The Somnambulists (2006)
Article 5503 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-27-2017
Directed by Kevin Lane
Featuring Tara Goudreau, Calvin Green, Jack Redmond
Country: USA
What it is: Horror short

A young woman who lives with her grandfather is tormented by strange dreams. Her grandfather has an idea of what is plaguing her… and the secret she is keeping hidden.

For the second time, a movie on the “Tomb of Terrors” movie set has caught my attention enough to inspire to me to give it a review, and for a good reason; I actually rather liked this one. Oh, it has its flaws; there are a few clumsy script problems, particularly in the way it handles some of its exposition. But it’s the closest of anything I’ve seen on this set to looking like it was professionally made, it’s only about 22 minutes long, and the concept behind it was novel enough to catch my attention. There’s also a few nods here and there to John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN that I liked. But, perhaps most significantly, this short was bereft of any of the annoyances that have plagued all the other movies on this set. There is no slathering of blood everywhere, no loud pulsating metal music with screeching vocals, no gratuitous sex, vomiting, violence or viscera. None of the characters are engaged in cussathons. And there isn’t a single scene of people running through an underground tunnel with lots of ductwork. In fact, I found myself wondering what it was doing on this set.

Sport Chumpions (1941)
Article 5498 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-12-2017
Directed by Friz Freleng
Featuring the voices of Jim Bannon, Mel Blanc, Robert C. Bruce
Country: USA
What it is: Warner Brothers cartoon

A series of blackout gags are made about sports.

This is pretty much the same thing as the previously reviewed FONEY FABLES except that sports is the theme rather than fairy tales, and though that doesn’t lend itself to fantastic content as well as the earlier one did, it gets by because one of the gags involves a mermaid. It’s also even less involving than FONEY FABLES; the only gag that worked for me involved the types of popular dives used in swimming. There isn’t even a running gag to add to the fun. Granted, I’m not a sports fan, and it might be funnier to someone who was, but I found this one dull. However, there is one point of interest; some of the animation is particularly convincing, especially during the swimming events. This does leave me wondering if a certain amount of rotoscoping was used to make this one.

She’s Alive! Creating the Bride of Frankenstein (1999)
Article 5476 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-1-2017
Directed by David J. Skal
Featuring Joe Dante, Christopher Bram, Scott MacQueen
Country: USA
What it is: Horror movie DVD documentary

The story of the production of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN is told.

If a movie is given special treatment in a DVD release, it will sometimes feature an extra like this – a documentary about the making of the movie. If the movie is old enough, you will probably not get any of the original stars appearing (as most of them are dead); the closest this one gets is to feature the son of Dwight Frye and the daughter of Boris Karloff. Instead, you get commentary from assorted experts on the genre; the most familiar names here are Joe Dante and Clive Barker, but Rick Baker and Gregory W. Mank are also familiar names among fans of horror. The documentary is entertaining if not compelling, and there are usually a few interesting pieces of trivia that come out. Much of the info will be repeated if one also watches the movie with the commentary track. All in all, this is a standard example of this kind of thing.

NOTE For the record, I’m not about to start reviewing every documentary found on DVDs for genre movies; life is a little too short, and I’m doubtful that I would be able to say anything about them that’s much different from what I said about this one. I’m reviewing this one as a representative example. However, if I do find one that is exceptionally interesting, I may review that one as well.

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)
Article 5470 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-6-2017
Directed by Barry Mahon and R. Winer
Featuring Jay Ripley, Dorothy Brown Green, Charlie
Country: USA
What it is: Do your children really deserve this?

Santa is stranded with his sleigh on a shore of the Florida coastline. Kids try to help him. Will they succeed? And what story will Santa tell them?

