Blue Thunder (1983)

BLUE THUNDER (1983)
Article 4400 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-23-2013
Directed by John Badham
Featuring Roy Scheider, Warren Oates, Candy Clark
Country: USA
What it is: Action thriller

A policeman who specializes in air surveillance is pegged to test a new experimental helicopter with the latest technology and capable of firing weapons. He stumbles across a conspiracy surrounding the helicopter, and finds he must stay alive long enough to provide proof of it.

The opening message in the movie claims that the technology on display in the movie already exists, which made me wonder why this movie would qualify as genre. However, there are two factors to consider: 1) the technology may exist for each specific aspect of the helicopter, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have been combined in this form, and 2) movies don’t always tell the truth. So let’s assume the movie is indeed genre, and proceed from there.

I first encountered this movie via a trailer I saw in a movie theater. It showed the helicopter in question appearing over the horizon and then letting its weaponry loose on a bus filled with dummies, all of which are violently destroyed. I do have to admit that the trailer was quite effective, though it probably had for me the opposite effect that was intended; because I tend to dislike movies that so baldly exploit paranoid mind-sets, I had no desire to see the movie after seeing the trailer. Though I did eventually see the movie, I was surprised that the sequence from the trailer did not appear in the movie, though there is an equivalent sequence where the helicopter is demonstrated on a fake town full of cardboard people. Yet the thing that surprised me most from this watching was that within the movie, the helicopter is never used to threaten the general populace, as almost all the scenes involving it have it being flown by the hero of the story.

With this current viewing, I found myself once again thinking about this curious aspect of the story, and an interesting thought occurred to me. The story itself could have reduced the super-helicopter to a Gizmo Maguffin, as the main thrust of the plot involves a conspiracy surrounding the helicopter, and, with some shuffling of the plot elements, the whole movie could have been written without ever using the helicopter at all. Instead, the helicopter becomes the instrument by which the plot is uncovered and brought to light, which is certainly an unusual use for a Maguffin. This offbeat use of a Maguffin manages to alleviate a little some of my problems with the movie, which is sometimes slow, has some action sequences which are a little silly (especially having the hero’s girlfriend take a dangerous u-turn in traffic and going the wrong way down a one-way street for no better reason than she missed a turn-off), and has a story that makes use of an astonishing set of coincidences. Apparently, the original script had the hero flipping out and terrorizing people with the copter, and I suspect that the Vietnam subplot came from the original conception. All in all, I found the movie sporadically effective. The movie was dedicated to Warren Oates; this was his last movie.

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Spies Strike Silently (1966)

SPIES STRIKE SILENTLY (1966)
aka Le spie uccidono in silenzio, Spies Kill Silently
Article 4399 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-22-2013
Directed by Mario Caiano
Featuring Lang Jeffries, Emma Danieli, Andrea Bosic
Country: Italy / Spain
What it is: Spyghetti

American agent Michael Drum is called in on the murder of a scientist’s daughter in Beirut. He discovers that there’s an insidious plot afoot to kill a series of great humanitarians, and he sets out to discover the truth.

Yes, this is one of the many Italian imitations of the James Bond franchise, and since it has a lowly rating of 5.0 on IMDB, I can only assume that it’s not a very popular entry of that type. Nevertheless, I found myself caught up in the plot at an early point; once it was revealed that a criminal organization was targeting great humanitarians, I became very curious as to exactly what type of plot was afoot, and that was the hook that got me interested. I suppose I should be disappointed that the movie never ends up giving me a satisfactory reason why this particularly group has been targeted; once you meet the supervillain, his ultimate goal is very ordinary indeed, but I still give the movie credit for catching my interest. It’s also one where the fantastic content is prominent; it involves a drug that destroys the will and allows the supervillain to control his minions. In the end, the movie is quite ordinary, but because it caught my interest early enough, I was able to sit through it with a certain degree of enjoyment, and that’s a bit of an accomplishment.

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Night Games (1980)

NIGHT GAMES (1980)
Article 4398 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-21-2013
Directed by Roger Vadim
Featuring Cindy Pickett, Barry Primus, Joanna Cassidy
Country: France / USA
What it is: Erotic drama

A housewife, scarred by a rape, finds it impossible to consummate with her husband. When he goes on a trip and leaves her alone, she fires the help and stays in the mansion by herself. Then she begins to get erotic visits from a fantasy figure…

As for the fantastic content, the fantasy sequences (which mostly involve her lover dressing up in strange costumes) might make it marginally a fantasy, and a subplot about her being stalked by a would-be killer might give it a touch of horror, but to me, neither of these touches are enough to really push it into genre territory. As for the movie itself, all I can say is that it’s less bizarrely silly than some of the other Roger Vadim movies I’ve seen, but then, not being a fan (and this movie didn’t turn me into one), I’ve not exactly went out of my way to find them. The movie may have an interesting premise involving rape trauma, but I’d hardly say that it really does justice to the theme, and most of the movie seems to be about Cindy Pickett wandering around a mansion in revealing clothes. If you’re a Cindy Pickett fan, go for it; for me, it was mostly a waste of time.

