200 MOTELS (1971)
Article 5111 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-17-2016
Directed by Tony Palmer and Frank Zappa
Featuring Mark Volman, Howard Kaylan, Ian Underwood
Country: USA
What it is: Frank Zappa’s idea of a concert film…maybe

The members of a rock group on tour in the fake town of Centerville worry about getting beer, getting paid and getting laid.

The best way I think of to prepare yourself for this movie is simple; just listen to some of Frank Zappa’s music when he was head of The Mothers of Invention. This movie is the visual equivalent of the jagged, bizarre montage music of the band, and on that level, nothing in the movie really surprises me; it was as freakishly non-linear and visually trippy as I thought it would be. I suspect that one’s reaction to it will be somewhat equivalent to one’s reaction to Zappa’s music in the first place. I admire Zappa quite a bit; he’s very true to his distinct musical vision, and he hovered in a strange area between classical, jazz, rock and experimental music that no one else inhabited. Still, I mostly enjoy his work in smaller doses; this movie is a bit much to take in one sitting. The movie is supposedly about how touring can make you crazy, and its non-realistic approach is its primary fantastic content, though any movie that features a man playing a vacuum cleaner is in a world all its own. Zappa wanted a number of famous people for the movie (including Christopher Lee, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Pete Townshend, John Lennon and others), and he did manage to get a few names in the cast; Theodore Bikel comes the closest to actually playing a coherent role of sorts, Keith Moon plays a hot nun, and Ringo Starr plays Larry the Dwarf who plays Frank Zappa. Zappa himself appears, but has no dialogue and is mostly seen either playing instruments or conducting the orchestra. The movie is full of bizarre visual tricks, montage effects, and even has an animated Dental Hygiene film in the middle. There’s no plot.

TRANSYLVANIA 6-5000 (1985)
Article 5079 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-13-2016
Directed by Rudy De Luca
Featuring Jeff Goldblum, Joseph Bologna, Ed Begley Jr.
Country: USA
What it is: Monster comedy

Two tabloid reporters are sent to Transylvania to investigate a video that claims that Frankenstein is on the loose in the area.

Well, I like the familiar faces in the cast; outside of those listed above, it features Carol Kane, Jeffrey Jones, John Byner, Geena Davis, Michael Richards and Norman Fell. I also like the way the movie reverses one old monster movie cliche by having the people at the inn, upon hearing the name of Frankenstein, break out in laughter. And I also like the concept that Transylvanians might try making money by developing a theme hotel based on their horror reputation. But that’s about it for what is mostly a depressing and ineffectual horror comedy that often spins its wheels with bad one-liners, bizarre running jokes and only the thinnest wisp of a story. The actors are in there giving it their best shot, but their comic ammunition is a series of blanks. The only thing that steals the movie is Geena Davis’s costume, and that’s probably all you’ll remember about it.

TIGHTROPE (1984)
Article 5075 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-9-2016
Directed by Richard Tuggle
Featuring Clint Eastwood, Genevieve Bujold, Dan Hedaya
Country: USA
What it is: Crime thriller

A New Orleans cop, divorced with two children, finds himself investigating killings caused by a serial killer with a taste for kinky sex…a taste that the cop shares, and which the killer knows about…

This is an interesting movie that hovers somewhere between a slasher film, a crime movie, and a character study. Oddly enough, the first half of the movie mostly emphasizes the last of those genres, drawing parallels between the serial killer and the cop and giving Clint Eastwood a chance to forge a complex and interesting character as he dabbles in the world of kinky sex. This half of the movie is pretty intriguing, and it left me wondering just where it was going to go with this theme. In truth, I ended up being a little disappointed that the second half reminds itself that it is a crime movie, and it starts going exactly where you’d expect a crime movie of this sort to go; with two children and a new girlfriend as characters, to whom do you expect the serial killer is eventually going to turn his attentions? It even begins dabbling in slasher cliches before it’s all over. So I have to admit to being a bit disappointed by the movie as a whole, but it is still redeemed by an excellent performance by Eastwood as well as a good one by Bujold, and, taken as a crime film, it is fairly exciting and suspenseful, and I have to admit I enjoyed it.

TERROR (1978)
Article 5074 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-8-2016
Directed by Norman J. Warren
Featuring John Nolan, Carolyn Courage, James Aubrey
Country: UK
What it is: A witch’s very confusing curse

People associated with a film crew that made a movie about the burning of a witch are dying off in horrible ways. Is it the witch’s curse or something else?

