UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE (1959)
(a.k.a. TEMPI DURI PER I VAMPIRE [HARD TIMES FOR VAMPIRES])
Article #1339 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-13-2004
Posting Date: 4-12-2005
Directed by Steno
Featuring Renato Rascel, Sylva Koscina, Christopher Lee

After his castle has been burnt to the ground, Baron Roderigo the vampire has his body shipped to his only remaining relative; a nephew in Italy. Unfortunately, the nephew has been forced to sell his castle to pay off his debts, and now works as a bellboy at the hotel to which it was converted.

At this point, I don’t think I’ve had the experience of covering an Italian horror comedy, so this movie presents something in the way of novelty value. It’s all pretty silly, and it plays fast and loose with vampire lore, even changing it from one moment to the next depending on which character is the vampire. Christopher Lee is the uncle, but apparently his voice was dubbed by another actor for the U.S. version of the movie. They did manage to find someone who sounded a little like him, though I don’t know why the vampires speak through an echo box half of the time. Renato Rascel is the main comic character, and becomes a vampire himself during the proceedings, and manages to have one of the busiest nights of any vampire I’ve seen. The movie is sporadically funny; the funniest scene involves Rascel desperately trying to talk a rooster into crowing.

UNNATURAL…THE FRUIT OF EVIL (1952)
(a.k.a. ALRAUNE)
Article #1293 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-28-2004
Posting Date: 2-25-2005
Directed by Arthur Maria Rabenault
Featuring Hildegard Knef, Erich von Stroheim, Karlheinz Bohm

Several men fall in love with a woman who is believed to be the daughter of a noted professor, though in truth he created her through a process of artificial insemination.

It’s a bit of a shame that this version of the story is the easiest one to find; it’s okay, but it’s somewhat uninspired and can’t hold a candle to the 1928 version with Paul Wegener and Brigitte Helm. On the plus side, it has Erich von Stroheim in the role of the professor, and he’s always fun to watch. It also has some nice moments here and there, and the ending (which is very different from, though more conventional than the one in the Helm/Wegener version) is good. Still, it comes across for the most part as a rather uninvolving soap opera, and has none of the visual splendor of that earlier version. The dubbing doesn’t help much, either, and my somewhat ragged print (which is short of the running time by 13 minutes) is a definite minus. If you can find it, opt for the 1928 version.

UNKNOWN ISLAND (1948)
Article #1292 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-27-2004
Posting Date: 2-24-2005
Directed by Jack Bernhard
Featuring Virginia Grey, Philip Reed, Richard Denning

Several adventurers journey to an island reputed to have living dinosaurs on it.

PRC may have been one of the cheapest of the Poverty Row studios, but they did make their share of fairly decent genre flicks that managed to work within the budget limitations. However, I don’t think an epic dinosaur adventure movie (in color) really lay within their means, and as you might expect, the dinosaurs are singularly lame. The brontosauruses have the movement range of one of those bobbing birds (though the brontos move much slower), and the Tyrannosaurs are obviously men in uncomfortable suits who move so slowly that Kharis the mummy could outrun them; the most impressive move I could see from one of these beasts was their ability to fall down, and that’s not a compliment. My print wasn’t really good enough for me to tell if the puppets were slurpasaurs or vice versa, but it doesn’t really matter. The most palpable horror in the movie is a guy in a somewhat doctored gorilla outfit, and it doesn’t speak well for the movie to say that I didn’t realize he was a giant monster until he goes one on one with one of the Tyrannosaurs late in the movie. These aren’t the worst dinosaurs I’ve seen in a movie (THE MIGHTY GORGA, anyone?), but I don’t think anyone was impressed.

Given the quality of the dinosaurs, it’s no surprise that most of the story concentrates on the human characters. Still, even these are disappointing; the basic conflicts are the usual triangle (with a lecherous sea captain thrown in for extra excitement), and a variety of rather cliche situations and characters. There’s not much to recommend here, though I will express surprise that the thing was even made. And even cheap dinos like this still can be a little bit of fun.

