SOME GIRLS DO (1969)
Article #1471 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-25-2005
Posting Date: 8-22-2005
Directed by Ralph Thomas
Featuring Richard Johnson, Daliah Lavi, Beba Loncar

Hugh Drummond investigates several murders that are tied to the development of a supersonic airliner.

Having only been familiar with Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond through the movies about him in the thirties, I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that the character was revived for a short time during the late sixties. However, I was not surprised to discover that the character was revived as a James Bond knockoff. Nor was I surprised that all the regular characters from the earlier series (Algy Longworth, Tenny, Inspector Nelson) were thrown by the wayside for other characters. However, I was quite surprised and delighted to see that the sense of humor that the earlier series had displayed had somehow remained intact. If anything, the humor is even stronger; this superspy movie is more than half a comedy, with its eccentric characters (Ronnie Stevens as Drummond’s prissy bodyguard, Robert Morley in a scene-stealing cameo as the instructor in a cooking school) and pithy one-liners. In truth, I found the humor here much more appealing than that of the Bond movies themselves; I always found those movies to be just a little too smug for my taste. In short, I was quite delighted by this movie, even if it was the last of the short-lived revival, and I look forward to seeing the first movie of the series. This is currently my favorite Bond rip-off.

SOMETHING WEIRD (1967)
Article #1460 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-14-2005
Posting Date: 8-11-2005
Directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis
Featuring Tony McCabe, Elizabeth Lee, William Brooker

After he is mutilated by a freak electrical accident, a man develops ESP. He then makes a pact with an ugly witch to be her lover if she helps him recover his looks. He then gets involved in an investigation of a serial killer.

Them as wants to see a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie minus the gore that was his hallmark are hereby directed this way. Maybe he thought he had enough exploitation elements already; this movie has psychic powers, martial arts, ugly witches (who look beautiful to all but their lovers), psychotic killers, LSD drug trips, haunted chapels and killer blankets. The acting is pretty good by Herschell Gordon Lewis standards, which is just my way of saying that it’s godawful but is generally better than the acting in BLOOD FEAST. The movie does live up to its title, though; whatever else you can say about it, the movie is certainly weird. The story itself is better than usual, but it was written by someone other than Lewis. I could pick at this one all day, but why bother? I will make a couple of observations though. One is that when people grow old, their whole bodies age, not just their heads, which is my way of saying that the hag has a surprisingly sturdy and young pair of legs. My other observation is that it’s very hard to make killer inanimate objects very scary, but you could go a long ways to overcoming this difficulty by choosing something other than a blue blanket.

SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (1960)
(a.k.a. THE BEAUTY AND THE ROBOT)
Article #1438 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-20-2005
Posting Date: 7-20-2005
Directed by Albert Zugsmith
Featuring Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Mijanou Bardot

A robot chooses the new head of the science department, a woman with an IQ of 268 who just happens to look like Mamie Van Doren. Hilarity ensues.

Let’s face it; with a title like SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE and a director like Albert Zugsmith, you won’t be expecting anything along the lines of CITIZEN KANE. Therefore, I can honestly say that this one didn’t catch me off guard, especially given the fact that I knew the basic premise of the movie ahead of time. It’s bad, but no worse than I thought it would be; in fact, it may be a hair better, though this should be balanced out by the fact that I thought this would be really bad.

Still, bad doesn’t necessarily mean immemorable, and there are several things here I that I won’t forget. Such as –

– Seeing Jackie Coogan engaging in a W. C. Fields impersonation.

– Watching Brigitte Bardot’s sister Mijanou coming on strong to a gangster called Legs Raffertino in order to do scientific research.

– Watching John Carradine do the Charleston with Mamie Van Doren.

– Watching John Carradine do the tango with Mamie Van Doren.

– Watching John Carradine, Louis Nye, Jackie Coogan and Irwin Berke engaging in the same sexy dance moves being used by Mamie Van Doren which ends with a kick line on top of the bar.

– Watching the augmentation of the above kick line by the addition of a monkey.

– Watching Tuesday Weld con Woo Woo Grabowski out of his fraternity pin by telling him she needs to fix her bra strap of else she’ll “fall to pieces”.

The movie also features a full-figure bra saleswoman, a robot called S.A.M. Thinko, a gangster who mistakenly keeps a violin in his violin case, Martin Milner, Conway Twitty and Vampira.

