Dracula (1979)

DRACULA (1979)
Article 3210 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-2-2010
Posting Date: 5-29-2010
Directed by John Badham
Featuring Frank Langella, Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasence
Country: USA/UK
What it is: Another take on the Stoker classic

Dracula arrives in England and takes possession of Carfax Abbey. He begins preying on the women staying at Dr. Jack Seward’s home, which is also an insane asylum.

Sometimes I marvel at the way adaptations will take the various elements of a novel and rearrange them. Like most of the other versions I’ve seen, this adaptation dispenses with the Arthur and Quincy characters. However, in this one, Dr. Seward has been changed from one of Lucy’s suitors to Lucy’s father. Mina has become the daughter of Van Helsing. The roles of Mina and Lucy have been somewhat reversed, making Jonathan Harker (who never goes to Transylvania) the beloved of Lucy. This is one of the few adaptations to retain a character called Mr. Swales, (the role I played on stage in a local version of the story); however, his character has been completely changed to that of one of the asylum attendants.

None of these changes would really make a big deal of difference if the movie worked. And, to be truthful, the movie works middlingly well, thanks in part to an interesting performance by Frank Langella in the title role; he manages to come up with his own interpretation that doesn’t owe a lot to either Lugosi or Lee. Certain key phrases and moments do pop up in this version, though at odd and unexpected times, and some of the changes are clever. However, on the disappointing side, the character of Renfield is severely reduced here, and Van Helsing himself isn’t near as formidable a foe to Dracula as he was in other versions of the story. However, most disappointing at all is that the movie really isn’t scary; despite all the atmosphere, the movie feels a bit distant and dry. The movie also marks a turning point in the perception of vampires; the recent perceptions of vampires as hot, sexy, romantic figures may well have its start here. Granted, that’s been a subtext in the story for many years, but this movie moves it from subtext to text. Personally, I think something is lost when that happens, and I do feel it’s interesting that, unlike the original Universal and Hammer outings, this one inspired no sequels.

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Death Ship (1980)

DEATH SHIP (1980)
Article 3209 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-1-2010
Posting Date: 5-28-2010
Directed by Alvin Rakoff
Featuring George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso
Country: UK/Canada
What it is: Haunted ship movie

A cruise ship is purposefully rammed and sunk by another ship in the night. The survivors, initially in a lifeboat, climb aboard a deserted black ship anchored in the middle of nowhere. But the ship has a will of its own, and it wants blood…

Given that this movie was made right in the middle of the slasher craze, it had the potential to be real novelty item for the time, and as the movie starts to unfold, I was really hoping for something good. And, sporadically, it delivers; I especially love when the ship appears out of nowhere behind the lifeboat. It’s also graced with a decent, solid cast who gives it their all. Unfortunately, the script is inconsistent, and it gets more muddled, confusing, and illogical as the movie proceeds. It’s one of those movies that starts trying anything for a scare, whether it makes sense within the context of the story or not, and eventually it founders due to its lack of direction. It’s a real shame; this could have been so much better. Still, I do have one question; during the course of the movie, an old movie musical gets shown in a projection room where little people come out of the sheet music on a piano and dance; I’d love to know which movie this is from.

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Curse of the Fly (1965)

CURSE OF THE FLY (1965)
Article 3208 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-31-2010
Posting Date: 5-27-2010
Directed by Don Sharp
Featuring Brian Donlevy, George Baker, Carole Gray
Country: UK
What it is: Mad scientist tale

An escapee from a mental institution meets and falls in love with her rescuer, and they marry. He takes her to his home, where his father has been experimenting with teleportation. However, some of the father’s experiments weren’t quite successful, and what is left of his subjects aren’t entirely human…

This, the second sequel to THE FLY, ditches the human/fly gene mixing of the first two films and tries for some vaguer type of horror. The experimental subjects don’t seem to be crosses with other creatures; they’re just misshapen. The movie has some effective moments, especially when two of the misshapen creatures are teleported together and come out as something truly abominable. However, the movie has its fair share of problems; the situation with the son marrying an escapee from a mental institution (the movie opens with her breaking out dressed only in her underwear and running away) is heavily contrived, the reactions of the characters to various events are hard to swallow, and the acting is variable. It’s one of the movies where I can sense that Brian Donlevy had been drinking; though he’s professional enough, some of his line deliveries seem strange and unfocused. The motivations of the female servant seem very odd; why does she leave the photograph of the escapee’s husband’s previous wife in her bedroom at one point? The slow pace during the first half of the movie also drags things down a bit, though the ending is pretty good. This is a mixed bag.

