WITCHBOARD (1986)
Article 5087 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-22-2016
Directed by Kevin Tenney
Featuring Todd Allen, Tawny Kitaen, Stephen Nichols
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Evil ghost possession story

When a woman becomes obsessed with a friend’s Ouija board, she unleashes a malevolent spirit that wishes to possess her.

On the positive side, I really like how this movie cares about its characters enough to develop them; that’s not something that usually happens with horror movies. On the other hand, it has a fondness for cliche phrases (you’ll have a bad feeling about that), annoying secondary characters (like the psychic and the policeman), and really bad false scares (way too many and not well done). Taken in the balance, though, I do have to say I was moderately entertained by this one, though I do find the final confrontation with the evil a tad disappointing. And for someone’s first movie, this is actually pretty good.

WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY (1977)
Article 5085 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-20-2016
Directed by Peter Sasdy
Featuring Jack Palance, Keir Dullea, Samantha Eggar
Country: UK / Canada
What it is: Not what it seems

Five people find themselves lost in a wilderness without any memory of their past lives and the only identification is a card telling them how many people they’ve murdered. They find themselves in a western town where a persons’ status is dependent on how many people they kill. One of them begins having flashbacks of this previous life…

Jack Palance is an intriguing actor; even in a role that seems tailor-made for him like he has here, he never quite gives the performance you’d suspect, and here he imbues his role with a touch of comic weirdness. For that matter, Keir Dullea also gives a rather odd performance, and I don’t mean these comments as criticisms, because their performances contribute a great deal to the atmosphere of this rather odd movie. All we really know at the beginning of the movie is that there’s something not-quite-right about the western scenario the characters are trapped in, and as the movie progresses, we learn more about the truth of the situation, revelations that push the movie into the dystopian science fiction popular during the seventies. Other aspects of the movie are less interesting; the direction is fairly indifferent, the script has some problems and the ending it a bit too pat. Nevertheless, the movie does make for an offbeat viewing experience.

WARP SPEED (1981)
Article 5083 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-18-2016
Directed by Allan Sandler
Featuring David Chandler, Camille Mitchell, Adam West
Country: USA
What it is: Space mystery TV-Movie

When a spaceship bound for Saturn returns home stripped of its equipment and missing its crewmen, a psychic is sent aboard the spaceship to track down the events that happened.

I’ve encountered Allan Sandler before; he’s co-directed/co-produced a few movies with Robert Emenegger, sometimes in concert with Steven Spielberg’s sister Anne and various relatives of Cameron Mitchell (two of which appear in this movie). The movies generally have interesting ideas and concepts, but are otherwise not particularly well done, and sometimes it’s a bit of a close call trying to figure out whether its strengths or flaws dominate. This is one of those where the strengths win out; the acting and direction may be uneven, but I did find the story interesting enough to hold my attention, right up to a bizarre but not-entirely-unexpected twist ending. It’s a little confusing at first, and the cheapness of the production is a little off-putting, but I found it was worth the effort to stick with it. It’s probably the best of the movies I’ve seen from this director and his cohorts.

WYNKEN, BLYNKEN & NOD (1938)
Article 4947 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-4-2015
Directed by Graham Heid
No voice cast listed
Country: USA
What it is: Disney Silly Symphony

Wynken, Blynken and Nod go fishing for star-fish.

I’m at the point that I pretty much know what to expect from a Disney Silly Symphony. It will be well animated, have some music, and is likely to be mildly whimsical rather than side-splittingly funny. That pretty much captures this one. The three title characters sail off into the heavens, have some tussles with star-fish, encounter the winds, and eventually return home to the dreams of a sleeping boy. There are some nice visual moments, and a few chuckles to be had, but it never quite reaches the heights of the best cartoons out there. Like so many of Disney’s Silly Symphonies, I like it well enough, but I don’t love it.

WILL POWER (1936)
Article 4946 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-3-2015
Directed by Arthur Ripley
Featuring Edgar Kennedy, Florence Lake, Kitty McHugh
Country: USA
What it is: Comic short

A put-upon husband concocts a scheme to get his mooching brother-in-law to find a job – he fakes a heart attack and then uses mystic will power to make sure his brother gains employment.

This is pretty amusing comedy short starring slow-burn comic actor Edgar Kennedy. It’s also a bit on the bizarre side and even has a bit of atmosphere when Kennedy goes into a trance to force the issue; it’s both effectively acted and well-photographed. Granted, since this is a comedy short, you know the plot is going to backfire, but that’s part of the fun. It’s an interesting comic take on the old hypnotism plot element.

WONDERFUL BEEHIVE (1905)
aka Ruche merveilleuse
Article 4945 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-2-2015
Directed by Gaston Velle
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Decorative short

Women dressed as bees dance before their beehive.

