Public Ghost No. 1 (1935)

PUBLIC GHOST NO. 1 (1935)
Short
Article 3260 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-23-2010
Posting Date: 7-18-2010
Directed by Harold Law
Featuring Charley Chase, Joyce Compton, Edwin Maxwell
Country: USA
What it is: Comic short

An unemployed man searching for a job mistakes a lunatic inventor for a powerful executive. The inventor talks the man into partnering with him as a professional ghost. When the man is hired by a realtor to drive out residents of a newly-bought home, complications ensue.

This turned out to be a very entertaining comedy short, thanks in part to a scene-stealing performance by Edwin Maxwell as the crazed inventor. It never tries to be scary; it’s obvious the ghosts are being faked from the beginning. Some of the tactics used to scare the residents are truly bizarre, including a silly banjo number, a dog in a skull mask blowing a duck call, and a recording of someone being shot in an argument. The biggest laughs surround the inventor’s Rube Goldberg-like fly exterminator. The story relies on some pretty outrageous coincidences, but that’s part of the amusement.

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The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962)

THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES (1962)
Article 3259 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-22-2010
Posting Date: 7-17-2010
Directed by Edward Bernds
Featuring Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Joe DeRita
Country: USA
What it is: Sword and sandal spoof

An inventor, his girlfriend, and three employees of a pharmacy go back in time to ancient Greece, where their appearance causes Ulysses to lose a war to a usurper named Odius. They must return Ulysses to the throne and save the girlfriend, who is in the power of the usurper.

I’m not sure I can think of a comedy team that lasted in movies as long as the Stooges did. I suspect that one reason is that their slapstick knockabout humor transcended trendiness; good timing is timeless. I also suspect that another reason was that they held off on making features until the end of their careers; people are quicker to forget a short that falls flat than a feature that does. None of the features really holds a candle to their best shorts, but given how long in the tooth they were, it’s perhaps amazing that the features were as good as they were. This one gives the whole sword-and-sandal genre a good nose-tweaking, and it’s just well-produced enough so that it does a good job of it. Perhaps my favorite scene is the battle with the Siamese Cyclops, which were played by a set of twins, which is an interesting if unnecessary gimmick, since the makeup is so heavy that it wouldn’t matter if they were really twins or not.

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Scrappy’s Ghost Story (1935)

SCRAPPY’S GHOST STORY (1935)
Cartoon
Article 3258 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-21-2010
Posting Date: 7-16-2010
Directed by Manny Gould and Ben Harrison
Voice actors unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Animated ghost musical

Scrappy tries to scare his little brother by telling a ghost story. They soon find themselves haunted by ghosts in a spooky forest.

This is an okay, very mildly scary musical cartoon from the Charles Mintz studio; it’s something like the various skeleton cartoons, only with ghosts. It’s emphasizing the music more than the scares, but it’s well animated, though it isn’t particularly funny. I found this one on Youtube, which has of late proved to be a source for a number of things I’ve found.

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Theater of Blood (1973)

THEATER OF BLOOD (1973)
Article 3257 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-20-2010
Posting Date: 7-15-2010
Directed by Douglas Hickox
Featuring Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry
Country: UK
What it is: Shakespearean revenge flick

When members of a Critics’ Circle are being murdered one by one in gruesome ways, the evidence points to a spurned Shakespearean actor who was denied an actor-of-the-year award by the Circle. However, the actor was supposed to have died by suicide… or did he?

