The Sand Castle (1961)

THE SAND CASTLE (1961)
Article 3400 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-24-2010
Posting Date: 12-5-2010
Directed by Jerome Hill
Featuring Barry Cardwell, Laurie Cardwell, George Dunham
Country: USA
What it is: Unusual children’s movie

A young boy and his sister are left on the beach by their working mother for the day. The boy passes the time by building an elaborate sand castle.

The first two-thirds of this movie is almost a plotless children’s art film of sort; as the boy builds his sand castle we encounter several of the other beach visitors. They make for an odd assortment; just to pick a few right off the top, there’s an elderly woman in a veil who can’t stand the sun, an artist who paints the boy at work, a skin-diver who is mistaken for a monster by a little girl, and a group of nuns playing baseball (a sight so unusual that it actually draws away the crowd that has gathered around the making of the sand castle). There’s a touch of humor and a bit of surrealism to this sequence. The last third of the movie switches from black-and-white to color and from real life to paper-figure animation, as the boy falls asleep and dreams he is a knight in the castle who encounters all of the people he met on the beach as paper caricatures of themselves. On a certain level, this is rather engaging and fascinating; though there’s no real plot, you end up wondering where it will all go. On the downside, it’s more than a little dull on occasion, probably due to the fact that there IS no plot and that the dreamlike atmosphere goes a ways towards lulling you into sleep; I found myself nearly nodding off at times. Still, part of me finds this as almost a natural reaction to this unique, slightly melancholic and bittersweet movie. If anything, it reminds me that children’s movies can sometimes take you on cinematic journeys to places other types of films would never venture to go. It’s worth catching if you can find it.

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The New Original Wonder Woman (1975)

THE NEW ORIGINAL WONDER WOMAN (1975)
TV-Movie
Article 3399 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-23-2010
Posting Date: 12-4-2010
Directed by Leonard Horn
Featuring Lynda Carter, Lyle Waggoner, John Randolph
Country: USA
What it is: Super hero TV pilot

During World War II, when an American pilot ends up on Paradise Island (the home of a race of Amazons) after having been badly injured, he is escorted back to the states by the queen’s daughter. The woman, who is immortal and has special powers, decides to stay and battle the Nazi threat.

I’ve never seen the TV series that was spawned from this pilot, so I’m coming to it fresh. Right off the bat, I noticed two things I like about this pilot (and I know what you’re thinking, so get your mind out of the gutter). First of all, I like the touch that they decided to opt for the period setting. Second, I like that they decided to go the route of light-hearted action adventure, walking a thin line between outright comedy while avoiding being overly serious. Any movie in which the Nazis are played by Stella Stevens, Red Buttons and Kenneth Mars is bound to be on the lighter side, and the addition of Henry Gibson (as a double agent) and Cloris Leachman (as the queen of the Amazons) adds to the fun. On the down side, Wonder Woman’s powers don’t seem particularly impressive; she doesn’t even twirl that silver lariat of hers, and though her reflexes are fast enough to deflect bullets, they don’t really seem all that impressive during the flimsy fight scenes here. Nevertheless, this was quite fun, and Lynda Carter plays the title role with the right amount of aplomb. Oh, and there are two other things I do like about this one (and you’re free to let your mind go anywhere it wants at this point).

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Metempsycose (1907)

METEMPSYCOSE (1907)
aka Metempsychosis
Article 3398 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-22-2010
Posting Date: 12-3-2010
Directed by Segundo de Chomon and Ferdinand Zecca
Cast unknown
Country: France

A woman puts a bust on a table. It comes to life, transforms into a butterfly, and produces two babies.

What we have here is your basic trick film; there’s no real plot, but just a series of visual tricks. I have no idea what the title means, but if someone had told me that this was where babies came from, I would have suspected that there was some psychosis involved. This brings our Chomonothon to an end, though I have no doubt that I’ll be covering more of his films at some later time.