So who gives the best comic performance here? I’d pick Woo Woo Grabowski as the captain of the football team who faints every time Mamie Van Doren is around because he can’t handle the opposite sex. His line to Tuesday Weld is priceless, to wit—”It’s too bad you’re not a guy. Then we could have some fun together.”

Incidentally, IMDB lists this movie at 94 minutes. My print runs 101 minutes. I suspect this is because a seven-minute sequence in the middle of the movie which features several topless dancers in quick succession was added after the fact. The reason I believe this was added after the fact is that only two of the regular cast members appear in this sequence with them, and they’re the two who would seem to me to be the least likely to object to appearing in these scenes; namely, the robot and the monkey.

THE STRANGE DOOR (1951)
Article #1425 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-7-2005
Posting Date: 7-7-2005
Directed by Joseph Pevney
Featuring Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Sally Forrest

A French nobleman tries to force a disolute playboy into marrying his daughter as part of an elaborate revenge scheme.

This movie along with THE BLACK CASTLE form an odd duo in Boris Karloff’s oeuvre; they’re both Gothic melodramas masquerading as horror movies which emphasized Karloff’s presence but consigned him to odd supporting roles. This one is the more interesting of the two, largely due to the presence of Charles Laughton. This would be the only time they would work together after THE OLD DARK HOUSE, and the movie is pretty much handed to Laughton, who chews the scenery with a gusto worthy of Tod Slaughter. In fact, he has all the good lines. Though he’s obviously having a good time, this isn’t one of Laughton’s better performances; some of his moments feel forced, while others feel just strange. Other than that, there’s not much of note here; the horror elements consist of some of the wilder Gothic elements, in particular a scene involving one of those rooms with the moving walls that come together. All in all, this is not a particularly noteworthy moment in the careers of either Karloff or Laughton.

SPOOK LOUDER (1943)
Article #1417 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-30-2005
Posting Date: 6-29-2005
Directed by Del Lord
Featuring Curly Howard, Larry Fine, Moe Howard

Three weight-reducing-machine salesmen agree to be guards for a scientist who fears infiltration by spies.

I would have to say that of the various Three Stooges shorts that I have seen so far for this series, this is my favorite. For one thing, its format (a reporter interviews the professor for the story of how the spies got captured, and the story is told in flashback) has a way of efficiently getting from one gag to the next. It’s also loaded with science fiction and horror touches—the weight reducing machine, a death ray, spies dressed up as skeletons and demons, a scary balloon, a piano that plays by itself, a hairy hand behind a bookcase, a gorilla and a fat ghost. The Stooges had a way of packing a whole movies worth of gags into a seventeen minute short, and this one is great fun. Then there is the central mystery—who is the mysterious pie thrower? This one makes a great lead-in short to any old dark house movie you might wish to see.

SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES (1971)
Article #1416 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-29-2005
Posting Date: 6-28-2005
Directed by Bruce Kessler
Featuring Andrew Prine, George Paulsin, Brenda Scott

A warlock befriends a young man, finds himself involved with the daughter of the D.A., and becomes involved in a narcotics investigation.

The movie opens with Andrew Prine delivering the line, “My name is Simon. I live in a storm drain. When it rains, most people go in. I go out.” Thus begins one of the oddest movies about witchcraft that I’ve seen in a long time. Andrew Prine underplays the title character, and this makes him more human and more sympathetic than he might otherwise have been. In fact, his friendship with Turk, a young male prostitute, is quite touching. The movie is also filled with some genuine intentional humor, and I laughed several times. However, the movie has problems. It’s never really as scary as it hopes to be, and a rather lame monster (played by a red light) doesn’t help. A scene in which Simon performs a ritual with the unwitting help of a gay man is overly stereotypical to be much fun. Some of the scenes are more silly than anything else, including one at a witch’s coven (though the line “Don’t touch me, I’m a sacred object.” is a keeper) and one where Simon talks to the trees. And once Simon and Turk part ways (in a rather sad scene), the movie gets lost in its messy, confusing and unsatisfying plot, and even engages in some 2001-inspired visual pyrotechnics that lead the viewer nowhere. It’s a shame; there’s something unique and inspired about this one at its best. Chalk it up as an interesting failure.

THE SIGN OF FOUR (1932)
Article #1407 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-20-2005
Posting Date: 2-19-2005
Directed by Graham Cutts and Rowland V. Lee
Featuring Arthur Wontner, Isla Bevan, Ian Hunter

Sherlock Holmes must protect a woman from a murderous one-legged man.