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
Article 3207 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-30-2010
Posting Date: 5-26-2010
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Featuring Richard Dreyfuss, Francois Truffaut, Teri Garr
Country: USA
What it is: Alien contact story

When a lineman encounters a UFO, he becomes obsessed with a shape that will lead him to the meaning of his experience.

This beloved UFO movie appears on a lot of people’s best ten lists for science fiction movies. There’s no doubt that in many ways it is a brilliant movie. Spielberg has a truly profound understanding of film language, and the way he has of telling a story and imparting information is wondrous. He also has the ability to come up with some truly impressive crowd scenes. The sense of mystery is strong here, and we feel for the various characters as they try to deal with their lives after their encounters. In many ways, this is a stunning movie.

Yet I resist the movie a little; for some reason, I’m a little disappointed with the ending. This may seem like a ridiculous statement; the ending is a masterpiece of special effects technology at the very least. But for me, the ending lacks a certain emotional resonance that I was hoping for. After doing a lot of thinking about it, I decided the problem is that the ending is a little too heavy on the “awe” end of the scale; in my mind, an encounter with aliens from outer space would have a more complex set of reactions than this. The rest of the movie has touches of fear and paranoia that seem to vanish at the end, and I don’t think they should vanish. Which is not to say that the movie should have a darker ending; I’m just saying that the existence and acknowledgment of that darkness would go a ways toward making the end of the movie a more complete experience.

Nevertheless, I must admit that I found this less of a problem this time than with my previous two viewings of the movie. Spielberg’s vision is breathtaking, and there are new things to be observed on each re-viewing. Whatever its flaws, the movie is a rich experience.

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Bluebeard (1972)

BLUEBEARD (1972)
Article 3206 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-29-2010
Posting Date: 5-25-2010
Directed by Edward Dmytryk and Luciano Sacripanti
Featuring Richard Burton, Raquel Welch, Joey Heatherton
Country: France/Italy/West Germany
What it is: Updated take on the Bluebeard story

A World War I veteran, presently a Nazi, has murdered several of his wives. His current wife discovers where he has hidden their bodies, and, in order to save her own life, tries to get to the bottom of his problem.

In the opening scene of this movie, we discover that the title character actually does have a blue beard. It could be argued that this revelation is actually a surprise, I suppose, as you don’t really expect that degree of obviousness; nevertheless, there was something about the literalness of it that annoyed me. As for the rest of the movie, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Our title character has a pet falcon, plays the organ, and keeps his dead mother in the attic, with all of these conventional horror trappings, I tried to figure out if it was straight horror or camp, but the movie never really veers one way or the other. It’s only when he starts to tell the tales of his previous wives that the movie takes a definite direction, as the movie clearly becomes a black comedy; unfortunately, it doesn’t stay on that level. And once you find out the reason he’s killing all his wives… well, let’s just say the revelation isn’t worth the two-plus hour length of this movie. Richard Burton actually underplays for much of the movie, which may have been a mistake; I think this is one movie that could have used a bit more hamminess. In the end, the movie is an unsatisfying mixture of horror, black comedy, sex comedy and drama, and I emerged from more confused and frustrated than anything.

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Barracuda (The Lucifer Project) (1978)

BARRACUDA (THE LUCIFER PROJECT) (1978)
Article 3205 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-28-2010
Posting Date: 5-24-2010
Directed by Harry Kerwin and Wayne Crawford
Featuring Wayne Crawford, Jason Evers, Roberta Leighton
Country: USA
What it is: Starts out as JAWS ripoff, then changes

Barracudas have begun attacking and killing people. A student investigates the possibility of pollution in the cove of a small town. Are these incidents related…?

It starts out as a simple JAWS ripoff; all well and good. Then it layers on the pollution subplot, which gives the movie two types of seventies movies from which it can borrow its plot trappings. By the time it gets around to throwing the paranoid conspiracy thriller into the mix, the barracuda attacks have definitely been placed on the back burner. And once you know you’re dealing with a paranoid conspiracy thriller, you’ll know how it’ll end. Though some of our heroes are likable enough, the indifferent acting, slow pacing, and the repetitive music start to take their toll. If the movie had concentrated on the subplot about behavioral changes of the townspeople, it might have worked itself up to something really interesting; as it is, it tries to cover too many over-familiar and exploitable bases at once and comes up short. But then, with a production company called Marketing Film, what do you expect?