THE UNSEEN (1945)
Article #1247 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-13-2004
Posting Date: 1-10-2005
Directed by Lewis Allen
Featuring Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert Marshall

A woman takes on a job as a governess to two children, only to discover that they’re harboring some mysterious secret involving an unsolved murder and an empty house next door.

Despite the fact that the movie really has no fantastic content (other than the sinister mood of the movie and the fact that the strange visitor remains a shadowy figure until the end), this movie is generally considered a follow-up to THE UNINVITED. This is no doubt due to the fact that both movies were directed by Lewis Allen, and that they have similar titles. A number of people consider this a disappointment, and I can see why; the beginning of the movie is awkward (with some very clumsy narration), and it ends rather flatly. Nonetheless, I found the rest of the movie to be rather engrossing; the first half plays like a variation of “The Turn of the Screw”, and it’s a lot of fun to see how the mysterious details in the first half all start to fall together in the second half. I was able to figure out who the villain would be fifteen minutes before it ended, but it does a good job of keeping you in the dark as to the motivations of many of the characters until the proper time. It’s not perfect, but I found it quite entertaining.

UGETSU (1953)
(a.k.a. UGETSU MONOGATARI)
Article #1073 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-21-2004
Posting Date: 7-20-2004
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
Featuring Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Kinuyo Tanaka

Two ambitious men, one a potter hoping to make his fortune, the other his partner hoping to become a samurai, find themselves in a position to realize their ambitions, but they end up deserting their wives in the process.

At heart this Japanese drama about greed and ambition has a very simple moral lesson about how trying to attain your ambitions can cause you to lose what you already have, and you can pretty much see the lesson coming early on. It’s the attention to detail, the emotional resonance, and the skill of the actors and the director that bring this story to life, and make it a truly wonderful movie. The fantastic aspects don’t pop up until the halfway point, and I don’t think I’m giving too much away to say that certain characters turn out to be ghosts. There is also an eerie sequence during a boat ride where the occupants discover what they think is a ghost boat, an event that spurs the potter into making one of his major mistakes. This is definitely a moving and memorable film.

THE UNHOLY NIGHT (1929)
Article #967 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-7-2003
Posting Date: 4-5-2004
Directed by Lionel Barrymore
Featuring Ernest Torrence, Roland Young, Dorothy Sebastian

Someone is killing off the members of a regiment, and a Scotland Yard inspector believes the culprit may be one of the remaining members.

Once again we hit a movie that was directed by someone better known as an actor, in this case, Lionel Barrymore. Actually, it’s kind of difficult to really gauge his success in this enterprise, as this is one of those early talkies that is somewhat stiff and static due to the limitations that were imposed by early sound techniques. Nonetheless, this one is fairly watchable, largely due to a fairly decent story with a surprising number of clever twists, a witty script from a Ben Hecht story, and a fun performance by Roland Young. The movie also features an uncredited performance by Boris Karloff in the pivotal role of Abdoul, and sadly, it just isn’t one of Karloff’s shining moments. Karloff had considerable talents, but he was not a master of accents, and the Arabian accent (I think that’s what is was supposed to be) not only makes him sound unnatural, but it appears to have resulted in a certain degree of overacting as well. The horror elements become quite marked as the movie progresses, especially during a particularly effective seance sequence near the end of the movie. All in all, one of the better early talkies I’ve seen.

THE UNINVITED (1944)
Article #697 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-10-2003
Posting Date: 7-10-2003
Directed by Lewis Allen
Featuring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Gail Russell

A songwriter and his sister buy and inhabit a deserted house by the sea, only to discover it is haunted.

