THREE ON A MEATHOOK (1973)
Article 4935 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-22-2015
Directed by William Girdler
Featuring Charles Kissinger, James Carroll Pickett, Sherry Steiner
Country: USA
What it is: Serial killer concoction

A young man living on a farm has been told by his father that he is responsible for several killings of women, though he has no memory of it. What is the truth behind it all?

Like PSYCHO, DERANGED and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, this is another cinematic stab at the Ed Gein story. I found this one on YouTube, and the copy I saw looked like a transfer from VHS that’s a little ways down the dupe line, and oddly enough, this made the viewing experience seem to be a little more effective; somehow, I think a pristine copy would have made the flaws more blatant. It’s not that the flaws aren’t already fairly apparent; most of the movie lifts its structure from PSYCHO (this is especially noticeable towards the end of the movie), and when it doesn’t lift from PSYCHO, it putters around without an idea of where to go. Two things that feel really out of place in a horror movie are to give its character an inspirational theme song and to have scenes of typical early-seventies “romantic frolicking through the fields”. Still, the movie does have a couple of surprises up its sleeve, which is more than I expected from it. It’s the weakest of the Ed Gein movies I’ve seen to date, but when you consider its competition, that’s not as damning a statement as it might seem. And I will have to give credit to actor James Carroll Pickett; he does manage to make you care about his character.

THREE ORPHAN KITTENS (1935)
Article 4934 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-21-2015
Directed by David Hand
Featuring the voice of Lillian Randolph
Country: USA
What it is: Disney Silly Symphony

Three kittens, abandoned in a snowstorm, take refuge through an open window into a house, and interact with the environment there.

Let’s take care of the fantastic content first. By dint of its use of talking and/or anthropomorphic animals, the vast majority of cartoons qualify for fantastic content on those grounds alone. This is one of the exceptions; the three kittens who are the main characters of this cartoon act like real kittens rather than anthropomorphized versions of them. Of course, that’s where the real appeal of this cartoon lies; it’s the superb animation of three kittens who are acting like kittens that gives the charm to this piece of animated whimsy. The fantastic content mostly manifests itself in the presence of certain animated exaggerations, such as the fact that when a kitten has his head stuck in a bottle, the head is somewhat shaped like the bottle, or in a scene where a kitten appears to be spanked by the hammers of a piano. Still, this is one of the more realistic of the Silly Symphonies. All in all, there’s not much of a story; outside of the uncertainty as to how the kittens will be greeted when their presence within the house is known, it’s mostly just a series of cute setpieces. This one is quite entertaining.

THOSE BEAUTIFUL DAMES (1934)
Article 4931 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-18-2015
Directed by Friz Freleng
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Cartoon

A poor girl trudges to her poverty-stricken home on a snowy night and is unable to keep the fire lit. Then, after she falls asleep, a troupe of toys show up, redecorate the home, and throw the girl a party.

Here’s another early Warner Brothers effort; this was before they developed a solid coterie of cartoon stars. They were content to make cartoons that mostly served to highlight chosen songs for which the company had the rights. It’s certainly more whimsical than funny, though it opens poignantly by emphasizing the girl’s poverty, then engages in some mild whimsy as the toys redecorate, and then does a couple of renditions of the title song. Like many of the cartoons from the studio during this time, it’s passable but uninspired.

THOR AND THE AMAZON WOMEN (1963)
aka Le gladiatrici
Article 4922 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-8-2015
Directed by Antonio Leonviola
Featuring Susy Andersen, Joe Robinson, Harry Baird
Country: Italy / Yugoslavia
What it is: Sword and Sandal

Musclemen Thor takes on the Amazons and their evil queen.

