Now Hear This (1962)
Article 5949 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-15-2021
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: An exercise in oddness

A hard-of-hearing Briton finds a new red hearing horn in the street, and throws his old horn away. However, this is no ordinary horn; it’s a horn missing from the head of the devil.

By the early sixties, the quality of the Warner Brothers cartoon was in rapid decline, but there is still the occasional gem to be found. This is one of them. This one is an exercise in surreal abstraction, with distorted and bizarre sounds leading the man into a series of indescribable encounters. It’s one of those cartoons that works fine in the lower-budget style of the studio in that time, and makes good use of the spareness of that style. Treg Brown gets prominent credit in the cartoon for his sound effects, and it is well earned; this cartoon uses sound as decisively as its visual quality. It was an Oscar nominee for its year, and it well-deserved the nomination. It’s one of Jones’ strangest works.

1941 (1941)
Article 5948 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-10-2021
Directed by Francis Lee
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Historical abstraction

An egg and light bulbs are destroyed in a wash of colors and to the music of Igor Stravinsky.

Here’s another short that is listed in the Walt Lee guide by dint of its being decidedly unrealistic. It was meant as a reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which is the only thing it has in common with the Spielberg movie of the same name. Unlike many abstract shorts, it’s not animated; it is filmed footage which mostly consists of various colors of liquid running through each other with the destruction of the egg and the light bulbs as added touches. In its own abstract way, it is rather effective, with the scenes capturing a bit of the feeling of having been dirtily violated. It’s only four minutes long and the Walt Lee guide lists it as an amateur film, but it’s rather interesting.

Night Train to Terror (1985)
Article 5947 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-8-2021
Directed by John Carr, Phillip Marshak, Tom McGowan, Jay Schlossberg-Cohen, Gregg C. Tallas
Featuring John Philip Law, Richard Moll, Cameron Mitchell
Country: USA
What it is: Anthology of recycling

While a rock band plays in another car of a train, God and Satan discuss the fates of three women.

I was about half-way through watching the first of the three stories in this anthology film when the light bulb clicked on in my head. What I was watching was not, in fact, footage made specifically for this movie, but rather, an entirely different movie which had been sliced to ribbons and re-edited to maximize the number of exploitable scenes; all the violence, nudity and gore, as little of the plot as possible. It’s an incoherent mess that you only begin to sort out when the narrator shows up and clues you in. The second story is more of the same only with bigger chunks of film and no real ending. The third fares a bit better because it only seems to be missing half its footage than the three-quarters the other two sections are missing; still, the special effects are subpar, especially during the stop-motion animated segments. The movie’s own footage consists of dull conversations between God and Satan along with scenes of a rock band doing a song called “Everybody but You”. According to the credits the band does three songs; I wonder where the other two went. At any rate, the song has a subtext; it can be taken to mean that everybody else is out there watching a movie somewhere, so why don’t you sit down and watch this one? Sure, it says it’s about dancing, but I know a subtext when I hear one. For all that, this movie isn’t quite as godawful as it could have been. That’s still no recommendation as to why you should watch this one.

Night of the Creeps (1986)
Article 5946 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-25-2021
Directed by Fred Dekker
Featuring Jason Lively, Tom Atkins, Steve Marshall
Country: USA
What it is: Not bad hodgepodge

The attempted theft of a frozen corpse for a fraternity gag unleashes a horror that began 27 years earlier when a alien capsule crash-landed on Earth.

This horror comedy borrows and references any number of other horror / sci-fi films. It’s a variant of the zombie movie genre with touches of ALIEN (among others) surrounded by a teen comedy. In description it sounds pretty bad, but its touches are actually rather fun. I like the fact that many of the characters have last names of famous horror directors. I also like the references to PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE and the fact that Dick Miller shows up playing a character named Walter (you supply the last name). There’s even one borderline annoying character whose final speech is unexpectedly and effectively poignant. It’s quite bloody, but it manages to have a decent heart at its center, so I give this one a pass.

The Night Before Christmas (1946)
Article 5945 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-20-2021
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: the poem brought to life

A narrator recites the poem “The Night Before Christmas”, and we see a reenactment of the events in the poem.

Here’s another short from Castle Films, and I suspect this may be a repackaging of a short from somewhere else, but I can’t say for sure. Despite the fact that I have this one on a cartoon collection, only about three scenes are animated; these are scenes of Santa flying through the air with his reindeer and of visions of sugarplums dancing in children’s heads. The rest is live-action. There’s not really much to say about this one; there’s really not much here to augment the poem and there are no surprises. It unfolds much like it probably plays in your head when you hear the poem. Nowadays, the verse about the pipe would be cut.

Near Dark (1987)
Article 5944 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-17-2021
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Featuring Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen
Country: USA
What it is: Vampire variant

A young man picks up a girl who turns out to be a vampire. After being bitten by her, he is kidnapped by a gang of vampires who are traveling around the country on a murder spree. If the new member wants to survive in their midst, he must learn to kill…

Here’s an interesting variant on the vampire theme. Outside of being killed by the rays of the sun, traditional vampire mythology is set aside, and the movie plays more like a moody rural action thriller than a horror film. There’s an interesting assortment of characters among the gang, with Bill Paxton memorable as the craziest and most violent of the vampires. Still, taken as a whole, the movie doesn’t quite work for me; certain plot elements seem a bit too convenient, and there’s something about the ways the characters interact that feels a little unconvincing. Nevertheless, it has some truly memorable images, my favorite being that of the hero’s smoky body stumbling through a field.