SPIRITUALIST PHOTOGRAPHER (1903)
aka Le portrait spirituel
Article 4265 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-15-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Magic film

A magician turns a woman into a portrait of herself, and then back.

This is a pretty ordinary Melies trick film, and I’d probably be largely finished with this review if it weren’t for one interesting little touch. It opens with a man holding up two placards, one in French and one in English, which convey to the viewer the knowledge that a dissolve effect will be demonstrated in the short without the use of a black background, and that this is a novel effect, and, if the truth be told, I do remember that this particular trick was almost always done with a black background up to this point. I don’t know just how difficult it was to switch to a technique using a white background, but it must have been tricky enough for Melies to take the trouble to explain the change in the film itself. If anything, this does demonstrate that the purpose of some of these magic shorts was to experiment with new techniques, which makes this short at least a little more interesting historically.

SOVIET TOYS (1924)
aka Sovietski igrushki
#4264
Date: 7-14-2013
Directed by Dziga Vertov
No cast
Country: USSR
What it is: Animated Soviet propaganda

A greedy capitalist devours everything and gives nothing back. Can the worker and the peasant force him to put his excess funds into the state bank?

What we have here is another foray in Soviet propaganda; it’s basically an allegory about conditions that arose in USSR at the time that Lenin instituted a New Economic Policy that resulted in the rise of greedy entrepreneurs. Much of the imagery is grotesque, especially the sequence where the capitalist gorges himself, vomits into a barrel, and then drinks the contents of the barrel. It verges into fantasy several times, the most striking of which is the merging of the peasant and the worker into a single two-headed creature that was capable of extracting the funds from the capitalist. The animation has a vaguely Emile Cohl-ish quality to it, which makes it a bit primitive for the time. I found it somewhat interesting but also quite predictable at times, and it is best viewed as a product of its time and place.

SONICMAN (1979)
aka Supersonic Man
Article 4060 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-19-2012
Directed by Juan Piquer Simon
Featuring Antonio Cantafora, Cameron Mitchell, Jose Luis Ayestaran
Country: Spain
What it is: Superhero hijinks

Supersonic Man comes from outer space to prevent an evil genius’s plan to conquer the world.

If you’ve committed to making a low-budget rip on SUPERMAN and you know it’s going to end up bad, you could do worse than make it at least colorful and goofy, which this one does. It has Cameron Mitchell as the villain, a flame-throwing robot, lots of people running around with blasters, a comic relief begging wino and a stupid theme song. Granted, it’s not in the same league as INFRA-MAN as far as inspired goofiness goes, but it’s at least much better than THE PUMA MAN. And, truth to tell, I would have liked to see a sequel… but only if they followed up on the ending of this one and gave the comic-relief wino the super powers as they seem to be doing. But I’m not going to hold my breath for the release of SUPERSONIC WINO.

THE STRANGER (1973)
aka Stranded in Space
TV-Movie

Article 3468 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-6-2011
Posting Date: 2-11-2011
Directed by Lee H. Katzin
Featuring Glenn Corbett, Cameron Mitchell, Sharon Acker
Country: USA
What it is: “The Fugitive” crossed with JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN, TV-pilot style

When something inexplicably goes wrong during a space mission, an astronaut finds himself a virtual prisoner in a hospital. He escapes, only to discover that he hasn’t returned to Earth at all, but is on a planet called Terra which is under a totalitarian state known as the Perfect Order… and he’s too dangerous to be allowed to live.

One of the ground rules I set for myself when I started this movie-watching project is that I would never base my review on a viewing of the MST3K version of the movie. Don’t get me wrong; I’m actually a big fan of the series, but I also believe watching their versions inherently changes the viewing experience, making it impossible to give any fair judgment of the movie. Only twice have I been tempted to break that rule, and in each case, it was due to the difficulty I had in tracking down the movie in question; one of them was RADAR SECRET SERVICE, and this was the other one.

I found this one particularly frustrating to find; I would see the title pop up occasionally in my hunting, but every time I got around to actually purchasing it, it had lapsed into unavailability again. I’m glad to say that I finally found a copy.

The movie is sitting with a lowly 3.6 rating on IMDB, mostly because of overeager Msties giving it a low rating merely because it appeared on MST3K. It’s not a great TV-Movie, but it’s far from the worst I’ve seen. Its worst problem is that the premise is quite far-fetched; it’s really hard to swallow that the planet would be this similar to earth, even to the point that everyone is speaking English. Yet among the implausabilities, there’s some nice ideas and interesting touches in the script. Furthermore, I find Cameron Mitchell’s performance in it to be one of his best; though he’s the primary villain, his combination of conviction and vulnerability (he’s well aware how quickly things could turn against him if he doesn’t recapture the astronaut) makes for a surprisingly complex character. Had this pilot managed to spawn a series, it might have been worth catching for Mitchell alone; however, I find myself wondering if he would have ended up a regular character. At any rate, I ended up liking this one better than I thought I would.