THE VAMPIRE’S GHOST (1945)
Article #632 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-7-2002
Posting date: 5-2-2003

An African village is the site of several unexplained murders. The natives believe a vampire is amongst them, and there is; a gambler by the name of Fallon.

When is a Lewton movie not a Lewton movie? When it came from Republic rather than RKO and was directed by Lesley Selander. Actually, Lewton had nothing to do with this movie, but despite the fact that the movie lacks Lewton’s trademark ambiguity (there is no doubt that we are dealing with a real vampire), in mood and poetry it reminds me of nothing else. The direction is merely ordinary, but there is an exquisite sadness about the unusually well-written script (by Leigh Brackett), and a memorable performance by John Abbott as Fallon, whose unusual looks and mesmerizing eyes make him an ideal actor for his role. Fallon makes for an interesting vampire; rather than isolating himself from the rest of the world, he actually seems to be a member of the community and interacts with those around him on a daily basis. Abbott’s refusal to resort to melodrama results in him underplaying the role, and he manages to invest his character with a wonderful sense of world-weariness that I’ve found in no other classic vampire movie that I’ve seen. There are memorable moments; a scene where he hypnotizes a man to leave his body under the full moon, and a jarring sequence involving a mirror both come to mind. I didn’t expect much from this movie going in, but it turned out to be one of the most unexpected (and pleasant) surprises I’ve run into recently.

VOODOO ISLAND (1957)
Article #459 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 6-17-2002
Posting date: 11-10-2002

An expedition investigates the disappearance of several men on an island believed to be the source of voodoo practices.

This late-fifties Karloff horror vehicle saves most of its best moments for the last fifteen minutes of the movie, so if you’re going to wait for them, you should be prepared for an enormous amount of talk. This in itself wouldn’t be so bad; the script does take a real stab at giving us an interesting array of characters to work with, but the actual dialogue is at times painfully self-conscious; even Karloff seems a little lost at times with the clumsy lines he’s given. Reginald LeBorg’s pedestrian direction isn’t much help, either. However, the presence of Karloff (and Elisha Cook) does help quite a bit, as well as the fact that the story itself avoids being more than just a compendium of voodoo cliches, and the carnivorous plants are fun. This is just one of those movies that calls for a little patience.

VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET (1960)
Article #427 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 5-16-2002
Posting date: 10-9-2002

A student from outer space decides to take a field trip to Earth to study the inhabitants.

This movie was based on a satirical play by Gore Vidal; it shouldn’t take more than a glimpse at the cast list to figure out that whatever satirical elements remain in the finished product are going to be coincidental. This is pretty much the case; most of the story has indeed been doctored to the talents of its star, Jerry Lewis, though hints and glimpses of satire remain around the edges.

Watching Jerry Lewis at this time in my life does remind me why I liked him when I was a kid; it also reminds me of how vital it was that I had been a kid when I was first exposed to him; if I had been any older, I would most likely have loathed him. For all that, this movie is quite watchable; I expected to be embarassed by Jerry’s antics, but I wasn’t. The reason for this may be that, no matter how potentially embarassing any given gag might be, Jerry threw himself into it with a gusto and commitment to the gag that belied any embarassment on his part, and I think this is a crucial point, because if I had at any time sensed embarassment on his part, I would have felt the same. Another interesting thing about him was that occasionally he would set aside his usual persona to pull off more sophisticated gags, such as during the point when he helps his host keep his job by blackmailing his boss. This is quite admirable, in a sense, and it does show that the man possessed some acting talent; unfortunately, it also revealed that his usual persona was nothing but a persona, which may explain why you never really believe the character. And also why, though I find this movie watchable enough, I never find it more than tepidly funny.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960)
Article #404 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-23-2002
Posting date: 9-16-2002

The entire town of Midwich unexpectedly passes out, and when they wake up, all the women of child-bearing age are pregnant.

I have always preferred this to the semi-sequel CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED; whereas that one has a somewhat messy story, this one is focused and powerful. I love the way it holds the interest throughout, first by catching your attention with a truly mysterious occurence, and then bit by bit drawing you into the details of the situation, only gradually letting the horror of the proceedings sneak up on you. In some ways, it is reminiscent of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, in that as the story progresses, the more you find out, the scarier it gets (though it generally avoids that movie’s visceral thrills). It also shares with that movie a certain vagueness over what is the actual cause of the events; though there is some talk of life on other planets, nothing is pinned down. In fact, it is because of what we’ve learned that the final sequence is so powerful; we’ve come to find out how powerful the children are, we know what they’re capable of, and we’re not sure whether out hero can resist them long enough to win out. This movie was based on a John Wyndham novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, the same man who also wrote THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS; though the movies take liberties with the novels, they both to some extent retain that sense of real human situations caught up in the horrific happenings; notice the various reactions to the discovered pregnancies of all the women. This is one very memorable horror movie.

VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES (1946)
Article #333 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-11-2002
Posting date: 6-28-2002

A man needs blood to keep himself alive, and kills and embalms his victims.

