Still, the movie does stumble on occasion, mostly when it gives in to certain horror movie cliches that it usually tries to avoid; occasionally, after he’s killed someone, the killer will throw out the type of one-liners that always seem phony and artificial to me, and though he isn’t one of those indestructible super-monsters like Jason, he comes closer than he should during the climax of the movie. What is most memorable is the element of surprise; the killer is uncommonly intelligent and his eruptions into violence come at the unexpected moments when you think the movie is just building up the suspense. The movie will no doubt alienate some viewers who perceive a political subtext that criticizes the whole family values movement, but I consider this a gross oversimplification, as it is the killer’s obsession with unreachable ideals and his inability to accept that there are some things he cannot control that set off his madness. The movie spawned two sequels, which is a pity; this is one of those movies that is only cheapened by the enfranchisement of it.

A SLIGHTLY PREGNANT MAN (1973)
aka L’Evenement le plus important depuis que l’homme a marche sur la lune
Article 2604 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-22-2008
Posting Date: 9-29-2008
Directed by Jacques Demy
Featuring Catherine Deneuve, Marcello Mastrioianni, Micheline Presle
Country: France/Italy

A male instructor at a driving school discovers that he is pregnant.

I have to admit that I find the idea of a pregnant man only mildly amusing at best, though I suspect that women may like the concept more. As a result, I’m not really surprised that I found this movie mildly amusing at best, dull, predictable and obvious at worst. It’s really hard to gauge the performances; the dubbing is fairly weak throughout, though Marcello Mastrioianni seems to be doing the best he can. There are hints of a much better movie here; one conversation in a beauty parlor brought up the subject of how the world would change if men were able to get pregnant, and a movie that pursued that subject might actually have been interesting. The movie even threatens to move into that direction at one point, but it remains no more than a unfulfilled promise. The most amusing sequence to my eyes involved the pregnant man’s association with a clothing manufacturer who starts putting out a line of men’s maternity (or is it paternity) wear. The ending, however, is a major cop-out, and, more than anything else here, makes this one largely a waste of time. In short, the movie doesn’t deliver.