Les generations comiques (1909)

LES GENERATIONS COMIQUES (1909)
aka Generation spontanee, Magic Cartoons
Article 3510 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-28-2011
Posting Date: 3-25-2011
Directed by Emile Cohl
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Abstract cartoon

There’s really no plot to this one; it’s basic a concept brought to life in which portraits are made of various eccentric characters, with animated shapes mutating and changing until they turn into the various people. In a sense, this may be the most representative of the movies I’ve seen in catching that peculiar charm that marked the work of Emile Cohl.

This marks the end of this run of short silents, but I’ll probably be revisiting them in the future.

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Les douze travaux d’Hercule (1910)

LES DOUZE TRAVAUX D’HERCULE (1910)
aka Hercules and the Big Stick
Article 3509 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-27-2011
Posting Date: 3-24-2011
Directed by Emile Cohl
Featuring Maurice Vinot, Alice Tissot (?)
Country: France
What it is: Animated mythological epic

Hercules performs his twelve labors with the help of his big stick and whatever else he can get a hold of.

Most of the other Emile Cohl movies I’ve seen have been combinations of live action and animation; this one is entirely animated, which made me rather surprised to see a cast listed on IMDB. Maybe they served as models for the animated characters. Despite given prominent mention in the English title, truth to tell, Hercules’s big stick isn’t particularly effective; though it helps him in wiping out an army, it’s pretty useless against non-human foes. In fact, when he tries to use it on a lion during the first task, the lion eats his big stick and then spits it out him; Hercules has to defeat him by sitting on him and squashing him, which is pretty easy, given the fact the Hercules’s stomach in this one is… well, I’ll be nice and describe it as Herculean. Most of the tasks involve killing beasties, though some of them rely on Hercules calling in some favors from buddies. It’s fairly amusing, though I think it might have been a bit easier for me to follow if I had familiarized myself with his twelve tasks, as the title cards are in French on this one.

And just so you don’t get the wrong idea, I think I ought to tell you that the big stick is a club.

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Le retapeur de cervelles (1911)

LE RETAPEUR DE CERVELLES (1911)
aka The Brain Inspector
Article 3508 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-26-2011
Posting Date: 3-23-2011
Directed by Emile Cohl
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Partially animated medical movie

A man goes to a noted brain inspector for help. After observing the goings-on inside the man’s head, the inspector concludes that an operation is necessary.

This short is a combination of live action and animation. The animated segments occur when the inspector uses a megaphone-like tube to inspect the man’s brain and sees various surreal visions, and again during the operation when the inspector removes a long rope from the man’s head. The rope then goes into a animated transformations, indicating that this is the cause of the man’s ailment. The animated transformations are very entertaining, almost Freudian at times, and it has a stream-of-consciousness flow to it. This makes for an interesting viewing experience, and makes me long for a rediscovery of Emile Cohl and his work.

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Onesime aux Enfers (1912)

ONESIME AUX ENFERS (1912)
aka Simple Simon and the Devil
Article 3507 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-25-2011
Posting Date: 3-22-2011
Directed by Jean Durand
Featuring Ernest Bourbon and Gaston Modot
Country: France
What it is: Supernatural comedy

A simpleton sells his soul to the devil so he can pay for his lunch. He then goes to hell. Hilarity ensues.

Well, they don’t call him Simple Simon for nothing. Onesime was a comic character who appeared in quite a few early French shorts; I’ve encountered him before in ONESIME HORLOGER. So what is hell like in this one? Well, in true Melies fashion, it’s full of tumbling imps, as well as beautiful women who, when Onesime tries to kiss them, turn into fat demons or policemen. It also has a twist ending that I just knew was coming. This is another charming early short.

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La Police en l’an 2000 (1910)

LA POLICE EN L’AN 2000 (1910)
aka Police of the Future
Article 3506 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-24-2011
Posting Date: 3-21-2011
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Science fiction comedy

IN the year 2000, policemen nab criminals with the help of their flying machine.

This one is pretty amusing. In order to nab the criminals, the police observe them from their flying craft with telescopes and binoculars, and then use long poles with hooks on the end to grab the criminals, haul them up to the flying craft, and dump them in a cell. They even do some dog-catching on the side, as they grab a stray dog eating sausages. Or maybe this was to prevent him from becoming a cannibal, considering how many dogs-into sausages movies were made in the early silent era. It looks like the real world has yet to catch up with this idea.

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L’Homme aimante (1907)

L’HOMME AIMANTE (1907)
aka The Magnetized Man
Article 3505 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-23-2011
Posting Date: 3-20-2011
Directed by Louis Feuillade
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Comic science fiction short

A man terrorized by ruffians decides to protect himself by buying some chain mail. However, the delivery boy leaves the chain mail next to a dynamo, thus magnetizing it. When he delivers it to the man, hilarity ensues.

Here’s another silent short that ended up on my “Ones that got away” list, but I was pointed in the direction of a French film collection that contained it. In fact, the collection will supply me with several days of silent shorts. This one is quite amusing, though a little obvious; the magnetized armor attracts store signs and a manhole cover. Actually, the movie gets a little risque when the man encounters some gendarmes; the rising of their swords in attraction to the armor looks quite suggestive, and the movie plays it up for all that its worth. Minor, but fun.

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Werewolves on Wheels (1971)

WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS (1971)
Article 3504 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-22-2011
Posting Date: 3-19-2011
Directed by Michel Levesque
Featuring Steve Oliver, D.J. Anderson, Gene Shane
Country: USA
What it is: Bikers and beasts

When a biker gang crosses swords with a Satanic cult, they find themselves under a curse that begins killing off the members of the gang one by one.