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Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (1968)

YOKAI MONSTERS: 100 MONSTERS (1968)
aka Yokai hyaku monogatari
Article 4397 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-20-2013
Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda
Featuring Shinobu Araki, Jun Fujimaki, Ryutaro Gomi
Country: Japan
What it is: Monster mayhem

A corrupt magistrate plans to tear down a shrine and some tenements to build a brothel, much to the anger of the residents of a village. However, when the magistrate refuses to take part in a curse eliminating ritual, he opens himself up to supernatural revenge…

This is the second of a loose trilogy of movies known as Yokai Monsters; I’ve already seen the last one, ALONG WITH GHOSTS. The title is a bit of a cheat; though it does have quite an assortment of monsters (most prominently a two-armed one-legged umbrella monster), I think it falls quite a ways short of a hundred. Even more to the point, the vast majority of the monsters only take part in a short melee scene and a final march sequence. In fact, most of the movie seems to be about the machinations of the magistrate which are intended to show just how corrupt and evil he is. When you get down to it, the main thrust of the plot is very ordinary, and though we get two ghost stories, a couple of attack sequences, a scene where the village idiot encounters the umbrella monster, and the aforementioned march, the movie seems somewhat short on monster action. So you can count me as being somewhat disappointed by this one; the monsters (when they show up) are weird and fun, and I’d just like to see a lot more of them and less of the humans. After all, with a title like this, the movie should be able to conjure up a new monster every minute or so.

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Goldface, the Fantastic Superman (1967)

GOLDFACE, THE FANTASTIC SUPERMAN (1967)
aka Goldface, il fantastico superman
Article 4396 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-19-2013
Directed by Bitto Albertini
Featuring Espartaco Santoni, Evi Marandi, Big Matthews
Country: Italy / Spain
What it is: Wrestling hero action

Wrestling hero Goldface takes on a terrorist organization specializing in extortion that is being run by a supervillain known as the Cobra.

Hey, here’s a novelty; it’s a masked wrestler movie not from Mexico, but from Italy. For the record, they may be better at this type of movie than than the Mexicans are; the movie is faster moving and has a lot more action than the Santo movies. It also has something that is generally in short supply in the Mexican masked wrestler movies; it has a genuine and intentional sense of humor. I like that Goldface has a peanut-munching sidekick who adds to the amusement, and my favorite scene has Goldface and his sidekick in a Goldface costume causing a villain to waste his gunfire shooting at an assortment of Goldface-shaped balloons. Still, it doesn’t quite have the charm of the Santo movies, and at least Santo is usually tussling with fantastically-themed enemies (martians, vampires, ghosts, etc), whereas Goldface is here facing off against a bargain basement Bondian supervillain. This brings up the problem of fantastic content. Despite the James Bond trappings, there is no gadgetry at play in this movie (unless the inflatable Goldface balloons count for something), and the main fantastic content that my sources list is problematic; according to them, both Goldface and his sidekick have super strength. Now I will admit that they both are strong, but there’s not a point in this movie where I see any demonstration of strength that seems humanly impossible. Still, this is certainly not the first time I’ve covered a movie about a masked hero with no superpowers for this series.

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The Devils (1977)

THE DEVILS (1977)
Article 4395 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-18-2013
Directed by Ken Russell
Featuring Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton
Country: UK
What it is: Surreal historical drama

When a strong, charismatic priest of the town of Loudun stands in the way of Cardinal Richelieu’s political ambitions, the latter uses his minions to concoct a way to destroy the priest by using the madness of a nun as proof that the priest is engaged in witchcraft.

If there is one thing that director Ken Russell is known for, it’s his penchant for excess, and from the opening scene in which the King performs in a Melies-inspired musical number that celebrates the birth of Venus to the orgiastic antics of the nuns to the grotesque nastiness of the techniques of a pair of torturers, there’s no shortness of excess in this one. However, this is one of those movies where the excess actually works; it underscores the nightmarish nature of the hypocrisies by which political machinations hide behind a religious front, not to mention the stupidity of the common people, who for the sake of of the circus-like spectacle of the witch hunt, end up sacrificing their own safety and playing into the hands of their enemies. I’m not surprised the film is controversial; its religious imagery alone would be very hard for many people to bear. I found it to be a powerful, fascinating and very sad movie, and it’s full of great performances; I often found myself surprised at discovering how certain characters ultimately behave under the circumstances into which they’ve been thrown. I haven’t seen a whole lot of Ken Russell movies up to this point, but this is perhaps the best of those I’ve seen.