This wasn’t Price’s final horror movie, but it was his last starring role in a horror movie that really mattered. It’s often praised as the pinnacle of his horror career, maybe so much so that I always find myself a hair more disappointed at it then I feel I should be. The basic story itself is a reworking of THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES; once again, a man believed dead takes revenge on his enemies (those responsible for the death of his wife in the earlier movie, and for the death of his career in this one) who uses a set group of murder methods to do away with his victims (the plagues of the pharaohs in PHIBES, the murders in the last season of his Shakespeare productions in this one). One of the big differences is that this movie gives Price a character which, by dint of being an actor, allows him to play a greater variety and range of characters than the Phibes movie could, allowing Price to really shine in that capacity. The movie also tones down the campy elements of the Phibes movie, though it doesn’t abandon them entirely. However, what this movie lacks is a director like Robert Fuest, whose sense of style and fun brings the earlier movie to life; Douglas Hickox does all right, but he doesn’t come across as inspired. In the end, I just don’t have as much fun with this movie, and I tend to notice the problems more; the fencing sequence has never worked for me because it seems painfully obvious that there’s a stand-in for Price, and the police, though superficially seeming far more competent than the ones in PHIBES by dint of not being played as comic buffoons, actually seem to do a far worse job of protecting the critics. In short, while I still respect this movie and Price’s performance in it, in the end, I’d opt for the Phibes movies.

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Une fee… pas comme les autres (1956)

UNE FEE… PAS COMME LES AUTRES (1956)
aka The Secret of Magic Island
Article 3256 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-19-2010
Posting Date: 7-14-2010
Directed by Jean Tourane
Voices unknown
Country: Italy/France
What it is: Bizarre children’s movie

An evil monkey infiltrates a carnival so he can sneak into a village and steal their treasure – a magic wand.

I’ve been dying to see this movie ever since I stumbled across a trailer of it. Once it popped up on my hunt list, it proved near impossible to find, but it finally turned up, albeit dubbed into Swedish. It’s a children’s movie with a gimmick, and that gimmick is that the cast is made up entirely of animals who, according to the ads “think they’re people”. So what you get are scenes of animals doing things that they don’t usually do; you see dogs tending bar, pigs using a bandsaw, frogs driving motorcycles, ducks driving trains and cars, dogs playing the organ, ducks shooting pool… you get the idea. The narrators tell the story, but with this sort of thing, the story is secondary; the attraction is the animal footage. Some of it gets really strange; there’s something truly unsettling about seeing a rabbit smoking a cigarette, or a fox giving a shampoo to a chicken. It’s the sort of movie where a critique is rather pointless; you’ll either find the gimmick irresistible or you won’t. Still, it does get old after a while, even with a running time of about an hour. At the very least, the movie is one of a kind.

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Prom Night (1980)

PROM NIGHT (1980)
Article 3255 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-18-2010
Posting Date: 7-13-2010
Directed by Paul Lynch
Featuring Leslie Nielsen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Casey Stevens
Country: Canada
What it is: Slasher movie

When a children’s game goes awry and causes the death of one of the players, the other four, fearful they may go to jail, make a pact to keep it a secret. Several years later, the children have become teenagers and are attending the prom. However, there is a maniac on the loose who knows of the accident and who has targeted them for death…

The opening scene with the children’s game is fairly decent, and the initial premise that drives the plot at the beginning is also not bad. Unfortunately, the movie gets caught up in too many subplots, red herrings, and extraneous characters, so that the killings don’t start until two-thirds of the movie have passed. From then on, it’s the usual compendium of slasher cliches, further marred by the fact that much of the action is too dark to make out. All in all, it’s just another slasher film.

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The Invisible Fluid (1908)

THE INVISIBLE FLUID (1908)
Article 3254 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-17-2010
Posting Date: 7-12-2010
Directed by Wallace McCutcheon
Featuring Edward Dillon,D.W. Griffith, Anthony O’Sullivan
Country: USA
What it is: A comic trick film

A messenger boy delivers a fluid that causes people and things to vanish. He decides to use it for his own amusement, eventually turning to crime.

This movie has been described as one of the first to use the concept of invisibility. I may be splitting hairs here, but it’s not, because it’s not about invisibility at all. Those doused with the fluid vanish, which isn’t the same thing as becoming invisible; if something is rendered invisible, it’s still there but not visible, and in this movie, the doused people and items vanish completely; i.e., they’re not there. It’s played for laughs; its best moment is towards the end when the messenger boy finds himself being chased by a mob of angry people, and, tired of running, he makes the only defense he can. It’s mildly amusing, but let’s face it; the tricks here are pretty simple in comparison to some of the things Melies was doing at the time.

