THREE CASES OF MURDER (1955)
Article #543 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-9-2002
Posting date: 2-2-2003

Three different stories are told, all revolving around the subject of murder.

One would think from the title that we would be dealing here with an anthology of whodunits, but in truth, only the second of the three stories (“You Killed Elizabeth”) is a conventional whodunit and it’s the odd man out; the other two stories have significant fantastic premises, the first (“In the Picture”) about people who reside in a painting in a musuem, and the last (“Count Mountdrago”) about a man whose dreams are being invaded. This last one is the centerpiece and has the only big name in the cast, with a fine performance from Orson Welles in the title role; all three of them also feature excellent performances from Alan Badel in various roles. The middle story is the weakest and most predictable, but they’re all enjoyable to some degree, though I don’t really know whether the movie will really inspire me to rewatch it again.

THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1933)
Article #416 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-5-2002
Posting date: 9-28-2002

Police are trying to track down a criminal organization. Evidence points to the criminal mastermind being Dr. Mabuse, who is currently locked up in an insane asylum.

This is a tremendously entertaining crime movie with a few horror elements to it, though it takes a little while for these elements to manifest themselves. Mabuse was one of the first supervillains, and this movie was a sequel to Fritz Lang’s earlier DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER. It also borrows a little from M, as Otto Wernicke is playing Inspector Lohmann, the same character he played in that movie. Wernicke is great, especially during scenes where he questions suspects or investigates crime scenes. Rudolf Klein-Rogge is back as Dr. Mabuse, but without giving too much away, you really don’t see much of him. Once again, I marvel at Lang’s visual splendor and his splendid use of sound, particularly in the opening sequence. At this point, this is the only one of the Mabuse movies I have seen, and I am looking forward to the others.

THE TERRIBLE TURKISH EXECUTIONER (1904)
Article #415 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-4-2002
Posting date: 9-27-2002

A terrible Turkish executioner beheads four men; they put their heads back on and exact revenge.

How terrible is he? Well, he can pull out his great big sword and decapitate four men with one blow, which is certainly efficient, and perhaps horrific enough for him to earn the epithet “terrible.” However, since the men don’t die (which is the point of an execution, after all), one might argue that this executioner was totally ineffectual, hence he did a terrible job, thereby making him in another sense of the word, “terrible.” I would therefore conclude that the executioner in question is indeed “terrible” in every sense of the word. And now that I have spent several minutes harping on the pun in the title, I feel the need to point out that the movie is a three-minute Melies short, and it takes less time to watch it than it does to write this. Isn’t that just a little bit pathetic of me, actually?

TARZAN, THE APE MAN (1932)
Article #413 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-2-2002
Posting date: 9-25-2002

Explorers search for the elephants’ graveyard in Africa, and encounter an ape man by the name of Tarzan.

There were Tarzan movies before this one, but this was the first one with Johnny Weissmuller in the role, and he does a fantastic job with a character who is equally savage, fun-loving, and slightly befuddled (he’s excellent trying to figure out what Jane is talking about). This movie sets some of the scenarios that would become fairly frequent in the immediate sequels, but they’re still pretty entertaining. This is the movie where an elephant carries Tarzan around with his head in his mouth; certainly one of the most jaw-dropping scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. The ending is truly nightmarish and spectacular, and this is indeed one of the Tarzan movies that really does belong in the category of fantastic movies. Eventually, Tarzan (and the whole series) would become domesticated and lose steam, but here it’s in its prime. Truly worth catching.

TARZAN ESCAPES (1936)
Article #412 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-1-2002
Posting date: 9-24-2002

A hunter agrees to join a safari to find Tarzan because he hopes to capture him and put him on display.

The follow-up to TARZAN AND HIS MATE was made after the Hays office came into effect, and the changes are noticeable; Maureen O’Sullivan’s costume is much more modest this time around, and the brutal violence is toned down considerably from the previous outing. Still, I suspect there was a real chemistry between O’Sullivan and Johnny Weissmueller; their scenes together are as playful as ever, and they do look like they’re having a lot of fun. There is still some savagery, but a lot of it has been replaced by cuteness; the treehouse is one example, the mugging of comic relief Herbert Mundin is another. It’s still quite entertaining, though, with some particularly nice scenes involving Tarzan’s escape from a metal cage with the help of Cheetah and a pair of elephants, and a trek through a sulfurous cave that brings the movie a little closer to the horror genre than other movies of the series. There’s also a good performance from Darby Jones, who would later become known for playing Carre-Four in I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE.

Incidentally, this is the Tarzan movie that turned the word “Oongawa” into the all-purpose Tarzan word.

TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934)
Article #411 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-30-2002
Posting date: 9-23-2002

Ivory hunters try to find the elephants’ graveyard so they can make a fortune off of the tusks, but run into resistance from Tarzan, despite the fact that one of them is an old boyfriend of Jane’s.

If you’ve ever wondered why the Hays office came into being, this movie provides one of the examples of just how much sex and violence Hollywood was putting into their product at the time. This, like the first Tarzan movie, has quite a bit of savage violence, and it’s pretty hard at times to watch the scenes involving wounded and hurt animals; I hope they were just well-trained actors, but this was long before the days when animals were given any protection in the making of movies. Also, Maureen O’Sullivan flashes an amazing amount of skin here; though her nude swim was performed by a double, her regular costume leaves very little to the imagination. I actually wonder how she survives in the jungle; it seems like she gets attacked by a wild animal every ten minutes or so; for that matter, Cheetah has a couple of scenes where he’s at risk, too, not to mention losing his mother in a somewhat shocking scene.

Of course, there’s still the question as to whether the Tarzan movies belong to this series, but since the book I’m using as a source includes them, so will I; it’s certainly more genre than NIGHT UNTO NIGHT, for example. Yes, they’re less fantasies than exotic adventure stories, but I’ve heard it said that Africa bears little real resemblance to the one seen in these movies, so fantasy may be an appropriate category; at any rate, there’s so many Tarzan movies out there that it’s bound to add several more entries to the Musings.

TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE (1959)
Article #384 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-3-2002
Posting date: 8-27-2002

Invaders from another world plan to use the earth as a grazing ground for their food supply, but one of their members turns against them and tries to save the earth.

This movie has a legendarily bad reputation, and for the most part, it deserves it. From the boneheaded dialogue to the poor-to-awful acting, from the terrible special effects to the ludicrous fake beards, there is a lot here to inspire derision and laughter. Yet, somehow, I never quite find myself laughing, despite the frequent times this movie fumbles the ball. Maybe it’s because I feel it has a pretty solid story underneath. Also, there are moments where the direction feels unusually solid for a movie this cheap; compare it with the works of Larry Buchanan, and this amateur movie shows a great deal of professional skill. In other words, I’ve seen movies that are hopelessly bad; this one is bad, but not hopelessly. Rewrite the dialogue, get some better actors, throw a little more money into it (okay, throw a lot more money into it), and I think you might have come up with some fairly solid SF thriller entertainment; not great, mind you, but enjoyable.

People seem to think I’m a little crazy to defend this movie, and maybe I am. Still, if I were given the task to take one of the legendarily bad science fiction movies that have been made and remake it in an effort to redeem it with the only rule that I had to leave the basic story intact, this would be the one I would pick.

THE TWONKY (1953)
Article #330 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-8-2002
Posting date: 6-25-2002

A man discovers his new television has unusual powers and its own agenda.

This unusual comedy is based on a short story by Henry Kuttner; I’ve not read the short story involved, but I doubt that the movie hones too closely to it. Hans Conreid is always fun to watch, and there are some amusing moments, but I don’t feel it really explores some of the interesting ideas it promises; after a while too many of the gags seem arbitrary and forced, and the ending has little to do with satire and everything to do with slapstick. Still, there is something quite entertaining about watching this television hobble around the house. This one was directed by Arch Oboler, who also wrote the script.

A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (1945)
Article #326 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-4-2002
Posting date: 6-21-2002

Aladdin falls in love with the daughter of a sultan and attempts to win her heart with the help of a genie named Babs.

Not a whole lot here; just a silly musical comic retelling of the Aladdin story from the Arabian Nights, with Cornel Wilde, Adele Jergens and Evelyn Keyes. Phil Silvers plays Aladdin’s thieving buddy Abdullah, who uses modern slang and generally creates mischief. Rex Ingram does something of a reprisal of his djinni role in THIEF OF BAGDAD, playing a giant in this one. I found myself mildly entertained, with Phil Silvers being quite amusing in a role that could have been really annoying. The ending, which involves Silvers doing an imitation of Frank Sinatra, is a truly bizarre moment.

THIRTEEN WOMEN (1932)
Article #313 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-22-2002
Posting date: 6-8-2002

Members of a school sorority find themselves dying in strange ways as a result of predictions by a mystic.

Though they never once use the word in the movie, hypnotism is the plot device here, as Myrna Loy plays another one of her evil Orientals (remember MASK OF FU MANCHU?) who is using hypnotism to bring about the deaths of those who shamed her in school because of her status as a half-breed. It’s all kind of silly, and the movie itself lets the premise slide a little when she employs much more conventional means to try to murder the son of one of the sorority members (Irene Dunne, who rarely dabbled in horror). At sixty minutes or so, it holds the attention, but I’m not sure it all really works, though it does have an interesting ending.