There’s a conceptual problem at work in this movie. Consider these two facts: 1) Thor’s enemies are the Amazon warriors, and 2) Thor is too much of a gentleman to fight women. I’m sure you see the central problem here. Maybe that’s why Thor is used so sparingly during this movie; he barely appears in the first half of the movie at all. Maybe that’s why the evil queen, despite the fact that she is convinced of the superiority of women to men in all regards, maintains a private coterie of (male) guards for herself; after all, Thor has to fight someone. Most of the movie concentrates on the inner dealings of the female prisoners who must fight in the arena for their freedom, known as the gladiatresses (a word I didn’t even knew existed). The movie itself looks rather chintzy, and there aren’t even many familiar sword and sandal faces here. Though a great deal of talk is made about Thor’s great strength, the only two manifestations of it are in his one direct physical altercation with the Amazons, a glorified version of tug-of-war, and a flashback sequence in which a man defeats a big ape in combat, which looks like it’s stock footage from something else. The movie is also rather sexist; it takes the stance that leadership by women is utter presumption. In order to back up this stance, it even makes the unexpected move of killing off a specific character (the only real surprise in the movie) for the sole purpose of making sure that the character who ends up on the throne at the end is a male. This is not the genre’s finest hour.

TARZAN’S GREATEST ADVENTURE (1959)
Article 4921 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-7-2015
Directed by John Guillermin
Featuring Gordon Scott, Anthony Quayle, Sara Shane
Country: USA
What it is: Tarzan movie

A group of criminals have been raiding villages in Africa for supplies that will help them reach a diamond mine. Tarzan vows to bring the criminals to justice, and discovers that their leader is an old enemy of his.

I’m not quite sure if I’d call this his “Greatest Adventure”, but if I were to make a list of the best ones I’ve seen, this one would be in the running. It’s an impressive entry in the series. There are only seven significant characters in the story, but they’re all uncommonly well-developed and well acted. Tarzan’s savagery is on display here; in fact, one of the themes of the movie is that Tarzan may be as motivated by personal revenge as he is by justice in his obsession with facing off with the main villain of the piece. The cast is excellent, and also includes Niall MacGinnis and a pre-Bond Sean Connery. The movie is filmed on location in Kenya, and this adds a great deal of flavor to the production. It’s one of the more adult entries in the Tarzan canon, but it’s also one of the most problematic for this series, as it’s one of the slimmest in terms of fantastic content; outside of the marginal fantasy content of Tarzan’s existence, there’s nothing. Still, this one is intense and gripping, and a short “Tarzan takes a swim” sequence is its sole nod to cuteness. This one is recommended.

TARZAN AND THE VALLEY OF GOLD (1966)
Article 4918 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-4-2015
Directed by Robert Day
Featuring Mike Henry, David Opatoshu, Manuel Padilla, Jr.
Country: USA / Switzerland
What it is: Tarzan movie

When a boy emerges from the jungle who is believed to be the resident of hidden tribe with a valley full of gold, a crimelord kidnaps him in order to get the gold for himself. However, Tarzan may put a stop to his scheme…

Someone in charge of this movie decided that the Tarzan formula needed to be updated a little. The solution? How about adding some James Bond touches to the mix? Fortunately, the movie only emphasizes this approach during the first twenty minutes or so; things return to normal once Tarzan is back in his loincloth and in the jungle. The fantastic content is pretty marginal; there’s some gadgetry on hand (the main villain’s hobby is designing miniature booby traps) and we have one of those hidden civilizations that pop up in these jungle movies from time to time. The movie is adequate, but no better than that; the pace is rather sluggish and the action sequences aren’t particularly well staged. Mike Henry has a good physique for Tarzan, but as a character in this movie, Tarzan is fairly one-dimensional. There’s quite a bit of animal footage, but even Dinky the chimp doesn’t register much in the way of presence. All in all, the series was getting pretty tired by this point. Still, this is the only movie I’ve seen where a man is killed by a giant cola bottle.

TERROR OF ROME AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1964)
aka Maciste, gladiatore di Sparte, Maciste: Spartan Gladiator
Article 4908 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-23-2015
Directed by Mario Caiano
Featuring Mark Forest, Marilu Tolo, Elisabetta Fanti
Country: Italy / France
What it is: Sword and Sandal, Historical Style

A Spartan gladiator who is a favorite at the court of Rome becomes enamored with a beautiful Christian woman. When her sect is arrested as enemies of the Roman state, the gladiator tries to rescue them so they can escape to a safe land, but he risks the anger of Caesar.