After having made the blanket statement that MAGIC LAND OF MOTHER GOOSE was the worst movie ever made, I now find I have to contend with this little atrocity. I’ll stand by my statement for now, though I’ll cover a few salient points as to why I made this decision. GOOSE has far and away the better rating on IMDB (3.1 to this one’s 1.3), but I suspect some of that may be because Herschell Gordon Lewis has more of a cult following than either R. Winer or Barry Mahon (and they may be the same person, as far as I know). In this movie’s favor, there is at least some effort made to give us a variety of camera angles and locations. Furthermore, this movie at least makes a cursory attempt to tell some type of story (especially during the “movie within a movie”). On the downside, the acting and the singing is far worse in the framing part of this movie, both in comparison to GOOSE as well as in opposition to the “movie within a movie”, where the acting is a bit better and the singing is a LOT better. Still, I consider GOOSE to be the much lazier movie when all things are considered.

And now let’s discuss the movie’s dirty secret; only about a third of the movie is any way new. Basically, an earlier children’s movie was bracketed with new footage featuring Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny, twenty minutes at the beginning and about ten minutes at the end. So the lion’s share of this movie is the old movie, which is what I’ve been referring to as the “movie within a movie”. And, which old movie, you might ask? That depends on which version of the movie you see. Most prints appear to have THUMBELINA from 1970 as the old movie, but the print I saw today used JACK AND THE BEANSTALK from 1970. Neither movie is very good, but in terms of storytelling, they’re both relatively coherent. And I will give the JACK AND THE BEANSTALK section one piece of credit; they actually try to give us a real giant rather than just a really tall man. That’s not to say the special effects are convincing; I’m just glad they took the effort.

Still, let’s face facts. This movie, like GOOSE, is almost unwatchable. In fact, I don’t think most people will make it through the opening song by the elves; and I will gladly proclaim this moment to be the single worst musical moment in the history of cinema.

The Stone Age (1922)
aka Felix in the Bone Age, Felix in the Stone Age
Article 5469 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-4-2017
Directed by Otto Messmer
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Felix the Cat cartoon

A prehistoric Felix the Cat has to tussle with a caveman who wants to make his hide a gift for his girlfriend, and then he deals with an enraged monster gorilla.

I’ve decided to only include cartoons if they have some element of the fantastic beyond the two cartoon conventions – anthropomorphic animals and comic exaggeration. In this case, the cartoon takes place in prehistoric times. However, as far as I know I can’t say the cartoon makes much use of the concept, but then, I’m not sure the cartoon I saw is complete; it ends without resolution in the middle of the actions with the gorilla. As a Felix the Cat cartoon, it’s also a bit of a disappointment; we get only one Felix “twisting of reality” gag, but if the cartoon wasn’t complete, there may have been others. Who knows – maybe a dinosaur could have popped up in the missing footage as well. At any rate, as it is it’s not a shining example of Felix at his best.

Sherlock Holmes (1916)
Article 5456 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-19-2017
Directed by Arthur Berthelet
Featuring William Gillette, Marjorie Kay, Ernest Maupain
Country: USA
What it is: Detective story

Sherlock Holmes is assigned to recover incriminating letters from a woman whose sister was betrayed by the crown prince. The situation gets complicated when the woman is kidnapped by swindlers, and Professor Moriarty appears on the scene.

At the time this movie fell off my hunt list and was consigned to my “ones that got away” list, it was believed lost. Since then, a copy was discovered in France (where it was released in four parts as a serial) and it was restored and released on DVD. For some reason, I never got around to getting a copy until recently, so I’m glad to finally get a chance to cover it.

William Gillette was a stage actor who gained fame playing Sherlock Holmes. This movie was an adaptation of a specific stage production written by Gillette, with the original stage cast reprising their roles in the movie. It’s basically an extended version of the story “A Scandal in Bohemia” with an elaborate Moriarty plot added to the mix. It was probably easy to convert to a serial, as each episode has a separate story arc while having an arc that extends through the whole work. Gillette was a good Holmes, and some of the Holmesian traditions originated with him, such as the Meerschaum pipe. Some of the elaborations to the story are a bit on the awkward side, but the movie is still entertaining enough, though Watson is mostly consigned to the edges of the story until the final act. However, I find it sorely lacking in the fantastic content that defines my series; the closest it gets is that Moriarty’s secret lair has a couple of small touches of horror to it. It was the only filming of Gillette in the role of Holmes.