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Blood Tide (1982)

BLOOD TIDE (1982)
Article 4394 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-17-2013
Directed by Richard Jefferies
Featuring James Earl Jones, Jose Ferrer, Lila Kedrova
Country: UK / Greece
What it is: Monster movie

A treasure hunter releases an ancient evil from an underground cavern on a Greek island.

This movie doesn’t have much of a reputation, yet I didn’t quite dislike it as much as some others do. The direction is indifferent, the script is rather muddled at times, and the level of monster action is low for its intended audience. However, I am partial to the Greek atmosphere of the movie, and there’s always something satisfying about hearing James Earl Jones’ voice in any context, even if having him quote from “Othello” constantly is too cute. I also like Jose Ferrer’s solid, underplayed performance as the mayor of the island. Still, there is something disappointing in a monster movie that can’t seem to find more than a fleeting glimpse of the monster, and it would have been better if they had saved the glimpse for the end of the movie rather than in the middle. The movie also has quite a few dead spots. Nevertheless, I did find a little to enjoy in the movie, and even though it does owe a little bit to JAWS, it’s hardly a clone of that movie.

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The Clock-Maker’s Secret (1907)

THE CLOCK-MAKER’S SECRET (1907)
aka Le secret de l’horloger
Article 4393 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-16-2013
Directed by Gaston Velle
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Deal with the devil

A clock-maker wins a contract to build a clock in the town square with a plan given to him by the devil. When the clock proves impossible for him to build, he is tempted by the devil to sell his soul for the help to build the clock.

Here’s another silent short saved from my “ones that got away” list, as was yesterday’s short. On the surface, this is similar to the one from yesterday as well; both involve people tempted to make deals with the devil to advance their careers. This one is a much more ordinary film than yesterday’s was, though; instead of hitting any dramatic marks, it’s a standard example of the effects-laden trick films of the era. So we get bizarre nightmare visions involving clocks, not to mention the ubiquitous dancing girls that were all too common to the era; in this short, the latter seem especially gratuitous, as they bring what story there is to a grinding halt whenever they appear. It’s passably entertaining, but hardly one of the better films of the era.

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A Deal With the Devil (1914)

A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL (1914)
aka Den mystiske Fremmede
Article 4392 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-15-2013
Directed by Holger-Madsen
Featuring Olaf Fonss, Ebba Thomsen, Alf Blutecher
Country: Denmark
What it is: Faust variation

A medical student, dreaming of fame and riches, makes a deal with the devil that allows him to become an extraordinary success.

This short movie ended up on my “ones that got away” list, but thanks to a friend, I was able to find a copy that not only has English subtitles, but fills in the missing second reel with a “stills recreation” summary of the missing action. I’m really glad to have a chance to have seen this one; it’s a very well done variation on the Faust story. Two things in particular impressed me. One is that it makes excellent use of a visual motif it sets up early on; when the aspiring medical student visits a patient, the devil will appear at either the head or the foot of the bed, a clue which will indicate whether the patient will live or die. Another thing it does well is that it manages to set up a fairly common and quite noticeable plot device (you know how it will end when the student falls asleep early on), but manages to make the rest of the story involving enough that you forget about the coming plot twist until it finally comes around. Alf Blutecher is very effective as the devil, and this is definitely one of the better horror movies of the era.

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The Awakening (1980)

THE AWAKENING (1980)
Article 4391 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-13-2013
Directed by Mike Newell
Featuring Charlton Heston, Susannah York, Jill Townsend
Country: UK
What it is: Ancient Egyptian evil meets THE OMEN

When an archaeologist unearths a tomb containing the mummy of an Egyptian queen whose name has been eradicated from history, it unleashes an evil that sets its sights on his own family.

I went into this movie with the knowledge that its reputation was not very high. An early scene in which the actions of the opening of the tomb coincide with pains undergone by the archaeologist’s pregnant wife did manage to intrigue me enough that I hoped the movie would be somewhat better than its reputation. However, once the bizarre deaths start happening, I begin to suspect the movie was primarily an imitation of THE OMEN. However, as the movie progressed, I began to feel that the bizarre deaths had less to do with the movie’s conscious attempt to borrow from the other movie, but more to do with the an attempt to cover up the movie’s real problem, which is that the movie gets more muddled and lethargic as it progresses, so much so that by the time the ending rolls around, I found myself having not the slightest interest in how it came out. In short, the movie is just plain dull, and even Heston’s star power can’t do a thing to pull it out of the doldrums. It’s a little ironic that a movie with this title should make you fall asleep, but there it is.

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