I had watched this horror movie many years ago and was sorely disappointed at the time, though that had a lot more to do with my expectations than any flaw in the movie itself. For one thing, I’m pretty sure I was put off a little by the brightness of most of the scenes, and a light comic touch that pops up occasionally. I liked it much better this time around; the brightness is only used in scenes when it is appropriate, and the comic touches are a bit of a relief from some of the heavy-handed comic touches that pervade a lot of horror movies. Probably the most important difference to me this time was that I actually followed the plot line, which is essential to appreciating the events in this movie; when I first saw it, I was a little too lazy to pay attention to the details, and my appreciation was somewhat less. The scary scenes are quite effective, and there’s something about the final confrontation between Ray Milland and the ghost on the stairs at the end of the movie which really was satisfying this time; last time, I felt it was a letdown. In many ways, this is an archetypal haunted house movie, and I’m glad I gave it a second chance.

THE UNDEAD (1957)
Article #667 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-11-2003
Posting Date: 6-10-2003

A hypnotist regresses a street-walker back to a former life where she is a woman falsely accused of witchcraft.

The above description makes this Roger Corman movie sound like another stab at the Bridey Murphy story, but that description just doesn’t do this movie justice. In fact, I’m not sure any description could; this is unlike any movie ever made, and certainly may be the most original to come from Corman and Charles B. Griffiths. At first, the past-life angle seems like a frame to tell a story of witchcraft, but it isn’t; it ends up playing an unexpectedly active part in the storyline at about the halfway point, and from there the movie veers off into some fascinating directions. The medieval spectacle is pretty pallid, but that’s forgiveable; they just didn’t have the money. It’s peopled with interesting characters and familiar faces; Mel Welles practically steals the movie as Digger Smolkin, who spends most of his time singing nursery rhymes with changed lyrics (usually about coffins), but Alison Hayes is also on hand, as well as Bruno Ve Sota, Billy Barty, Dick Miller and Richard Garland. I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of it all until the final twist at the end of the movie, and I found the final twist so clever it won me over. This is definitely one of the oddest horror movies ever made.

ULYSSES (1954)
Article #659 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-3-2003
Posting Date: 6-2-2003

An amnesiac man washed up on the shores of a kingdom across the waters from Ithaca turns out to be the great hero of the Trojan War, Ulysses.

This adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey was made before the Hercules cycle of movies featuring Steve Reeves kicked off the whole Sword and Sandal craze, so it doesn’t quite belong to that trend, despite its having been made in Italy. It features two English-speaking stars, Kirk Douglas in the title role, and Anthony Quinn as one of Penelope’s suitors. It’s more thoughtful and overtly poetic than the later S&S movies, though there is still quite a bit of romance in the mix; however, that was all in the original story. It also retains the story’s awkward but somewhat necessary structure of telling most of the adventures in the form of a flashback (this is a good two-thirds of the movie), but this is necessary in order to establish the situation with Penelope’s suitors early enough in the story so that out interest is piqued by the urgency of the situation. Interestingly, the actress playing Penelope and the actress playing Circe are the same woman. The scenes with Polyphemus the cyclops are pretty memorable, as well as Ulysses’s encounter with the sirens. It’s not a personal favorite of mine (actually, among the books of Homer, I prefer The Iliad myself), but it’s a pretty solid and fun affair.

UNTAMED WOMEN (1952)
Article #631 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-6-2002
Posting date: 5-1-2003

Survivors of a downed military plane find themselves on an uncharted island with a tribe of beautiful women without men.

It may well be that the above description will make the movie sound delectable to those with a taste for such things, especially if I mention that it throws in a slurpasaur for good measure. Think of it as something like CAT WOMEN OF THE MOON or FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE in a lost world rather than another planet, and you get the picture. Unfortunately, this movie is just as lively as those are, and that is not a recommendation. Still, the movie is worth watching to hear one of the great howler lines of all time, namely: “Shoot anything with hair on it that moves!” It also features Lyle Talbot, a wisecracking kid from Brooklyn, a volcano, and one of those phantom hairdressers hidden in a cave somewhere to keep the women looking their best. It’s a little better than WILD WOMEN OF WONGO. You take it from there.