SYMPHONIE MECANIQUE (1956)
Article 5441 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-2-2017
Directed by Jean Mitry
No human cast
Country: France
What it is: Short Experimental film

Modern music plays while machines operate.

We’re returning to the world of experimental film again, and I’m not sure this one even really qualifies for the series; though there is an emphasis on technology, I don’t think it ever crosses over into the realm of science fiction. It amounts to watching various machines operate while avant-garde music plays on the soundtrack. Many of these experimental films are interesting to look at, but often I can’t find anything to say about them; this one is an exception. One of the things that struck me was there was a certain similarity to the music and the machines at work; both share the trait of having a rhythm, and that’s what I think this film taps into. It’s actually a bit hypnotic watching these machines at work, and at moments they stop feeling like machines and start feeling organic, a feeling that gets a bit ominous before it’s all over. So maybe the film taps into that same fear of technology that was touched upon by much of the science fiction cinema of the era. I liked this one, but once again, if you don’t care for experimental film, you probably won’t care for this one.

LE SPIE AMONO I FIORI (1966)
aka The Spy Loves Flowers
Article 5437 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-28-2017
Directed by Umberto Lenzi
Featuring Roger Browne, Emma Danieli, Daniele Vargas
Country: Italy / Spain
What it is: Spyghetti

A secret agent who has just recovered a stolen secret weapon is given a follow-up assignment to assassinate three men who know of the weapon. However, it becomes apparent to the secret agent that someone knows of his assignment and is targeting him.

I will give this movie one thing; despite the fact that it borrows a few elements of the Bond films (spy who is great with women, exotic locations, etc), it manages to not feel like an imitation of the Bond films. It takes itself somewhat more seriously, and the tone and music of the film give it a different feel. If the story was a little more creative, it might have been one of the better Eurospy films out there, but it’s a little too predictable at times; for one thing, you won’t be the least bit surprised as to the identity of the primary villain of the piece, a revelation I anticipated a very short ways into the movie. The movie is also very short on fantastic content; there is hardly any gadgetry, and the secret weapon is little more than a Gizmo Maguffin to drive the action. I’m glad they tried for something a little bit different here, but it’s only adequate.

SCIENCE FRICTION (1959)
Article 5430 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-20-2017
Directed by Stan Vanderbeek
No cast as such
Country: USA
What it is: Experimental film

No plot.

We may be in the realm of experimental film again, but at least this one hones close enough to genre content that it’s of more interest than most of the others I’ve seen. That’s because science seems to be the central theme here. This film uses photographs, stills and images and animates them in much the same way Terry Gilliam would later do for “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”; in fact, there are times here where you might think you were watching Gilliam’s work, especially when a hammer runs around smashing any image it feels like smashing. We see images of Lon Chaney Jr. in MAN-MADE MONSTER as well as the Frankenstein monster, and there’s a sequence that looks like a parody of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There are also lots of rockets; in fact, there are lots of images of rocket-like buildings that become rockets during the course of this short, such as the Washington Monument and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. What does it all mean? I can’t say, but it was no doubt inspired by the space race, given the year it was made. I enjoyed this one.

THE SCARECROW (1921)
aka L’epouvantail
Article 5425 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-15-2017
Directed by Wladyslaw Starewicz
Featuring Wladyslaw Starewicz and Nina Star
Country: France
What it is: Animated hallucinations

When a gardener given to drink, gambling, and losing his temper is exhausted by the pranks of some children, he hallucinates that he has to win back his soul from the devil via cards. However, the gardener is also a master cheater…

The introduction to this cartoon features a quote from Starewicz on the subject of his marionettes, who he saw as actors and modeled off of people he knew. That may account for the fact that his animated characters are so brimming with character. Part of the joy of this short is watching the puzzled reactions of the various imps and devils as they seem mystified over how they can be losing the card games so badly. Unlike many of Starewicz’s shorts, this one is partially live action, with about half of the short involving the gardener’s dealings with mischievous kids; Starewicz himself plays the gardener. This short has only a so-so reputation on IMDB, but I’m always charmed by Starewicz’s mastery of his craft, and I enjoyed this one no less than I have the other works I’ve seen of his.