Curse of the Voodoo (1965)

CURSE OF THE VOODOO (1965)
Article 3310 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-21-2010
Posting Date: 9-6-2010
Directed by Lindsay Shonteff
Featuring Bryant Haliday, Dennis Price, Janet Stacey
Country: USA / UK
What it is: Voodoo curse movie

A big game hunter kills a lion in a territory inhabited by a tribe that worships lions. The witch doctor places a curse on the hunter.

The first twenty minutes of this movie work well enough; the story is told crisply, moodily and efficiently. Once the action leaves Africa, though, the movie loses steam. This is probably because there really isn’t much of a story at this point, so we get distracted with several side issues (such as the marital problems with the hunter and his wife) and repeated displays of the curse at work, though I find little variety in the way it manifests itself. Eventually, the action shifts back to Africa, but by this time the tension built up in the opening scenes has dissipated, and the movie’s ending doesn’t really satisfy. This is ultimately a disappointing follow-up to the previous collaboration between Haliday and Shonteff (DEVIL DOLL).

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The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)

THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD (1975)
Article 3309 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-20-2010
Posting Date: 9-5-2010
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Featuring Michael Sarrazin, Jennifer O’Neill, Margot Kidder
Country: USA
What it is: Reincarnation thriller

A man, suffering from recurring dreams and unexplainable pains, comes to the conclusion that he is having memories of a previous life. He decides to investigate the details of his previous life… and why he was killed.

I remember the ads for this movie when I was in my teens, but I don’t remember it lasting very long in the theaters and it never showed up locally. I don’t know what I would have thought of it had I seen it then; watching it now, all I can say is that the story seems to be a little better than the presentation. In some ways, it seems like the story itself is the obvious approach to a reincarnation drama – a person digs up the story of his previous life but gets embroiled in the events surrounding it and ends up reliving it. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this movie is the way that sex plays into the story; sex surrounds the murder and plays a role in the attempt to discover the truth, with hints of incest entering the picture. Unfortunately, the movie is overlong and a bit dull; after awhile, we get tired of the repetition of events that is supposed to convince us of the reincarnation angle when it is something that we take for granted in watching the movie. As a result, the movie is only so-so, and is a bit forgettable. It appears to be in the process of being remade, though IMDB lists two Bollywood movies based on the same story.

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Le Passe-muraille (1951)

LE PASSE-MURAILLE (1951)
Article 3308 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-19-2010
Posting Date: 9-4-2010
Directed by Jean Boyer
Featuring Bourvil, Joan Greenwood, Gerard Oury
Country: France / Italy
What it is: Fantasy comedy

A man stumbles upon the ability to walk through walls.

My copy of this movie is in French with no subtitles, but given that I’ve already seen the English version of this movie (MR. PEEK-A-BOO), you’d think that wouldn’t be an impediment. Unfortunately, I discovered that the English version didn’t really stay with me, so I couldn’t really use my memory to help me with this. Much of the humor is visual, usually involving the protagonist’s use of his ability to play pranks on others, but much is also verbal. I may have to rewatch the English version to see what I think. Based on the ratings on IMDB, this French version is supposed to be the superior; it has a rating of 6.0 to the English version’s 4.1. At any rate, the French version looks fast-moving and fun.

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Tarzak Against the Leopards Men (1964)

TARZAK AGAINST THE LEOPARDS MEN (1964)
aka Tarzak conro gli uomini leopardo, Ape Man of the Jungle
Article 3307 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-18-2010
Posting Date: 9-3-2010
Directed by Carlo Veo
Featuring Ralph Hudson, Rita Klein, Nuccia Cardinali
Country: Italy
What it is: Italian Tarzan clone

Zoltak must save explorers from a tribe of Leopard Men, who have given up their peaceful ways and turned to war.

No, my hand didn’t slip when I was typing the title of this one; the onscreen title is indeed TARZAK AGAINST THE LEOPARDS MEN. This makes me wonder if English was not the primary language of whoever wrote the title. Furthermore, whoever came up with the title wasn’t in sync with those doing the translation for the dubbing, for these people changed the main character’s name from Tarzak to Zoltak, probably to deemphasize the obvious fact that this movie is a Tarzan clone. The movie is so-so, but I found it more interesting to compare how this movie differs from the American Tarzan movies. For one thing, Zoltak here as Hercules-style strength, which increases slightly the fantastic content of the jungle tale. The movie has little in the way of animal footage, and Zoltak is not shown having any particular rapport with them. We also have a scene of the grateful white men coming to the rescue of the beleaguered Zoltak, something that I’ve not seen before. Most striking, though, is the ending, where the heroes seem to show more coldness and brutality than we’re used to; just consider the scene where one of the villains falls into quicksand and calls to one of the heroes for help. All in all, it proved to be an interesting viewing experience.