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Le petit-poucet (1909)

LE PETITE-POUCET (1909)
aka Tom Thumb
Article 3397 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-21-2010
Posting Date: 12-2-2010
Directed by Segundo de Chomon
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Fairy tale

A small boy and his brothers are lost in the woods, and end up at the home of an ogre who has evil plans for them.

This one isn’t a visual marvel like yesterday’s, but it’s much easier to follow, even if the title cards are in French. The title seems curious, as the little boy who is the hero of the piece is hardly as small as anyone’s thumb here, not even that of the giant ogre’s. The special effects are kept to a minimum; it seems to mostly rely on forced perspective to make the ogre look very big. This isn’t quite as fascinating as some the other movies I’ve seen by Chomon.

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La legende du fantome (1908)

LA LEGENDE DU FANTOME (1908)
aka Legend of a Ghost
Article 3396 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-20-2010
Posting Date: 12-1-2010
Directed by Segundo de Chomon
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Early epic fantasy

A woman encounters a ghost who sends her on a mission to battle demons.

It looks like we’re going to have a short Chomon-a-thon here; I’ve acquired a collection of shorts from early silent fantasist Segundo de Chomon, and some of them are on my hunt list. I suspect that this one, like many of Melies’s films, came with narration; at least, I found the sequence of events highly confusing in my viewing. In many ways, it doesn’t matter; Chomon uses many of the same techniques that were used by Melies, but he has his own approach, and much of the imagery in this one is very striking indeed; I especially like the scenes where the demons tool around in a demonmobile. Chomon doesn’t seem quite as stagebound as Melies was, and on occasion it looks like he shot some scenes out of doors. It’s beginning to look like Chomon may be the most striking early director of fantastic genre features next to Melies, and I look forward to seeing some more of his work.

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Motel Hell (1980)

MOTEL HELL (1980)
Article 3395 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-18-2010
Posting Date: 11-30-2010
Directed by Kevin Connor
Featuring Rory Calhoun, Paul Linke, Nancy Parsons

Farmer Vincent Smith runs a motel that is known for its excellent smoked meats, made from a secret family recipe. To get his secret “ingredients”, he waylays passing motorists and fattens them up in his garden. However, when he is smitten with a young lady and decides to make her part of the family, he sets in motion his own undoing…

This is an uneven but interesting black comedy that I wish was better than it is. It’s a pretty outrageous story with a fun sense of detail; I like some of the bizarre traps Vincent sets up to capture his prey, and the sense of detail that goes into the preparation of his “animals” is rather striking. The problem I have with the movie is that it tends to soft-pedal the humor; in fact, the score occasionally betrays a lyrically evocative mood that seems quite out of place with the story. If anything, the movie seems to take itself a little too seriously at times, and though Rory Calhoun gives a memorable performance as Vincent, he may go a little too far in keeping his character from being a caricature. In short, it’s just not all that funny, even though it’s too outrageous to be taken in any other way. The ending, which parodies old-fashioned mellerdrammers (think of heroines tied to logs in in sawmills) is one of the better scenes in the movie, and it does feature Vincent’s last line, which is the funniest one in the movie. It’s worth catching, though I’m afraid it’s not quite successful.

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Laserblast (1978)

LASERBLAST (1978)
Article 3394 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-17-2010
Posting Date: 11-29-2010
Directed by Michael Rae
Featuring Kim Milford, Cheryl Smith, Gianni Russo
Country: USA
What it is: Neglected kid goes wild with alien weapon

When Billy discovers an alien weapon and its necklace power source in the desert, he becomes possessed by the power and goes on a rampage. Both the government and space aliens try to track him down.

At first, this movie doesn’t seem quite as bad as its reputation; the special effects are low budget but fun, the aliens are neat looking, and it has an interesting premise. Unfortunately, the movie is incredibly unfocused; the movie is cluttered with pointless scenes, undeveloped characters, muddled story-telling, and an overabundance of scenes of cars blowing up. It’s almost as if the script was never completed and is missing several key scenes, but was filmed anyway. The movie also fails to generate any suspense, and the main character remains an uninteresting cipher throughout. Ultimately, the movie fails because you never end up caring about what happens. Also, the movie makes poor use of two veteran actors; Roddy McDowall is killed off before he can really do anything, and Keenan Wynn is stuck in a potentially interesting role, but which ultimately isn’t used in any interesting way.