This was another stab by Republic at the horror market. It’s certainly better than the horribly dull CATMAN OF PARIS, with Ian Keith giving a ripe performance as Ormand Burks. Keith was apparently one of Lugosi’s rivals for the role of Dracula. There’s a lot of priceless silly dialogue here, but since the movie aspires to be something of a comedy, the laughs may be intentional. The Valley of the Zombies of the title is only referred to in passing; there’s only one Zombie, and he acts more like a vampire crossed with a mad doctor. A slight, but strange B horror flick.

THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933)
Article #327 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 2-5-2002
Posting date: 6-22-2002

Vampire-like murders are being committed in a small village, and the prime suspect is a mad boy with a love for bats.

This movie features Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, and Dwight Frye as Herman, the bat-loving boy. It seems like a vampire movie, but without giving too much away, I’ll only say that the plot veers away from the supernatural into science fiction before all is through. I found this one quite enjoyable, with a great role for Frye and another solid performance by Atwill; one thing I like about Atwill is that he played his characters with a good deal of ambiguity; you were never really sure whether he was going to turn out to be the villain or not, and this movie does keep you wondering for quite a bit of the time. There’s lots of fun character work in this movie as well.

THE VEIL (1958)
Article #299 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-8-2002
Posting date: 5-25-2002

An anthology of stories about people who experience events that pierce the veil of reality.

Stringing episodes of a TV series together to create a movie has never been IMHO a good idea; however, since this TV series was never aired, it was probably the only way that these shows would ever get exposure. The concept works a little better with an anthology series, too, as it adheres to a recognizable and workable cinematic style. Two other anthologies would be created from the series “The Veil,” called JACK THE RIPPER and DESTINATION NIGHTMARE; both are available on DVD, as well as a DVD set of the entire series. All four episodes of this one deal with men who see things that they shouldn’t be able to see; two see events that happen in places far removed from their current location, one sees an event three days before it happens, and several people see a man who actually couldn’t have been there. The show is pretty so-so, but I suspect Boris Karloff, who appears in each of these four episodes in a wide variety of roles, was enjoying himself; it’s strange seeing him as a French rake, but I like even this performance when I put aside my preconceptions about what is the right role for Karloff.

VOODOO MAN (1944)
Article #141 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-4-2001
Posting date: 12-18-2001

A man tries to revive his dead wife by kidnapping women who drive on the road alongside his house (he uses a fake detour sign and ambulatory bushes to trap them), and using voodoo to transfer their life essences into the corpse of his wife.

This is, I believe, the only movie to feature Bela Lugosi, John Carradine AND George Zucco (unless you think George is in RETURN OF THE APE MAN somewhere). It would have been nice if the script had been fashioned to put all three stars to their best use: unfortunately, only Bela gets a good role, and both Carradine (as a blithering idiot) and Zucco (as an evil gas station attendant) are woefully miscast. The goings-on are pretty silly, as you would expect from Monogram. And even though the plots are significantly different, there’s something about the movie that strongly reminds me of THE CORPSE VANISHES; maybe it’s the presence of someone who looks like George Eldredge who played the role of Mike in that movie. At any rate, I wonder what kind of movie they could have made had they tailored a script to fit all three actors rather than wasting two of them.

VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS (1965)
Article #140 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-3-2001
Posting date: 12-17-2001

Several juvenile deliquent teens steal a substance concocted by Ronny Howard, boy genius, that causes animals to grow to many times their natural size. They consume the substance, and then use their new-found stature to take over the town.

That sound you hear is H.G. Wells rolling over in his grave. I haven’t read the novel on which this movie was based, but I’m willing to bet that very little of the novel ended up on the screen. It’s like one of those Disney comedies of the period (which I call shopping cart movies, in reference to a movie watched by some kids in the Joe Dante movie MATINEE), only with the emphasis on female anatomy; when the teens grow, the camera is clearly most interested in the girls popping out of their clothes, there is an overabundance of close-ups of wiggling derrieres during the dance scene (not to mention the shots of ducks wiggling their tale feathers), and the scene where the giant woman dances with the normal sized Johnny Crawford (he has to hang off her bra) is enough to cure you of several sexual fantasies. For the Disney crowd, there’s Ronny Howard and Tommy Kirk. Beau Bridges and choreographer Toni Basil are also on hand. Blame it all on Bert I. Gordon, who, not content with running this Wells novel through the wringer once, would go back to it eleven years later. Now I don’t have any real illusions about Bert I. Gordon; when I see his name in the credits, I adjust my expectations accordingly. But in general, he tended to set his vision to a somewhat higher level of sophistication and taste than he did this time around.

VAMPYR (1932)
Article #139 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 8-2-2001
Posting date: 12-16-2001

A man whose “vision reaches beyond that of most men” encounters a family being plagued by a vampire, an ugly old woman.

This is certainly one of the strangest vampire movies I’ve ever seen. Half of it is a relatively straightforward vampire movie (and I do mean relatively), but because the main character seems to live in both one world and another, we have several sequences of this other world, a world where men’s shadows detach themselves from the bodies to which they belong to live a life of their own, and where the hero seems to both witness and take part in his own burial. The storyline can be quite hard to follow, and it is so full of haunting and memorable images, that it, more than any other movie I know of, feels like a bizarre, only partially remembered dream. The movie was apparently shot silent, and the dialogue was added later. I have a great deal of affection for movies this strange.