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Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974)

WELCOME TO ARROW BEACH (1974)
Article 3306 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-17-2010
Posting Date: 9-2-2010
Directed by Laurence Harvey
Featuring Laurence Harvey, Joanna Pettet, Stuart Whitman
Country: USA
What it is: Serial killer thriller

A female hitchhiker is invited to spend the night in the home of a Korean war veteran and his sister. When she discovers the man hacking a body with a cleaver, she escapes and tries to tell the police… but they won’t believe her.

If you were just to look at the title of the movie and know that the title tune was warbled by Lou Rawls, you might well expect it to be a drama with romantic overtones, and not a serial killer flick with cannibalistic overtones. I say overtones because the cannibalism is implied rather than made explicit, but that also may be due to the fact that my copy runs only 82 minutes, shorter than IMDB’s time of 85 minutes and much shorter than a Belgian video version that runs 99 minutes; in short, there’s something missing. I’m guessing that some of what’s missing involves a Korean war flashback that in my print is singularly uninformative. There are also a whole slew of other plot elements that are either abandoned or seem extraneous, such as the opening sequence with the hot rodder, the sheriff’s run for re-election, and the police investigation. Though these sequences do play a little into the plot, they are given far more emphasis and time than is necessary for the story as is. Perhaps the longer versions make better use of these elements, and perhaps not. At any rate, those elements did seem to promise a more complex story than we have here. Incidentally, this is Laurence Harvey’s last movie both as actor and director; he died of cancer before it was released.

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The Vulture (1967)

THE VULTURE (1967)
Article 3305 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-16-2010
Posting Date: 9-1-2010
Directed by Lawrence Huntington
Featuring Robert Hutton, Akim Tamiroff, Broderick Crawford
Country: UK / Canada / USA
What it is: Ineffectual monster movie

A vulture with the head and hands of a man is terrorizing the members of a family.

Whatever expectations you have going into this movie, I suggest you lower them. It’s by no means a good movie; in fact, it’s just plain ludicrous, with a silly monster, a ridiculous backstory, and a budget-strapped threadbare look. None of these things necessarily make a movie unenjoyable, but even those who come to laugh will be a little disappointed; there are some laughs to be had (especially when the hero explains what’s going on or the monster attacks), but most of the movie is a gabfest of the dullest sort. It’s something of a cross between THE FLY and THE FLYING SERPENT. For me, the most memorable thing about the movie is the scientific question it left me pondering – could a bird the size of a man become airborne while carrying Broderick Crawford in his claws?

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Starflight One (1983)

STARFLIGHT ONE (1983)
aka Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land
TV-Movie
Article 3304 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-15-2010
Posting Date: 8-31-2010
Directed by Jerry Jameson
Featuring Lee Majors, Hal Linden, Lauren Hutton
Country: USA
What it is: Cross between MAROONED and the AIRPORT movies

A new experimental plane which uses rockets to bring it the highest levels of the stratosphere is launched on its first flight. When it is forced to fly above debris from an aborted rocket, a malfunction causes the plane to use all of its fuel and ends up leaving the earth’s atmosphere. It is stranded in space without fuel, short of oxygen, in need of repair, and unable to reenter the earth’s atmosphere without blowing up. Can they be saved?

If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was a two-hour commercial for the space shuttle Columbia; it’s used so many times in the rescue effort that it pretty much becomes the hero of the story. It’s also the movie’s greatest failing; the movie uses it so often, always with a relaunch from Earth, that it loses all credibility after a while. There are some nice moments here; I like some of the acting and certain details stand out; for example, I like the touch that the passengers who pass through the space tunnel between the plane and the shuttle do so in their stocking feet so as not to damage the tunnel. But it’s also slow-moving, mired by disaster-movie style cliches, implausible, and has plenty of dead spots. My favorite performance is from Pat Corley, who plays an electrician terrified of flying who is recruited to do some last minute repairs. It’s not awful, but it is more than a little dull.