Like yesterday’s movie, this is a silent short that I managed to find on YouTube. Also like yesterday’s short, it does not appear to be complete; if the sole user review on IMDB is to be trusted (it’s by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, but it does appear to be one of his legitimate entries), there’s a scene where the queen bee is threatened by a giant spider that is not in the print I saw. This is a bit of a disappointment, as this footage would have upped the fantastic content a bit; there’s really not a lot to be said about dancing ladies in bee costumes otherwise. However, I suspect the spider scene was fairly brief, as the short apparently ended as it began; with girls in bee costumes dancing. This is one of those silent shorts that seems to be largely decorative in nature; rather than telling a story or exhibiting a special effect, it seems to be content to look pretty. On this level, it succeeds; the short is quite easy on the eyes.

WILLIE’S MAGIC WAND (1907)
Article 4944 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-1-2015
Directed by Walter R. Booth
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Silent trick film

A young boy absconds with a magic wand and uses it to create mischief.

I managed to locate a copy of this film on YouTube. However, based on the elaborate description of the plot on IMDB, I can only conclude that the print is not complete; it seems to be missing one or two pranks and the ending (in which the boy is punished for his mischief by being turned into a girl) is also missing. Enough of it exists, however, that I decided to let it qualify. The plot is the standard comic one for early trick films; a youngster gets hold of an invention or magical object, runs around and creates chaos by using it, and then gets his comeuppance. This one does have one of my favorite scenes of mischief in it; I find it amusing that, much to the consternation of the cook, the boy brings a big dead fish back to life, which then proceeds to wreak havoc. Since the object of use is a magic wand, there’s a bit more variety of mischief than is usually found in a short like this. The short cuts off in the middle of a stop-motion sequence where he gets some boots to clean themselves off. From what I’ve seen, this one is not bad.

WESTWORLD (1973)
Article 4896 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-10-2015
Directed by Michael Crichton
Featuring Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin
Country: USA
What it is: Machinery runs amok

Several vacationers visit the resort of Delos, which has a series of themed fantasy getaways (the old west, Roman times and medieval times) inhabited by lifelike robots, in which vacationers can indulge in their violent and hedonistic fantasies without fear of hurting someone or being hurt themselves. And, of course, nothing could possibly go worng….

Though I wouldn’t call it the best of the Michael Crichton movies, this is perhaps the most quintessential one in that it defines what we’ve come to expect from Michael Crichton; the catchphrase for the movie is certainly definitive. Storywise, it’s not only archetypal; it’s also fairly bare-bones, but from what I gather, the movie was edited down from a much longer cut that Crichton thought was too dull. Even at that, there are scenes here that feel like filler or padding; the barroom fight is silly and pointless, and the scene where a woman is rescued from the dungeon of the medieval world feels like a stall. Still, there are some clever touches here; I like that some of the robots are of animals as well as humans, and I do like how they at least address the possibility of guests potentially hurting each other. Nevertheless, it does seem to me the height of foolishness to have the robots packing loaded guns. For me, the best thing about the movie is Yul Brynner’s performance as the Gunslinger; it’s modeled off of the character he played in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, but he does such an effective job of playing an unstoppable non-human character that he more than anything else sells the last third of the movie. Apparently, his character was the inspiration for the Michael Myers character in the HALLOWEEN movies, as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performance in THE TERMINATOR.

WEREWOLF WOMAN (1976)
aka La lupa mannara, Legend of the Wolfwoman
Article 4877 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-20-2015
Directed by Rino Di Silvestro
Featuring Annik Borel, Howard Ross, Dagmar Lassander
Country: Italy
What it is: Sleazy psycho killer movie

A woman with a traumatic history becomes convinced she is a werewolf and begins tearing the throats out of her victims.

This movie was directed by Rino Di Silvestro, a film-maker who made a career out of very sleazy and sometimes offensive exploitation fare. This movie is no exception. The opening scene does feature a woman who has turned into a werewolf, but it’s only a dream sequence; the main character never undergoes a transformation of that sort. The movie is largely a compendium of scenes involving murder, rape, sex and nudity punctuated by scenes of police talking about the investigation and doctors spouting pseudo-psychiatric babble. It’s the type of movie where when a nice guy appears on the scene, you know it’s only setting you up for more brutality and nastiness down the road. Fans of exploitation might have some use for this one; as for me, movies that seem to appeal to the lowest-common denominator as this one does are more likely to depress me. Reportedly, it’s a favorite of Quentin Tarantino’s.

THE WONDERFUL LIVING FAN (1904)
aka Le merveilleux eventail vivant
Article 4859 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-30-2015
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Decorative trick short

The King of France receives a marvelous giant fan whose leaves turn into beautiful women.

Though in some ways, this is one of Melies’s “magic trick” shorts, it plays out like one of those “decorative” shorts that occasionally popped up during the early silent era. These are shorts where the primary purpose seems to be to magically produce a pretty tableaux, in this case that of a series of beautiful women appearing as the leaves of fan. The women magically change clothes as well. It’s well done, though it does take a little too long for the short to get around to the magical section. Ultimately, though, the entertainment value of these types of shorts is pretty slim, and this one is no exception.