A WOMAN’S FACE (1941)
Article #853 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-16-2003
Posting Date: 12-13-2003
Directed by George Cukor
Featuring Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Conrad Veidt

A bitter woman with a scarred face turns to crime, and then gets an opportunity to undergo plastic surgery to restore her looks.

Title check: Why not just call it JOAN CRAWFORD’S FACE? She has so many close ups, it would be an apt title; it might also inspire Kim Carnes to come up with a companion song to BETTE DAVIS EYES.

If you’ve followed some of my MOTDs up to this point, you probably know that I’m not a particular fan of Joan Crawford. For all of her star quality, I’ve never really cared for any of her characters; they never quite make that jump to convincing me they’re real people rather than personas put on by the actress. This movie only touches marginally on the horror genre by skirting the same ground as any number of Lon Chaney movies (with whom she worked in THE UNKNOWN) or in Peter Lorre’s FACE BEHIND THE MASK; the fact that she is a scarred criminal at the beginning of the movie is the only real horror element. The movie is in thrall with her; if I were, I’d like it more than I do. As it is, I mostly just enjoy the moments when the movie gets away from her long enough for me to notice that George Zucco is on hand as the nice attorney, Henry Daniell as the mean one (he seemed to specialize in mean SOBs, didn’t he?). At heart, I enjoyed watching Marjorie Main (who is also on hand) more than I do Crawford, and I quite like how Conrad Veidt has a nice mad speech that manages to pull the focus from Crawford even while he shares the screen with her in one scene; it was nice to see the camera pay attention to someone else for a change.

THE WEREWOLF (1956)
Article #798 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-21-2003
Posting Date: 10-18-2003
Directed by Fred F. Sears
Featuring Steven Ritch, Joyce Holden, Dan Megowan

A werewolf is loose in a small village and the local sheriff tries to capture him.

Title Check: No problem; you want a werewolf, you got a werewolf.

In some ways, this generically titled movie is similar to the also-generically-titled THE VAMPIRE from a year later; they both feature sympathetic monsters, and they both add a science fiction angle to a usually-supenatural monster. Unfortunately, this one isn’t quite as good as that one; the screenplay never gels as well as it should, and the various elements (including the werewolf’s family and the two evil scientists who create him) feel thrown in rather than organic. Steven Ritch does as good a job as he can with a character that is not developed as well as he could be. The opening scenes, in which a seemingly amnesiac man is waylaid by a robber outside of a bar are the most memorable in the movie; you suspect one of these people is the werewolf, but you’re not sure which one. Not a bad movie, but one that could have been better.

WARNING FROM SPACE (1956)
Article #758 by Dave Sindelar
Date Viewed: 4-12-2003
Date Posted: 9-9-2003
Directed by Koji Shima
Featuring Keizo Kawasaki, Toyomi Karita, Shozo Nanbu

A starfish-shaped alien from outer space attempts to make contact with a professor.

You have to put a bit of concentration into some of these Japanese science fiction epics, partially because the bad dubbing can actually obscure your comprehension at times, and partly because the plot lines can be all over the board. This one has plot similarities to THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, among others, and the plot emphasis can often shift so quickly that a short trip to the refrigerator is enough to throw you off. This one can be split into three different sections, each with a slightly different feel; it is moderately entertaining and at times more effective than you’d think. The worst problems are the aliens; they resemble starfish with eyes in their centers, and are obviously just people in starfish costumes with their legs apart and sticking their arms out (which is why you never see them move). Stills from this movie led me to believe they were giant, but that is not the case. Once again, a subtitled version would help immensely.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? (1945)
Article #719 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-4-2003
Posting Date: 8-1-2003
Directed by Gregory Ratoff
Featuring Fred MacMurray, Joan Leslie, June Haver

A man unable to join the military during World War II encounters a genie who tries to get him into the army; however, since his watch is busted, he sends him back to the days of George Washington instead.

I’m not really a musical fan, and I’m a little out of my territory in trying to critique them, at least partially because I’m not particularly partial to the types of music generally found in them, but I’ll put in my two cents anyway. The musical sequences are fairly decent, including a big number in a USO club early in the proceedings, and an operetta sequence aboard one of the ships of Christopher Columbus. The story is pretty silly, but that’s probably no surprise if you’ve read the above description. Still, if you’re just dying to hear Fred MacMurray do an impersonation of Adolf Hitler, this is the movie for you. My favorite gag is a musical one; namely, near the end of the movie there is point where our heroes travel among the clouds which are marked with the various centuries they are passing through; the music they play when they hit the twentieth century is great. Anthony Quinn plays an Indian chief who makes a business deal.

THE WORLD OF THE VAMPIRES (1960)
Article #672 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-16-2003
Posting Date: 6-15-2003

A vampire swears to destroy the only three remaining members of the Colman family.

This Mexican vampire-fest gets a little dullish at times when certain scenes drag on too long, but this is offset by some very interesting variations on the vampire legend. The vampire keeps a horde of sub-human vampires AND a horde of beautiful women as his followers, and the movie takes a very different direction in how to defeat vampires, with music instead of the usual crosses and stakes. It also has some entertainingly moody cavern sets. It also finally puts to rest an old wives tale; if you really want to know what causes hair to grow on the back of your hands, the answer is here.