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The Queen of Spades (1916)

THE QUEEN OF SPADES (1916)
aka Pikovaya dama
Article 3253 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-16-2010
Posting Date: 7-11-2010
Directed by Yakov Protazanov
Featuring Tamara Duvan, Ivan Mozzhukhin, Vera Orlova
Country: Russia
What it is: Ghost revenge story

A poor soldier, obsessed with gambling but unable to do so due to lack of funds, becomes intent on learning the secret of a countess who knows a secret three-card combination that can make him rich.

Though I don’t think it’s as impressive as the British version of the story from the late forties, this Russian silent film is still quite useful, as it emphasizes other story details that are often overlooked in other versions. In particular, it gives us a much more elaborate backstory for the countess; the first third of the move involves the circumstances surrounding her discovery of the secret. It deemphasizes the soldier’s relationship with the countess’s ward (a ruse designed by the soldier to give him access to the countess), it clarifies some of the plot points, and it stretches out the climax by having the three cards played in succession over three nights. Somehow, these changes make this version of more interest than it would be otherwise. I haven’t read the original Pushkin story yet (though I do have a copy), so I wonder how closely it follows it. At any rate, I found this silent version quite watchable, though it lacks the eerie strengths of the British version.

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Yotsuya Kaidan Part II (1949)

YOTSUYA KAIDAN PART II (1949)
aka The Ghost of Yotsuya Part II
Article 3252 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-15-2010
Posting Date: 7-10-2010
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Featuring Ken Uehara, Kinuyo Tanaka, Keiji Sada
Country: Japan
What it is: Almost a ghost story

Torn by guilt and hounded by a blackmailer, the man who killed his wife finds himself haunted by her ghost… or could he be going mad?

This is the part of the story where the horror manifests itself, but the movie appears to have taken the tack that the ghost is not real per se, but a reflection of the husband’s guilt. In other words, we’re dealing not with the supernatural but with the descent into madness. This might be all well and good if my copy was in English or I understood Japanese, but since neither is the case, I’m mostly stuck with trying to read between the lines of long conversations. Personally, I think horror fans will get much more satisfaction out of the 1956 version. Still, there are interesting touches here; I like the movie’s interest in doors (there are a lot of scenes involving them, enough so I did notice it), and one of the eerier moments is when a wood platform seemingly changes its direction in the water of its own accord. I did a little hunting around and found some plot descriptions that helped a little; much of the talk involves a blackmail scheme against the murderer, continued investigations on the wife’s disappearance, and the involvement of a man who was forced to help hide the bodies.

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Yotsuya Kaidan (1949)

YOTSUYA KAIDAN (1949)
aka The Ghost of Yotsuya
Article 3251 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-14-2010
Posting Date: 7-9-2010
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
Featuring Kinuyo Tanaka, Ken Uehara, Haruko Sugimura
Country: Japan
What it is: Part of a Japanese ghost story

A man, hoping to end his financial troubles, is tempted to have his current wife murdered so he can marry into a rich family.

I almost sat through both parts of this movie in one sitting before it occurred to me to check if IMDB split it into two movies, and, lo and behold, they did. Since I use IMDB as my guide in such matters, I decided I would review each movie separately and write separate reviews. Though this puts me in the somewhat awkward position of reviewing only half of a story, that’s not the biggest problem I have here, since it’s another case where I’m watching a movie in a foreign language without English subtitles. Still, I wasn’t totally lost; I’ve seen two other versions of this story, so I know the basic gist of the story. This first half ends with the murder of the wife, so this half really ends before the fantastic content really sets in, though the death of the wife through a deforming poison is certainly on the horrific side. There are some interesting visual touches, but since ninety percent of the movie is involved with the various plot elements that require talking, it’s really not that engaging when watched without understanding the language. It’s also much less explicit than the other versions I’ve seen; you never get a clear look at the wife’s deformity, because the moments it’s on display are pretty fleeting.

Still, I bet no one will be surprised what tomorrow’s movie will be now.

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