THE WHISPERING SHADOW (1933)
(Serial)
Article #1215 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-12-2004
Posting Date: 12-9-2004
Directed by Colbert Clark and Albert Herman
Featuring Bela Lugosi, Viva Tattersall, Malcolm McGregor

A villain known as the Whispering Shadow is trying to get his hands on the jewels of the Czar.

…and so is everybody else in this serial thriller. The science fiction aspects are strong here, as the Whispering Shadow uses a radio death ray to deal out death to those who interfere with his plans as well as to project his image from long distances away. The question is; who is he? Is he the well-known horror star who works in a museum known as the House of Mystery, Professor Red Herr…er, Strang? Is it that oily radio technician with the same name as the famous novelist, Steinbeck? Is it the escaped convict who stole the jewels in the first place and wants them back? How about the company president? The company vice-president? Or is it one of the other characters who seemingly appear to be taking little or no interest in laying their hands on the jewels? If you know anything about this type of serial, you should be able to eliminate several of these characters right off the bat. I know I had my guess, but I turned out to be wrong largely because one of the rules I usually apply to figuring out this sort of thing turned out to be incorrect, but I still maintain my guess would have been a good one.

I will admit that this serial was fairly fun, though incredibly confusing; with at least five different people scrambling for possession of the jewels, it leaves your head swimming at times just trying to keep track of who has them. I’m also willing to bet there are some huge plot holes in the story, as I find myself wondering how the actual villain could actually know as much about people’s movements as he appears to do. At least you can tell most of the characters apart this time, which helps things immensely.

THE WITCHING HOUR (1934)
Article #1114 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-2-2004
Posting Date: 8-30-2001
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Featuring Guy Standing, John Halliday, William Frawley

A young man commits murder after accidentally being placed under hypnosis, and must find someone to defend him at his trial.

There’s nothing particularly novel about the central gimmick of this story (murder under hypnotism); it’s popped up many a time in other movies. Nonetheless, even a fairly hackneyed concept can work well if handled in a novel way, and that is just what this movie does. First of all, the fact that the murder was committed under hypnosis is not the big final revelation (as it is in several other movies); rather, the emphasis is on finding someone who is willing to defend them with this explanation rather than having the man plead insanity, and then to try and convince a skeptical jury. The backstory is novel and interesting, involving an illegal gambling den, a cat’s-eye ring, and two concepts that also cause the movie to fall into the realm of the fantastic; namely, telepathy and ghostly apparitions. The characters are also well-drawn, and the story solidly constructed. In fact, I consider this movie to be one of those forgotten gems that I occasionally encounter, and this goes a long way to make up for the fact that my print of the movie is in very poor condition. This is definitely one I will upgrade when the opportunity presents itself.

WONDER MAN (1945)
Article #1088 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-7-2004
Posting Date: 8-4-2004
Directed by H. Bruce Humberstone
Featuring Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Vera-Ellen

When a nightclub entertainer comes forth as a witness to a murder committed by a notorious gangster, he is knocked off before he can testify. The entertainer’s ghost then persuades his bookworm twin brother to take over his identity for a few days.

Danny Kaye was known for his comic singing and monologues, and it’s really no surprise that this movie takes every opportunity to drop the story momentarily in order to jump into one of them. He plays a dual role here, but this doesn’t seem particularly novel in his case, as he would constantly change characters as an entertainer; he does very well as you might expect. The special effects are top-notch (it won an Oscar for them), and there are a number of familiar faces in the supporting cast, including Edward Brophy, Natalie Schafer, Huntz Hall (as a sailor who punches Kaye at one point) and Otto Kruger. My only complaint is that the comic bits do rely a little too much on the repetitions of two situations; jokes hinging on the fact that the living brother is the only one who can hear and see the dead brother, and the living brother’s constantly being stuck in situations where he needs the spirit brother to take over his body, but the spirit brother doesn’t show. This is somewhat compensated for the final musical number, which both highlights Kaye’s talents and advances the plot.

WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO? (1971)
Article #1077 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-25-2004
Posting Date: 7-24-2004
Directed by Curtis Harrington
Featuring Shelley Winters, Mark Lester, Chloe Franks

Two orphans stow away in a car so they can attend a Christmas Party hosted by a woman named Forrest (who prefers to be called Auntie Roo). The woman becomes attached to the girl orphan due to her resemblance to her dead daughter.

The title certainly makes this one sound like it was part of the cycle of horror movies featuring aging actresses that was kicked off with WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, and the presence of Shelley Winters confirms this. The odd thing about this trend is that the movies were not mere repetitions of each other, and I think this may have something to do with the fact the BABY JANE movie was so unique that it really didn’t lend itself to repetition. This one borrows its story from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale of all things. It was also directed by Curtis Harrington, and like some of his other horror movies, it is rather offbeat. Unfortunately, he’s never made a movie that totally worked for me, and this one is no exception. I think the problem is that it never really becomes either a full-blooded horror movie or an effective variation on the fairy tale. The scare scenes would be more effective if they didn’t seem so arbitrary, and the last third of the movie fails to build up the necessary tension or suspense. As it is, what I most enjoy in the movie is seeing some familiar faces such as Ralph Richardson, Hugh Griffith and Lionel Jeffries, all who are quite entertaining in their roles and severely underused. It’s a curiosity, but little more.

WHEN KNIGHTS WERE BOLD (1936)
Article #1076 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-24-2004
Posting Date: 7-23-2004
Directed by Jack Raymond
Featuring Jack Buchanan, Fay Wray, Garry Marsh

The heir to an ancestral home returns from India to meet his family for the first time. He discovers they are all stiff and joyless, but he falls for his cousin, the Lady Rowena.

