MURDER AT 45 R.P.M. (1960)
aka Meurtre en 45 tours
Article 3818 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-17-2012
Posting Date: 1-27-2012
Directed by Etienne Perier
Featuring Danielle Darrieux, Michel Auclair, Jean Servais
Country: France
What it is: Suspense thriller with twists

A songstress in an unhappy marriage with a songwriter is secretly in love with her pianist. When the songwriter dies in an automobile accident, the songstress and the pianist suspect each other of having murdered him. But could it be possible that he’s not really dead…?

The horror content here is that the plot touches at one point on the possibility that the songwriter may have returned from the dead, but this touch is pretty light, and there’s really nothing else here to to make this one anything more than marginalia as far as the this project is concerned. I found the movie passable. What I liked best is how the movie plays with your expectations by the presence of a single scene of a man trying to hitch a ride shortly before the accident occurs; I couldn’t help but notice how this scene really sets up a situation that keeps you wondering about the truth of the situation until it is finally resolved at the end of the movie. Still, one problem that this movie has is that it all has to be explained sooner or later, and the explanation here starts falling apart the minute you give it any serious thought. Still, I think it worked well enough as an okay thriller.

MURDER MOTEL (1975)
TV Episode of British TV series “Thriller”
Article 3817 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-16-2012
Posting Date: 1-26-2012
Directed by Robyn Millan, Ralph Bates, Edward Judd
Country: UK
What it is: Suspense thriller

When her boyfriend mysteriously disappears after being suspected of embezzling, a woman traces him to a hotel, where she attempts to discover his fate. What she doesn’t know is that the boyfriend has been killed by the hotel staff, who are part of a ring of assassins for hire.

Though it is possible to argue that paid assassins could be lumped in with serial killers, that’s a pretty big stretch for me in terms of horror content, and, truth be told, I don’t think this one qualifies as horror. It’s also not one of the better episodes of the TV series in question; it starts out all right, but it gets a little repetitive once you’ve established the premise, and I didn’t care for the nervous, fidgety performance of Robyn Millan as the heroine of the piece. There’s a few good moments here and there, but that’s not enough to really redeem this one.

MOON OF THE WOLF (1972)
TV-Movie
Article 3816 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-15-2012
Posting Date: 1-25-2012
Directed by Daniel Petrie
Featuring David Janssen, Bradford Dillman, Barbara Rush
Country: USA
What it is: Made-for-TV lycanthropy

When a young girl is found dead in the bayou, the belief is that wild dogs were responsible. However, an autopsy reveals that the killer was no wolf. And when more deaths occur, it becomes apparent that the killer has superhuman strength. And why does a dying old man keep referring to a loup-garou?

I really didn’t watch many of the made-for-TV horror movies when I was a kid in the seventies, but this is one I caught… at least for a while, until I lost interest in it. I’d been disappointed because the ads made it look like a horror movie when it was really some sort of a mystery, and for many years, I carried the belief that this was one of those movies which pretended to have fantastic content and didn’t. The problem was that I didn’t wait long enough, and having watched it now, I realize that I was dead wrong; yes, the first half plays more like a mystery, but ultimately it doesn’t cop out of the horror genre. Of course, as a kid, I expected the monsters to be trotted out early and often; as an adult, I’m more patient, and I found myself enjoying the movie more than I did as a kid, at least partially because the script is reasonably well-written and it’s well acted. In fact, it’s the horror content that is the most disappointing thing here; the werewolf makeup is not very impressive, and the climax is fairly unmemorable. For me, the most disappointing thing was the way it trots out the “loup-garou” word and plays all mysterious about it before finally explaining what it stands for; I knew what it stood for immediately and was annoyed that no one else in the movie knew, but that may be an individual reaction. All in all, it was watchable enough, but merely okay.

METEOR (1979)
Article 3813 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-12-2012
Posting Date: 1-22-2012
Directed by Ronald Neame
Featuring Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden
Country: USA
What it is: Disaster movie

A comet hits an asteroid, causing a huge piece of it to break off and head on a collision course with Earth. The only way to keep the meteor from hitting the Earth is to use nuclear weapons aboard satellites that aren’t legally supposed to be there. Can the Americans and Russians come to an agreement to save the world?

I went into this one expecting the worst, but I found myself enjoying it a lot more than I expected. Which is not to say that it doesn’t have its problems; for example, Connery’s character has a very bad case of Mamet Dammit (i.e. painfully bad cussing), and the movie occasionally gives into its worst melodramatic impulses, with the result that certain scenes are truly embarrassing. Yet I like the fact that, in comparison with other disaster movies, it keeps the soap opera aspects in check; they’re there, but kept to a minimum. I also actively enjoyed the game of diplomatic chess between the Russians and the Americans in which they jockey for a way for each side to save face to ensure cooperation. I also like the fact that the movie was aware of the dramatic problem of having the big climax involve a lot of waiting for something to happen, and got around that by dovetailing a secondary crisis to keep the movie from getting too tedious towards the end. Still, it does have a major problem in that some of its special effects aren’t up to snuff; the splinter meteors look more like glowing lights, and, despite the wealth of explosions, the climax doesn’t have a whole lot of bang to it. But as far as movies go, I’ve seen a lot worse… and some of it very recently.

MEGAFORCE (1982)
Article 3812 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-11-2012
Posting Date: 1-21-2012
Directed by Hal Needham
Featuring Barry Bostwick, Michael Beck, Persis Khambatta
Country: USA / Hong Kong
What it is: Loud and busy

A military group called Megaforce uses the most advanced technology the free world can muster to combat evil. This means they can blow lots of things up. They are sent to catch a band of revolutionaries who are also good at blowing things up. Unfortunately, their mission backfires when they are left stranded in a foreign country because their actions (which involved blowing things up) have created an international incident. Can they escape by blowing more things up?

Director Hal Needham was one of the highest paid stuntmen of Hollywood before he turned to directing. I was dragged to see his first directorial effort SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT by a friend who insisted it was one of the greatest and funniest movies ever made. I was very far from impressed (and still wonder if there is a cult out there who thinks that hearing Jackie Gleason cuss up a blue streak is the epitome of great comedy). Sorting the ratings on IMDB, that appears to be Needham’s best movie; so what am I going to think of this one, which ranks as his worst? Well, let me try to recreate the experience. Please imagine a soulless eighties action soundtrack playing underneath all of this.

Opening credits. Bad comedy. Corny comedy. Explosions. More explosions. More bad comedy. Stunts. Bad comedy. Romance. Comic inventor character type. Stunts. Explosions. More explosions. More bad comedy. Stunts. Explosions. Explosions. Stunts. More bad comedy. Catchphrase. Stunts. Unbelievable final stunt. Obligatory hint that a sequel is forthcoming. Ending credits.

Final notes – Megaforce’s advanced technology is the fantastic content. No sequel. End of story.