WHAT (1963)
(a.k.a. THE WHIP AND THE BODY)
Article #671 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-15-2003
Posting Date: 6-14-2003

The sadistic son of a nobleman returns home and is murdered. A woman then finds herself haunted by his ghost.

Yes, this movie did actually go out under the truly awful title of WHAT, a move that most likely resulted in failing to capture the public’s attention, but ultimately may have confused it with a similarly titled movie by Roman Polanski movie released the same decade. The other title, THE WHIP AND THE BODY, is not only better, but more descriptive. In fact, this is a pretty amazing movie. One of the common qualities of Italian horror that has the potential to drive me away is their emphasis on sadism; some of them dwell so much on the torture of women they become nearly unwatchable. This is one of the exceptions, and this is partly because the sadism is so strongly a part of the characters and the story that it feels essential rather than exploitative; it defines the characters and the way they behave, and it adds a surprising amount of substance and depth to the story. This, plus Mario Bava’s usual visual touches, make the movie a unique, fascinating horror movie, and it even contains a certain amount of Lewtonesque ambiguity. Some people think it may be Bava’s finest movie; I haven’t seen all of his work to be sure, yet, but I would go so far to say that this one is definitely in the running. It features Christopher Lee and Daliah Levi (in great performances).

WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST (1958)
Article #670 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-14-2003
Posting Date: 6-13-2003

The sister of the Amazing Colossal Man believes him to still be alive in Mexico.

About halfway through this movie they run a six-minute montage of the most memorable scenes from THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, the movie to which this is a sequel, and despite that movie’s flaws, there’s no doubt it has some quite memorable scenes. Unfortunately, it also made me realize how unnecessary this sequel is; it spends about half of its time turning him into a standard giant-monster threat (though the rampage is even less substantial than the one in the original) and the other half trying to work up sympathy for his plight. Unfortunately, the actor playing him is stripped of both voice (he utters one word at the end of the film) and facial expression (the hideous makeup is shocking, but leaves him little to work with as an actor), and this gives us little chance to really care about him as a character other than our memories of the first film. None of the other characters in the first movie appear in this one, with his fiancee having been replaced by a sister, though I do notice some of the actors in the original are back in this one; unfortunately, almost all of the new characters are uninteresting and bland, with the possible exception of the Mexican police official who vanishes from the story at about a third of the way through in a sequence that fades out too soon. This would be the second one-eyed giant that Bert I. Gordon would give us, the first being in THE CYCLOPS, which, in all honesty, is not as good as this one.

WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957)
Article #603 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-8-2002
Posting date: 4-4-2003

A doctor on his way to receive an award for his fifty years of service finds himself troubled by strange dreams and reliving scenes from earlier in his life.

Sometimes this journey through the world of fantastic cinema takes me to some interesting places, even if they only marginally belong under the banner of the fantastic. I’m not really surprised that eventually I would encounter Ingmar Bergman along the way; I remember reading once that he was profoundly influenced by James Whales’ FRANKENSTEIN, and if you watch that movie and any of Bergman’s, you can see the influence. This thoughtful drama is both sad and comic, with meditations on life and death and any other subjects of philosophy you might wish to examine; I ultimately found myself deeply moved by it, though I suspect your average horror/science fiction/fantasy fan might have little use for it. However, if it should come by your way some time, take five minutes to catch the opening dream sequence in the movie; this dream is so filled with creepy dread that it’s almost like a little horror movie in itself, and it is for this scene alone that the movie is being covered here. It’s so powerful, that when a seemingly innocuous image in the dream (that of a clock missing its hands) recurs later in the movie, it actual has a certain shock factor. Fascinating, but only for those willing to venture into the world of Bergman.

THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1959)
Article #594 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-30-2002
Posting date: 3-25-2003

Three people discover they may be the only survivors of world destruction.

This movie really tries, and for the first half hour, with much of that time devoted to Harry Belafonte wandering the deserted city of New York, it succeeds. Unfortunately, once he meets Inger Stevens, the movie starts to falter, and from that point onwards I found the movie to be stiff, self-conscious, clumsy, and ultimately and painfully obvious in doling out its messages. It’s a shame; I really wanted to believe these characters were three-dimensional, living beings, but they end up being either symbolic or mouthpieces for the messages. I guess when it comes to movies like this, I’ll probably go back to either FIVE or THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH before I pop this one in again, no matter how breathtaking the scenes in the first thirty minutes are; at least the characters in those movies seemed to have some real personality to them.

WILD WILD PLANET (1965)
Article #591 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-27-2003
Posting Date: 3-22-2003

A commander investigates a series of disappearances of people, which leads him to a plot to create a perfect race.

You will notice the title, WILD WILD PLANET, is designed to conjure up visions of wild sixties culture, and one would expect something overdone and campy; other than a scene in which the heroes fight with a bunch of women in nighties and black panties, there is very little outrageous enough to warrant your attention here. The special effects are awful, but this wouldn’t be fatal if the story were lively, but alas, a promising premise degenerates into confusion and tedium. The bad dubbing once again doesn’t help matters (does it ever?), but it appears that the movie may be of a little interest except to those who feel garish colors and bizarre costumes make for a great movie; I would prefer a solid story, myself.