You know, some of these movies really do leave me scratching my head when I try to decide whether they rightfully belong in the fantastic movie genres or not, and this is one of them. The basic plot of this musical-comedy certainly doesn’t give any indication of having a fantastic premise, and for most of the movie I was wondering what would come up. However, the last third of the movie consists of a dream sequence in which our hero ends up in the middle ages and must defend the castle against an onslaught of invaders. It’s here that the comedy really takes an anarchic turn, and the question becomes whether outrageous anarchic comedy qualifies as fantastic cinema. However, scenes in which the knights come riding in on bizarre bicycles, and a series of gags involving magnets both push this into the realm of fantasy, so I guess it does qualify to some extent. The movie itself is quite amusing and very British. Barry Fitzgerald and Terry-Thomas both appear somewhere in this movie, though I wouldn’t be able to point them out.

WHAT’S SO BAD ABOUT FEELING GOOD? (1968)
Article #1007 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-17-2003
Posting Date: 5-15-2004
Directed by George Seaton
Featuring George Peppard, Mary Tyler Moore, Don Stroud

A toucan carrying a virus gets loose in New York City. The virus has only one symptom; it leaves its victim in a state of euphoria.

This is one of those curious little movies that really could have only been made during the late sixties. It’s subject matter is definitely summer of love / hippie material, and I found it a little curious that it chooses as its primary focus not the effect it would have on the class of corporate conformists that would be the expected target, but rather its effect on a group of doom-and-gloom obsessed beatniks, a social group that must certainly have been passe at this time. This decision has an unfortunate effect; it strips the concept of some of its satirical clout, though not completely; the satirical aspects of the movie are too strong to be ignored, and mostly manifest themselves in the scenes in the bunker, with Dom DeLuise as a government man sent to the scene to combat the plague. The satire is also weakened by the movie’s incessant cuteness, in particular by the decision to give the bird dialogue (by means of comic strip-like word balloons) and it’s reliance on slapstick setpieces on occasion (the main couple tries to smuggle the bird past the police by disguising it as the woman’s pregnancy). Nevertheless, the movie still has its moments, and I particularly enjoyed George Furth’s performance as DeLuise’s “administrative assistant” and a cameo by Thelma Ritter.

THE WITCH’S MIRROR (1960)
(a.k.a. EL ESPEJO DE LA BRUJA)
Article #962 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-2-2003
Posting Date: 3-31-2004
Directed by Chano Urueta
Featuring Rosa Arenas, Armando Calvo, Isabela Corona

A witch, unable to save her ward from being murdered by her husband, vows to exact vengeance for the murder.

You know, sometimes you have to just sit back and marvel. Starting with a concept from SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (a witch with a magic mirror), we then find ourselves thrown into the standard husband-trying-to-murder-his-wife plot, followed in quick succession by the plots of NIGHTMARE CASTLE (woman haunted by the ghost of husband’s first wife) and EYES WITHOUT A FACE (scientist tries to restore the face of his loved one), followed by hints of a dizzying array of movies such as THE BODY SNATCHER, THE PREMATURE BURIAL, a distaff version of THE HANDS OF ORLAC, and finally (this one I saw coming though it takes a long time for it to manifest itself) THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS. It’s almost as if they threw a bunch of movies in a blender and tried to see what would come out. Furthermore, the bandages on the scarred lady make her look like the lumpy Frankenstein monster in DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN, though admittedly, that one postdates this one. This, combined with the standard K. Gordon Murray dubbing process, makes for a truly surreal movie-watching experience. After a while, you just can’t tear your eyes away because you’re wondering what other movies it will remind you of. It’s all part of the fun of dipping into the wide wonderful world of Mexican horror, where logic as we understand it is truly thrown to the winds. Bizarre, hallucinatory, jaw-dropping, and in its own weird way, essential.

WITCHCRAFT (1964)
Article #961 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-1-2003
Posting Date: 3-30-2004
Directed by Don Sharp
Featurng Lon Chaney Jr., Jack Hedley, Jill Dixon

When an ancestral cemetery is plowed over by a bulldozer, a witch who was buried alive arises from her grave to wreak vengeance.

There really aren’t that many surprises in this standard entry in the witch’s revenge/devil worship subgenre of horror. Nonetheless, it’s effective enough, at least partially due to a generally decent level of acting enlivened by a good performance by Lon Chaney Jr. (though he only appears sporadically); actually, he seemed to get better horror roles during the sixties than he did the previous decade. One thing that caught my attention was what I orginally thought was an editing gaff; a woman is driving through a landfill, but the shots through her windshield show her driving through a tree-lined lane. In truth, what she sees through the windshield is merely what she sees in her mind, though I do consider it a case where the movie could have made this a lot clearer; as it is, I didn’t figure it out until the same thing almost happens again later and we get a verbal explanation.

WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS (1978)
Article #960 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-31-2003
Posting Date: 3-29-2004
Directed by Kevin Connor
Featuring Doug McClure, Peter Gilmore, Shane Rimmer

Undersea explorers discover the lost civilization of Atlantis.

This was the fourth and last of several features directed by Kevin Connor and starring Doug McClure that were made in the second half of the decade of the seventies, a time when this sort of adventure story was out of fashion. The other three were based on Edgar Rice Burroughs stories; this one doesn’t seem based on anything in particular, but was no doubt influenced by them. To say that it fails to live up the epic grandeur of its ambitions is somehow missing the point; it largely exists to trot out the monsters, and that’s pretty much what it does. The monster effects aren’t that bad, but the monsters themselves are sometimes a little too sluggish for their own good; compare the octopus here with the squid in 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and you’ll see what I mean. It’s all pretty silly, with the Atlanteans being essentially Nazis under another name, and the plot being nothing but a series of incidents tied together by the thinnest of stories. And just what was Cyd Charisse doing in this one anyway?