I’ve encountered the work of Norman J. Warren before, and I can honestly say that nothing I’ve seen of his work up to this point has done much to impress me. Here, however, I get a few hints of creativity and cleverness; I was especially impressed with a sequence in which a scene of car lights in the distance recalls an earlier scenes of villagers with torches in the distance. However, I must confess that the screenplay here is really a mixed bag. Though I like the way it does some interesting things in the opening “villagers burning the witch” sequence, once the action opens into the present day, the movie seems to go off half-cocked in several directions at once. The movie features several horrible deaths, many of which simply don’t make any sense within the given plot. From what I gather from a user comment on IMDB, this movie was heavily influenced by SUSPIRIA, but that movie (confusing as it is) seems quite focused in comparison to this one, and whatever talents or style Warren possesses, he’s definitely no Dario Argento. The end result is a bloody and confusing head-scratcher. Still, I do have to say of the Warren films I’ve seen to date, this is the one I like the best.

TELEFON (1977)
Article 5071 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-4-2016
Directed by Don Siegel
Featuring Charles Bronson, Lee Remick, Donald Pleasence
Country: USA
What it is: Spy thriller

A Russian provocateur seeking to start a war between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. comes to America and begins activating sleeper agents (people unaware that they are under post-hypnotic suggestion) to attack military installations. The KGB send their own agent to stop the provocateur before an international incident erupts.

One of the things I’ve discovered over the years I’ve worked on this project is that I’m a sucker for a spy movie, though I should specify that my affection is much more for the more serious, straightforward examples rather than the fanciful superspy antics attached to James Bond movies and their imitators. I noticed that I even tend to like the ones that don’t have much of a reputation, such as this one. The use of hypnosis is the main fantastic content here (the sleepers are activated to perform their sabotage via coded telephone messages), though the CIA’s use of a computer that can respond to a human voice (a very minor story element) pushes it into science fiction territory. Charles Bronson gives a stolid performance as the KGB agent sent to catch the villain (played by Donald Pleasence), but Lee Remick’s perky fellow agent is so jarring in this context that she seems to be in a different movie. The movie takes a while to really get going, and some of the plot elements don’t make a lot of sense, but I have to admit that I enjoyed it.

LE TEMPLE DE L’ELEPHANT BLANC (1964)
aka Temple of the White Elephant, Sandok, il Maciste della giungla
Article 5053 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-17-2016
Directed by Umberto Lenzi
Featuring Sean Flynn, Marie Versini, Alessandro Panaro
Country: Italy / France
What it is: Historical action movie

When the daughter of a Viceroy is captured by a dangerous Indian sect that worships a white elephant, a lancer concocts a plan to infiltrate the cult’s temple and free the daughter.

Is that Maciste’s name I see in the Italian title? Yes, it is, but in this case, it’s a descriptive word; I’ve seen the title translated as SANDOK, GIANT OF THE JUNGLE. Furthermore, Sandok, though having a great deal the strength and wearing a loincloth, isn’t quite a sword-and-sandal hero; furthermore, he’s a secondary character in the action. The copy I found of this one was in French without English subtitles, but the plot description I found on IMDB gave me enough info to scope out the plot. There are a few fantastic touches here and there; one of the characters is under hypnosis, Sandok does demonstrate a certain amount of “super-strength” in one scene (he breaks some chains and bends the bars back), and the action makes me wonder whether the white elephant being worshipped might actually have greater than average powers, though that is fairly ambiguous since I couldn’t understand the dialogue. The movie itself seems to be pretty standard action fare; I didn’t see anything that really stood out or made it special.

TWIRLIGIG (1952)
Article 5047 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-12-2016
Directed by Norman McLaren
No cast
Country: Canada
What it is: Abstract animation

A little red squiggle mutates and gyrates in front of several planes of abstract figures.

Yes, it’s more abstract animation that gets considered for this project by dint of its being non-realistic. This one was also created in 3D, but I lack the necessary equipment to watch it in such. However, even in 2D, the planes of action seems fairly cleanly delineated, so I can rather sense how it might look. This one doesn’t appear to have been drawn to fit a piece of music; rather, it appears the music was composed to complement the visuals here. There’s a light-hearted and playful spirit to this one, with the squiggle even taking on enough anthropomorphic design to tip its hat to you. At only about three and a half minutes, it doesn’t strain your patience, either. This one was rather enjoyable.