Which son of Hercules is it this time? The original title would you lead you to believe it’s Maciste, but that name was a little obscure for the English language version, so it was changed to Poseidon. Being a historical story rather than a mythological one, it’s lighter on the fantastic content, but there are a few moments where the hero might be construed to have super-strength (one of which may be the result of a miracle brought about by his prayer to God), and at one point he fights a big ape that, as far as I can tell, isn’t a gorilla, a chimpanzee, or an orangutan; I don’t know if this is a fictional ape or the result of a poorly designed costume. Those hoping for an evil queen in this one will be disappointed; all female characters are on the side of good. Storywise, it’s a fairly solid entry into this over-crowded sub-genre of fantastic cinema, but it’s also a bit on the dull side. It even has the wisdom to use the comic-relief character sparingly, though the food-obsessed Caesar may be one himself. All in all, this is an acceptable example of a sword and sandal movie.

TRON (1982)
Article 4895 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-9-2015
Directed by Steven Lisberger
Featuring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner
Country: USA
What it is: Good vs. Evil in VideoGameLand

A hacker intent on finding proof that his work was pirated by an executive at a corporation joins forces with the author of a security program in order to get that evidence, and to break the iron hold a Master Control Program has over the corporation’s computer system.

The primary appeal of this movie is visual; the virtual world of the inside of a computer system in which much of the action takes place makes for some marvelous eye candy. Not that there’s anything wrong with the acting, which is good (my favorite performance here is from David Warner, who excels in villainous roles); it’s just that the type of movie it is doesn’t really require much from the actors other than a certain level of competence. The story has a few problems, largely because its reliance on trying to create visual manifestations of abstract and non-physical concepts occasionally leaves us in a confused muddle; there are moments where it’s rather difficult to tell what’s going on. There are touches that I really like about the movie; the use of color coding to help us separate the good guys from the bad guys is well done, as is the design for David Warner’s desk with a built-in computer in its jet-black top. Fortunately, for the most part, the eye candy is enough to hold the interest here, and for what it’s worth, I like the movie a lot more than I like the video-game it inevitably spawned.

THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974)
Article 4894 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-8-2015
Directed by Tobe Hooper
Featuring Marilyn Burns, Edwin Neal, Allen Danziger
Country: USA
What it is: A brutal nightmare

After encountering a psychotic hitchhiker, a group of friends run short of gas and visit an isolated home in the hope of buying some. They chose the wrong house to visit…

Due to the exploitative title and the movie’s reputation, I could barely watch the screen the first time I saw this one. Even then, I could appreciate that this was one of the most intense and harrowing horror films I’ve encountered. It isn’t the blood and gore that’s extreme (for the subject matter, it’s actually pretty light on that content); it’s the jarring use of sound, the plethora of visual images that project a sense of sickness, decay and decrepitude even when you’re not sure what you’re looking at, the utter sense of hopelessness and dread, and the fact that when the murders do occur, you’re not quite prepared for them. Hooper makes good use of the opening thirty minutes of the movie; though not much is happening (save the incident with the hitchhiker), he uses the time to build the needed sense of apprehension, especially through the use of a continuing radio report about a body-snatching at a graveyard. Reportedly, the actual shoot of the movie was grueling and stress-inducing, and that sense comes across in the finished product. The movie does live up to its reputation, but it’s always a bit exhausting to actually watch it.

THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE (1935)
Article 4840 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-3-2015
Directed by Wilfred Jackson
Featuring the voices of Eddie Holden and Ned Norton
Country: USA
What it is: Disney Silly Symphony

Max Hare and Toby Tortoise have a footrace. Max has the obvious advantage, but will his cockiness be his undoing?

Here’s another of Disney’s Silly Symphonies, and, like THE THREE LITTLE PIGS, it’s based on a fairy tale with a moral. Actually, I find this one somewhat more amusing than that one; there’s more funny moments and gags here. Granted, part of the reason for that is that the story of the Tortoise and the Hare is extremely short (you could tell the whole story in three sentences), and it was necessary to add quite a bit to fill out a nine-minute cartoon. The cartoon even enhances the moral lesson a bit by making the hare cocky and rude. It’s somewhat fitting that his downfall is not due to taking a nap (which isn’t a visually interesting event in a cartoon), but in getting caught up in trying to impress a gaggle of girl bunnies with his antics. The animation is top-notch as usual, and I can’t really fault the cartoon. However, unlike my favorites from Warner Brothers or the Fleischers, it doesn’t really call me back for a second viewing. Maybe that’s the reason that when it comes to the shorts, I tend to prefer some of the other studios.