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Monster a-Go Go (1965)

MONSTER A-GO GO (1965)
Article 3393 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-16-2010
Posting Date: 11-28-2010
Directed by Bill Rebane and Herschell Gordon Lewis
Country: USA
What it is: Seventy minutes of footage

A capsule lands. A radioactive monster who was once an astronaut comes out. People die. People investigate. People dance. A car runs out of gas. Movie is padded out to feature length.

No movie this static and lifeless should have the words “A-GO GO” in its title. This movie was originally directed by Bill Rebane in the early sixties but was abandoned when funding ran out. Several years later, Herschell Gordon Lewis bought the existing footage, and then added new footage of his own so he’d have a companion feature to MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN. My guess is that this is one of these two directors’ worst movie and the other’s second worst. For what it’s worth, Lewis does seem to make his new footage blend in with the old footage, but that’s no compliment; however, since he couldn’t get the original cast for his new scenes, the movie still comes across as disjointed and unfocused. It’s shot in a flat distant style, the sound is bad, the narration is ill-timed, intrusive, and gives away the important things that will happen in scenes before they happen, there are a wealth of pointless scenes that go nowhere, huge gaps exist between line deliveries… all these things conspire to drive viewer interest away at every moment. I’ve heard some people say the ending is clever, but I interpret it as meaning that Lewis got tired of even trying to finish the movie and came up with it as a way to get it off his plate; to me, it’s the movie thumbing its nose at the audience. I wonder how soon the drive-ins cleared out after this movie started.

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The Million Dollar Duck (1971)

THE MILLION DOLLAR DUCK (1971)
Article 3392 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-15-2010
Posting Date: 11-27-2010
Directed by Vincent McEveety
Featuring Dean Jones, Sandy Duncan, Joe Flynn
Country: USA
What it is: Shopping cart movie

An experimental scientist takes home a duck from the lab after it fails every experiment and becomes irradiated. They discover that the duck lays eggs with golden yolks when barked at by dogs. Will greed cause them to lose their humanity?

According to IMDB, this movie shares the dubious distinction of being one of the only three movies Gene Siskel walked out on during his movie review career. So how awful is it? It’s not near as awful as that trivia seems to imply, but it does mark a low point of the Disney shopping cart movies, as I call them. These Disney comedies always flirted with silliness, stupidity and contrived situations, but this one falls in. All of the major characters act like idiots (except the little boy, whose main function is to tug on the heartstrings), the whole setup is incredibly contrived, and most of the jokes are pretty lame. Still, I think one of the more subtle problems is that the concept itself doesn’t lend itself to clever special effects, which is one of the big attractions of these Disney comedies, thus making the movie a little disappointing from the outset. On the plus side, the cast is appealing (especially Dean Jones and Sandy Duncan), but you’re all too aware that they are playing roles that are beneath their abilities.

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Maneater of Hydra (1967)

MANEATER OF HYDRA (1967)
aka La isla de la muerte
Article 3391 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-14-2010
Posting Date: 11-26-2010
Directed by Mel Welles
Featuring Cameron Mitchell, George Martin, Elisa Montes
Country: Spain / West Germany
What it is: An old dark greenhouse movie

Tourists arrive on an island inhabited by a Baron who experiments with horticulture. People start dying, and their bodies are drained of blood. Who or what is the killer?

Though in some ways it’s structured like a mystery, the tagline (which I won’t mention here) pretty much gives away the revelation, but given what you find out early in the movie, you won’t be surprised. Suffice it to say that it’s not a mystery; it’s just a good old-fashioned monster movie. It’s cheesy, cheap-looking, and silly, but the presence of Cameron Mitchell adds a bit of fun, and it’s watchable enough in its low-budget way. It would make a good double feature with CASTLE OF EVIL.

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