2069 A.D. (1969)
aka 2069 A.D. – A Sensation Odyssey
Article 5032 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-28-2015
Directed by Sam Kopetzky
Featuring Harvey Shain, Barbara Lynn, Sharon Matt
Country: USA
What it is: Compendium of human friction experiments

In the year 2319, a man guilty of violence is punished by being sent back into time to learn about love and violence in past ages in the hope it will cure him. He is given a time ring that will allow him to travel through the ages; it also has the power to remove extraneous clothing with the snap of a finger. He goes back in time and participates in human friction experiments.

Here’s another one that ended up on my “ones that got away” list but which I was finally able to see, though since the movie originally ran seventy-five minutes and the copy I saw ran only one hour, I’d say there’s some footage missing. The opening where the man is sentenced actually takes itself seriously enough that I found myself wondering if the movie was actually going to have something to say other than to be a string of human friction experiments (please note that this is a euphemism). Alas, when the ring inexplicably changes hands after the first experiment, it becomes clear that nothing beyond the obvious is going to be explored. After a while I found myself very annoyed at the scenes where people act confused when they’ve traveled through time instead of just going ahead and getting engaged in the next experiment.

Yes, I’ve groused before at having to watch sexploitation as part of my series (including 2069 – A SEX ODYSSEY, with which this movie shouldn’t be confused), and it’s not really because I’m prudish or above the pleasures of this type of movie. It’s more due to the fact that I rarely know how to evaluate them or what to write about them. About the only way I could think of rating them is by using the number of times it encourages the viewer to play the home version of the game, but who wants a tally of that? And, on a side note, the year of 2069 is never visited.

THE THIRD EYE (1966)
aka Il terzo occhio
Article 4955 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-12-2015
Directed by Mino Guerrini
Featuring Franco Nero, Gioia Pascal, Erika Blanc
Country: Italy
What it is: Thriller

After both his fiancee and his mother die on the same day (both are homicides that look like accidents), a count goes crazy and begins picking up and killing women.

This effective little Italian thriller doesn’t fit in easily with the standard Italian fantastic genres of the era, though describing it as a modern-day version of a period gothic thriller crossed with a giallo gets us within the ballpark. It could also be described as a cross between PSYCHO and one of those Vincent Price movies where he’s obsessed with a dead wife. It’s certainly fairly bloody for its time, and it plays as a straightforward horror movie enough that the occasional arty touches don’t detract from it. Franco Nero gives an excellent performance, though I’m not sure if the script is consistent in the way it portrays his character’s madness; at times he seems blindly delusional, but at other times (especially at the end of the movie), we’re not sure exactly how delusional he is. Still, overall this is a very effective horror thriller, and it’s one we’re never sure exactly how it’s all going to come out in the end. It was apparently remade by Joe D’Amato as BUIO OMEGA.

IL TUNNEL SOTTO IL MONDO (1969)
aka Tunnel Under the World
Article 4938 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-25-2015
Directed by Luigi Cozzi
Featuring Alberto Moro, Bruno Salviero, Anna Mantovani
Country: Italy
What it is: Art film science fiction

A man finds himself living the same day three days in a row and finds the world oddly changed.

I was a little bit surprised to see a well-known science fiction author credited as the source of the original story of this one, and I wondered if the story was as strange and fractured as this movie was. A quick check at Wikipedia gave me the impression that Frederik Pohl’s original story was more or less coherent, and therefore the arty disconnected feel of the movie was more the result of director Luigi Cozzi than a part of the original story. This in itself was a surprise; I was familiar with Cozzi from such movies as STARCRASH and CONTAMINATION, and those movies are light-years away from the art-film approach of this movie. From what I can tell, the script takes key scenes from the story and presents them in a disconnected, hard-to-follow fashion; plot points and clear revelations are hidden if they’re there at all. Actually, I found myself considering the similarity of this movie to those old silent shorts that would take well-known novels and fairy tales and present selected scenes as tableaux, only I’m not sure if all of the scenes in this movie have any relation to the story. Certain individual moments of the movie work well enough; I particularly liked the opening sequences which loop back to the same events only with minor variations, and a scene involving a man having a conversation with a computer that is trying to learn about God. Most of the rest of the movie was baffling; though I can see how some of the scenes fit in with the plot description I read of the original story, others just left me scratching my head, such as the scenes involving a couple of murderous men in Santa suits. As with other movies of this sort, my evaluation is based more on feel than what I was able to understand, and at this point it appears to be a very mixed bag to me. However, it did intrigue me more than Cozzi’s other movies have.