Kaibyo arima goten (1953)

KAIBYO ARIMA GOTEN (1953)
aka Ghost-Cat of Anima Palace
Article 4170 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-2-2013
Directed by Ryohei Arai
Featuring Takako Irie, Michiko Ai, Yoshitaro Sadato
Country: Japan
What it is: Ghost-cat woman

A murdered woman returns as a vengeance-driven ghost cat.

Many ghost-cat movies were made in Japan during the fifties. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were pretty similar, but I haven’t seen a lot of them yet. The plot is a little vague to me as my copy is in Japanese without English subtitles, but the general thrust of the action is straightforward enough; a woman (who seems to be part of a harem of sorts) is unpopular with the other women, and is murdered. She returns as a ghost-cat, and one of the most striking scenes in this one is watching the ghost, her hands folded in like a cat’s paws, forcing two of her victims to perform tumbling routines. There’s a few scenes of disembodied heads flying around as well. It’s entertaining enough, and some of the horror sequences are effective, but parts of it seem a bit silly as well.

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Jupiter’s Thunderballs (1903)

JUPITER’S THUNDERBALLS (1903)
aka Le tonnerre de Jupiter
Article 4169 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-1-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies

The fearsome god Jupiter prepares to wield his terrible thunderbolts… that is, if he can get them to work and not hurt himself in the process.

Quite frankly, this is one of Georges Melies’s stranger shorts, a circumstance that is only made even more prominent by the fact that the soundtrack on my copy substitutes sound effects for music. There seems to be a bit of a story involving him trying to recharge his thunderbolts and to try to get it to rain so he can use them, but the actions is more than a little confusing at times. Melies plays Jupiter as a rotund buffoon who is his own worst enemy. It’s interesting, but I don’t think he quite pulls this one off.

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Un drame au fond de la mer (1901)

UN DRAME AU FOND DE LA MER (1901)
aka Drama at the Bottom of the Sea
Article 4168 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-27-2013
Directed by Ferdinand Zecca
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: A drama at the bottom of the sea

Two deep sea-divers fight over a fortune in jewels.

IMDB classifies the movie as a fantasy, and it is included in the Walt Lee guide, hence its inclusion in my hunt list. It is, however, a false alarm. Basically, two deep sea divers descend into a scene where several dead people lie around. They find a treasure, fight over it, and one of them prevails. That’s about it, and unless the deep sea diver technology was too advanced for this period of time, there’s no fantastic content, though there are special effects. Still, I can understand how it got misclassified, with the possibility of submarines or mermaids popping into the story. Though I wouldn’t call the special effects strictly realistic (they don’t really look like they’re underwater, for one thing), they are pretty creative. No, there’s not really much of a story, but it’s only about one minute long, so what do you expect?

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La bruja negra (1907)

LA BRUJA NEGRA (1907)
aka La sorciere noire, The Black Witch
Article 4167 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-26-2013
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Trick short

An Arabian couple invite a black witch up into their palace to perform tricks for them.

I’m not sure who’s responsible for this trick film (though the style looks roughly Segundo De Chomonish), but I was impressed by two things about it. One was the excellent quality of the hand-painted color, which not only brightens the scenes but also contributes to changes in mood; a magical change of location will result in a change of tint, which is a technique that I’ve seen in later silent movies, but rarely this early. The other is that the special effects are also fast moving and very smoothly done. There’s no real plot, but these other qualities hold the attention during this four minute short. I’ve seen so many of these silent shorts that they rarely impress me anymore, but this one does.

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Dai-sanji sekia taisen: Yonju-ichi jikan no kyofu (1960)

DAI-SANJI SEKIA TAISEN: YONJU-ICHI JIKAN NO KYOFU (1960)
aka The Final War
Article 4166 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-25-2013
Directed by Shigeaki Hidaka
Featuring Tatsuo Umemiya, Yoshiko Mita, Yayoi Furusato
Country: Japan
What it is: End of the world drama

When an American nuclear bomb is accidentally detonated over Korea, the resulting tensions between the US and the Communist countries escalates into a hot war, with Japan caught in the middle. The story is told from the point of view of a reporter, his girlfriend nurse and their friends and families.

I’m glad to have finally gotten a chance to see this elusive movie (which eventually ended up on my “ones that got away” list), though I’m not surprised that I could only find a copy with no English subtitles or dubbing. Sadly, this is one of those movies that heavily relies on dialogue to tell its story rather than visuals, and if I hadn’t had some handy plot descriptions, I would have been mostly lost, and would have had to rely on the visuals of the final ten minutes (where almost all of the special effects can be found), and a short sequence in which announcements are made in English. Even the plot descriptions are a bit contradictory, with some saying the bomb exploded over South Korea and others saying over North Korea. Still, most of the action is not shown, but announced to the various characters as they listen to the radio. The scenes of panicking people on the run are interesting, and part of the plot seems to hinge on those who are trampled and hurt during the panics. It seems well-directed and well-acted, and, given the subject matter, it’s no surprise that it’s a little depressing. Still, I must hold off on any serious evaluation of this one.