I’ve got to be honest; with a title like this one, I certainly wasn’t expecting a good movie. I did harbor the hope that the movie would at least deliver on the one visual it seemed to promise – a shot of a gang of biker werewolves tooling around on their choppers. Not only does the movie never give us that visual, but it plays all mysterious about the werewolf angle, not giving us a good view of one until very late in the movie. And though one of the werewolves eventually does get on his motorcycle and ride around, that’s still only one, and most of the footage is too dark to appreciate. So what we mostly get is bikers doing biker stuff – terrorizing passers-by and living their hedonistic lifestyle. If this is your idea of a great time, you’re welcome to it; it’s a better biker movie than it is a horror movie, for what it’s worth. There is at least one memorable scene, though, in which the gang of bikers disappears into a dust storm; it’s the eeriest moment in the movie.

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Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (1971)
Article 3503 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-21-2011
Posting Date: 3-18-2011
Directed by Dalton Trumbo
Featuring Timothy Bottoms, Kathy Fields, Marsha Hunt
Country: USA
What it is: Anti-war drama

A young soldier suffers from a shell attack that leaves him a quadriplegic who is also unable to see, hear, or speak. The doctors and the military also believe he is brain-dead, but he is aware. How can he keep sane, and will he ever be able to communicate to those around him?

Like yesterday’s movie, this is also a winner at Cannes; it won the FIPRESCI Prize as well as the Grand Prize of the Jury. It’s also interesting to compare this to TRACKS, another anti-war movie with fantasy sequences that rise from the mind of its protagonist. But whereas the other movie lost a lot of its power due to a certain self-indulgence and lack of focus, this one remains focused and powerful, especially at the end. It’s also a rare instance where the author of a novel not only writes the screenplay (with a slight assist from Luis Bunuel) but gets to direct it as well. The movie is at its weakest when it tries to make its anti-war statement explicit, but this is fortunately confined to a stray statement here or there. Most of the movie is concerned with the protagonist’s trying to hold onto his sanity by exploring his past and dwelling on fantasy repercussions of those events; incidentally, the scenes with Donald Sutherland as Jesus Christ were written by Bunuel. The most emotionally involving scenes involve the protagonist trying to communicate with those around him; two of the most powerful scenes in the movie involve breakthroughs, one in which a nurse discovers a way to wish him a “Merry Christmas”, and the other when he finally figures out how to communicate with those outside of his mind. This would prove to be Trumbo’s sole directorial credit, and it is a truly powerful movie.

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Empire of Passion (1978)

EMPIRE OF PASSION (1978)
aka Ai no borei
Article 3502 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-20-2011
Posting Date: 3-17-2011
Directed by Nagisa Oshima
Featuring Tatsuya Fuji, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Takahiro Tamura
Country: Japan
What it is: Erotic ghost thriller

The wife of a rickshaw driver has an affair with a man 26 years younger than her. Her lover talks her into helping him kill her husband and dump his body in an old well. But afterwards, the fear of discovery keeps the lovers apart, and people are starting to dream about the fate of the rickshaw driver… and his ghost begins appearing.

Nagisa Shima is an important Japanese new wave director who is best known in the US for having directed the controversially explicit IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES. This movie was screened at Cannes and won Shima the Best Director prize. This was his only foray into the Japanese ghost story genre, and some of the scenes are quite spooky; I’m particularly partial to the scene where the ghost appears to his former wife with his rickshaw, offering her a ride which she initially rejects, but then changes her mind. Overall, the movie is good, but I’m afraid I came away slightly disappointed, because I was expecting something that would be a little bit more than merely good. As it is, the movie gets a too mired in the theme of the guilt that the lovers feel (there’s a chance that the ghost may be part of their overactive imaginations). It’s interesting when they do such things as try to remove the body from the well; it’s dull when they endlessly argue with each other, fall into despair, have sex, and offer to take the blame for the murder so that the other will be let free. In short, the movie spins its wheels a bit too much, and the potentially shocking ending loses its punch because it was simply too long in coming. I don’t find the movie quite as interesting as some of the other Japanese ghost stories I’ve seen.

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Doc Savage The Man of Bronze (1975)

DOC SAVAGE THE MAN OF BRONZE (1975)
Article 3501 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-19-2011
Posting Date: 3-16-2011
Directed by Michael Anderson
Featuring Ron Ely, Paul Gleason, William Lucking
Country: USA
What it is: Pulp hero parody

When an attempt is made on his life and the last communication from his father is destroyed, Doc Savage takes his band of heroes (known as the Fabulous Five) on a mission to the country where his father passed away, where he hopes to unravel the secrets that resulted in his father’s death.

Back when I covered BUCKAROO BANZAI, some of the replies made passing comments to the pulp origins of that type of story, with a special mention of Doc Savage as a prototype for Buckaroo Banzai. I’ve not read any of the Doc Savage books, but having now seen the movie, I can appreciate the influence, and it’s made me quite curious to find some of the Doc Savage novels and get to know the world he lived in. Since I’ve also heard that this movie doesn’t really do him justice, that seems even more like a good idea. There are things I like here much better than in BUCKAROO BANZAI; in particular, I think the Fabulous Five are a much more well-defined group than the Hong Kong Cavaliers. Unfortunately, for this, his last film, George Pal chose a camp approach to the material, and the camp humor is obvious, intrusive, and simply not very good. As a result, the sense of adventure and excitement is muted and compromised; because the movie doesn’t take itself seriously, neither do we. Furthermore, the movie is slow and leisurely when it should be fast-moving, and a poorly conceived musical score only makes things worse. At times, the movie is just pointlessly weird; why does the one villain sleep in a giant rocking crib? There’s enough fantastic content for genre fans, with the eerie phantom snakes being only the most striking example. Still, the movie is a missed opportunity.

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