As enjoyable as the Rathbone Holmes movies are, they weren’t the be-all and end-all of Holmesian cinema. There’s plenty of room for movies like this one, a fairly faithful take on the classic Doyle novel. It takes quite a while before Holmes actually appears on the scene, but the backstory that makes up the first third of this movie is interesting enough to hold the attention. Wontner does an excellent job as Holmes, capturing both his intelligence and his wit. His conversations with Watson reveal the former, while the latter is wonderfully shown in his scenes with a smug but dim-witted Scotland Yard detective. It’s a bit on the creaky side, the primitive sound and the accents render some of the dialogue unintelligible, and the fight scenes are unfortunately shot in fast motion, but this is a very satisfying Holmes adaptation.

A SHRIEK IN THE NIGHT (1933)
Article #1406 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-19-2005
Posting Date: 6-18-2005
Directed by Albert Ray
Featuring Ginger Rogers, Lyle Talbot, Harvey Clark

When a man falls to his death from his penthouse, police and reporters try to figure out whether it was murder or suicide.

The presence of future Fred Astaire partner Ginger Rogers in the cast makes this forgotten horror one in which there is a certain novelty value, and though I sense that she didn’t feel entirely comfortable in the spunky reporter role, she gives a spirited performance. And even though the horror elements are slight (the murder victims all receive an ominous card heralding their deaths), there are other interesting points to this one. For one thing, it doesn’t take place in an old dark house. The villain is somewhat unexpected. The movie is also filled with some slightly oddball comic relief, though the fact that it features a scared black woman instead of a scared black man doesn’t alleviate the stereotype much. Still, the plot is over-complicated (it takes almost two minutes of dialogue at the end of the movie to explain the plot, and that’s way too long), and the direction is painfully static. The best moment comes near the end, when the meek, cowardly assistant to the inspector faces off against the murderer. It has its moments, but it is a bit of a chore to watch at times.

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR (1942)
Article #1405 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-18-2005
Posting Date: 6-17-2005
Directed by John Rawlins
Featuring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers

Sherlock Holmes is called in by the inner council to track down a saboteur who is using the airwaves to report his acts of sabotage.

At one point in this series I made the comment that I liked the way the Holmes series was handling its wartime propaganda; most of the movies I’d seen from the series at that time had featured nothing more than a terse but stirring handful of comments near the end of the movie. However, these examples came from the later movies of the series. This was the first of the modern-day Sherlock Holmes series at Universal, and it’s fairly steeped in the wartime propaganda. In fact, it takes over the movie to such an extent that the usual charms of a Sherlock Holmes movie are fairly overwhelmed. Furthermore, the closest thing I can find here to qualify as fantastic content is some moody photography, so fans of fantastic cinema have no real reason to check out this one. Overall, I’d have to choose this one as the weakest of the series. And on a side note, I’m certainly glad Basil Rathbone found a better barber for the later movies in the series.

SCROOGE (1936)
Article #1404 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-17-2005
Posting Date: 2-16-2005
Directed by Henry Edwards
Featuring Seymour Hicks, Donald Calthrop, Robert Cochrane

Scrooge is visited by ghosts on Christmas Eve who teach him the true meaning of Christmas.

In some ways, I can’t really fault this adaptation of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”. It has a good deal of atmosphere, and with one exception (Mary Glynne overacts a bit in her scene with Scrooge), the acting is fine. However, on the whole, this adaptation leaves me unsatisfied. For me, the problem is with the middle section of the story involving the ghosts. With the exception of the Ghost of Christmas Present, I find the ghosts to be extremely disappointing; the Ghost of Christmas Future is a shadow on the wall, and the Ghost of Christmas Past is blurry figure of light. It also doesn’t help that the section involving the Ghost of Christmas Past only touches upon one single event in Scrooge’s past life, which seems a lot stingier than is necessary. For me, though, the worst problem is the portrayal of Marley; after a nice buildup to his appearance, I was deeply disappointed that instead of the lockbox-laden figure of the story, we get nothing more than a disembodied voice. In fact, whoever plays Marley isn’t even given a credit. This may not matter to some people, but for me, the visual presence of Marley is very important to the story, and this movie leaves me feeling cheated. The movie isn’t a disaster, but this is a long ways from the best version of the story out there.