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Joan of Arc (1900)

JOAN OF ARC (1900)
aka Jeanne d’Arc
Article 4165 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-24-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Bleuette Barnon, Georges Melies, Jeanne d’Alcy
Country: France
What it is: Biography of a saint

Joan of Arc is called on by visions of saints to help France defeat their English conquerors.

It might be interesting some time to make a list of real-life people whose life stories have qualified in one way or another for this series. This adds another one to the list, as the appearances of the saints to Joan does qualify as fantastic content, and the movie does include that scene, as well as a sequence at the end where we see Joan in heaven. This appears to have been a very ambitious project for its time; it runs over ten minutes. The movie is also hand-tinted, and has a narrator. One of the more interesting things about the latter is his tendency to go off on tangents about the movie itself, commenting on the appearance of Georges Melies in several different roles, as well as pointing out how the parade sequence used the same extras again and again (having them run around the back of the scenery to reappear), and even pointing out the Melies logo in the corner in one scene for copyright reasons. It’s more historically interesting than it is fun to watch, but it has its moments.

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How to Stop a Motor Car (1902)

HOW TO STOP A MOTOR CAR (1902)
Article 4164 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-23-2013
Directed by Percy Stow
Featuring Cecil M. Hepworth, T.C. Hepworth, Claude Whitten
Country: UK
What it is: Comic trick short

After a policeman is run over by a car he is trying to stop, he consults another policeman on the proper method of stopping a motor vehicle.

My hat’s off to Percy Stow for this one; it’s a one-joke premise, but it’s a pretty amusing joke, at least to my eyes. In a sense, I see it as something of a sequel to HOW IT FEELS TO BE RUN OVER, only this time, there’s some clear fantastic content; after the policeman is run over, he is scattered into several pieces, which reassemble themselves through the use of stop-motion animation, though it is clear that the policeman does suffer some trauma as a result of the accident. The correct method of stopping a car also falls under the category of the fantastic (I certainly wouldn’t try it in real life), but I refuse to give that away for anyone interested in seeing the film. This one was fun.

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Jack Jaggs and Dum Dum (1903)

JACK JAGGS AND DUM DUM (1903)
aka Tom Tight et Dum-Dum
Article 4163 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-21-2013
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Comic trick short

A magician tries to do his trick, but is interrupted by an intrusive dancing fool.

It’s Melies engaged in his usual tricks here, only with the addition of a comic subplot in which his act is interrupted by a clownish dancer. I’m assuming the magician is Jack Jaggs or Tom Tight, and that the dancer is Dum-Dum, but I can’t guarantee that. If this one were a little tighter and livelier, it would work better, but, as it is, it’s one of Melies’s duller shorts from the period. It does build up to a nice final comic moment, though. As for the tricks, you’ve seen them before in other Melies shorts.

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Chandrasena (1935)

CHANDRASENA (1935)
Article 4162 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-20-2013
Directed by Rajaram Vankudre Shantaram
Featuring Nalini Tarkhad, Rajani, Sureshbabu Mane
Country: India
What it is: Epic fantasy

Rama and Lakshmana are kidnapped by an underground demon. Can the monkey god Hanuman rescue them?

Given that my copy of this movie is in unsubtitled Marathi, I had to go to IMDB to get a bit of help with that plot description. Even with that help, this wasn’t easy to follow. It’s based on a story from the Ramayana, and I just don’t have the cultural touchstones to follow it. However, there is a wealth of fantastic content, including a tribe of monkey men, people who can fly and appear out of nowhere, a man who can rise from the dead and duplicate himself, a flying crocodile transporting a woman, and a particularly fun sequence in which the monkey god turns into a giant and picks up a normal sized man. There’s some of the strangest props I’ve ever seen in a movie (some of which I think are musical instruments), and some of the most outrageously huge swords I’ve ever encountered. Since I couldn’t quite follow the story, I just let the flow of images wash over me. Like almost all Indian movies, there’s lots of music (though surprisingly little dancing). I was initially amazed that the movie runs under two hours, but according to IMDB, it should run 136 minutes, which means that my copy may be short about thirty minutes. I can’t really evaluate how good the movie is due to the language barrier, but I was entertained well enough.

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It’s Got Me Again (1932)

IT’S GOT ME AGAIN (1932)
Article 4161 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-19-2013
Director unknown
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Animated cartoon

A gang of mice have a party in a music room until the party is crashed by a hungry cat.

This is one of the early Warner Brothers cartoons that got nominated for an Oscar, and though it’s pretty much a standard cartoon of the era (more singing and dancing than story, characters that look like Mickey Mouse, etc.), it is well animated (especially the fierce-looking cat) and it makes some creative use of the various musical instruments lying around the place. Perhaps the most striking bit involves two mice playing a melody on the piano while doing a version of the Apache dance. The title song is played on a gramophone initially, and then is sung by a cornered mouse with altered lyrics later on. No, it’s not a great cartoon, and it needs to be watched with an appreciation for the nature of animated cartoons at this point of history, but this is one of the better examples.

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