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The Sins of Dorian Gray (1983)

THE SINS OF DORIAN GRAY (1983)
TV-Movie
Article 3303 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date 7-14-2010
Posting Date: 8-30-2010
Directed by Tony Maylam
Featuring Anthony Perkins, Belinda Bauer, Joseph Bottoms
Country: USA
What it is: Wilde novel reinterpreted

An aspiring actress wishes her screen test footage would age instead of her. Her wish is granted, but her seeming agelessness corrupts her and makes her cruel.

This version of the Oscar Wilde novel made me consider what I liked best about the 1945 movie version. I realized that it was the character of Lord Henry Wotton I liked best; as the libertine who corrupts Dorian Gray, he is given the wittiest lines in the story. This later version of the story switches genders on the title character, updates the time to the present, and moves the action from England to America, and somewhere in the transition the wittiness is lost. There’s an equivalent character, of course; entrepreneur Henry Lord is this movie’s substitution, but the character has been so thoroughly redone that there’s very little left of the original. Maybe it’s just as well; it’s hard to imagine Anthony Perkins playing the same character that was such a good fit for George Sanders. But the movie really has no substitution for the loss of wit, and I found Belinda Bauer singularly unconvincing as Dorian Gray, and to my mind, the movie degenerates into strident soap opera. And, given that it was a TV movie, it couldn’t even really turn to sleaziness to up the interest factor. For me, the oddest thing about this production is that it’s from Rankin/Bass; personally, I liked them better when they stuck to holiday specials.

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The Phantom of Hollywood (1974)

THE PHANTOM OF HOLLYWOOD (1974)
TV-Movie
Article 3302 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-13-2010
Posting Date: 8-29-2010
Directed by Gene Levitt
Featuring Skye Aubrey, Jack Cassidy, Jackie Coogan
Country: USA
What it is: Masked maniac on the loose

Worldwide Studios is selling their back lots, since all shooting is now done on location. However, there is a secret resident living on one of the back lots, and he doesn’t want them sold… and he’s not afraid to kill those who do.

The story here is no great shakes; it’s basically a variation on THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. However, it’s the milieu that makes this movie memorable, as it takes place on the back lots of MGM. My favorite moment in the movie is near the beginning; as the camera pans across the decrepit and decaying buildings of the back lot, we cut to movie scenes where the buildings were used, and, for movie lovers, there’s something very sad about these scenes. It’s actually quite clever for MGM to use the destruction of their own back lot for a final movie there, and I spent a good deal of the movie watching the familiar scenery and trying to remember the movies where I first saw them. Furthermore, there’s something very ironic about the fact that this movie is both shot on the back lot AND location, since the back lot IS the location of the movie. I also liked the touch that the masked villain occasionally is able to walk about in public at times when the lot is peopled by other actors in costumes. A good performance by Jack Cassidy in a dual role is also a plus.

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Persecution (1974)

PERSECUTION (1974)
Article 3301 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-12-2010
Posting Date: 8-28-2010
Directed by Don Chaffey
Featuring Lana Turner, Trevor Howard, Ralph Bates
Country: UK
What it is: Psychological horror

A boy kills his mother’s cat out of jealousy, and she proceeds to punish him for the deed for the rest of his life. When the boy grows up, gets married and has a child of his own, his mother begins scheming on how to destroy the marriage. However, she herself has a few skeletons in the closet…

This bizarre foray into psychological horror is much maligned, no doubt due to the over-deliberate pacing and the fact that there’s a sense of absurdity underlying much of the action in the movie. Nevertheless, the movie has its supporters, and I count myself among them. I find something fascinating here about the ways in which the mother torments her child, and I’m entranced by the way that every atrocity that is committed in the household has a parallel atrocity at another part of the story. I’m not sure exactly what role the cat plays in the story, but I suspect that it serves the most evil person in the house; notice how the son can only embrace the cat when he himself turns the corner into madness. It’s a very sad story at times; watching the son burn his boyhood toys one by one, and then reliving his mother’s rejection of a Christmas present is hard to take. There’s certain moments that bother me; I’m not sure to what degree the death of the baby is an accident or intentional (due to the ambiguity of the role of the cat), and I think the final line of the movie overdoes things just a bit, but I generally found the movie interesting and satisfying.

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