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Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)

FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1973)
aka Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein
Article 3204 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-27-2010
Posting Date: 5-23-2010
Directed by Paul Morrissey and Antonio Margheriti
Featuring Joe Dallesandro, Monique van Vooren, Udo Kier
Country: USA/Italy/France
What it is: Over-the-top horror and sex black comedy

Baron Frankenstein is in the process of creating a man and a woman in his lab in the hopes that they will mate and produce a race of perfect Serbians. His wife/sister has the hots for the oversexed stable boy and brings him into the house as a “personal servant”. Their two children sneak around the house and observe everything.

Though IMDB doesn’t classify it as a comedy, I think that’s the only way to interpret this ultra-gory sexed-up version of the Frankenstein story. We have a Baron Frankenstein whose extreme sexual repression has manifested itself in some truly outrageous ways, which are unfortunately picked up by his impressionable but stupid assistant. We have the oversexed wife/sister who is only disgusted with sex when someone else is getting it, and the stud of a manservant who actually seems a little bored with it all and has other things on his mind. You have a case of mistaken identity; the doctor is searching for the head of a man for his monster who is sex-obsessed and ends up with the head of man who aspires to be a monk. If you think about it, this is all pretty amusing, and the over-the-top gore is just part of the joke. It was originally shown in 3D, and even watching it flat you can see how it made some interesting (if occasionally disgusting) uses of the gimmick. I remember that I first saw this one on the USA network (NOT a pay channel); I’d actually like to see it again having seen the unedited widescreen version, if for no other reason than to marvel at the ingenuity they must have used to edit this into anything that could have actually been shown on the channel. Andy Warhol was one of several producers, but you can ignore the Antonio Margheriti credit; he was credited for quota reasons in Italy, but had nothing to do with the movie.

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Deliverance (1972)

DELIVERANCE (1972)
Article 3203 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-26-2010
Posting Date: 5-22-2010
Directed by John Boorman
Featuring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty
Country: USA
What it is: Tense adventure drama

Four men from the city take a canoe trip on a backwoods river prior to the area being converted into a huge lake. When two of the men are sexually assaulted by backwoodsman, the other two come to their rescue and kill one of the assaulters. Then they are faced with a dilemma; report the incident to the police and face the danger of not being believed due to being strangers in a close-knit community, or try to cover up the incident. And the other assaulter is still out there…

I’ve always admired this harrowing exploration of what it must be like to be strangers in a strange land caught in a compromising situation, and the movie does such a fine job of exploring its various themes (civilization vs. wilderness, guilt, fear, what men will do when they are desperate, etc.) that it remains engrossing from beginning to end. Add to that the fine performances from the four leads (two of which, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, were making their movie debuts) as well as their courage and commitment (it’s amazing to see how well they remain in character while performing their own stunts), the bravura direction of John Boorman, the wonderful cinematography and the stunning use of “Dueling Banjos”, and you have an indelible cinematic experience. Even the minor parts are well performed, with Billy Redden as the banjo-playing boy, Bill McKinney and Herbert Coward as the two backwoodsman, and author James Dickey as a sheriff standouts. The occasional ambiguities only add to the tension of the story. I certainly don’t question this movie’s status as a classic.

However, for this series, the main question is whether it qualifies for inclusion here. I’m covering it because “The Motion Picture Guide” classifies it as horror, but since I’ve questioned their genre assignments, I feel compelled to do so again. There’s no doubt that it’s scary at moments, and the whole story could be described as nightmarish, but it’s really not a horror-style nightmare. Perhaps the most relevant element in this regard is the movie’s touching upon the concepts of degeneracy and inbreeding, especially during the opening scenes. Still, on a lighter note, I can’t help but remember a segment of SCTV in which Count Floyd hosts a “scary” talk show, with one of his guests being the banjo-playing boy from this movie.

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The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969)

THE CASTLE OF FU MANCHU (1969)
Article 3202 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-25-2010
Posting Date: 5-21-2010
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Christopher Lee, Richard Greene, Howard Marion-Crawford
Country: West Germany/Italy/Spain/UK/Liechtenstein
What it is: Fu Manchu movie

Fu Manchu plans to take over the world by using a secret formula that turns water into ice.

It took five countries to make this movie? This is the last of the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu movies, which, given the quality of this one, was no great loss. What can you say about a movie in which the big opening action sequence (a confused mess) is made up entirely of footage from two other movies (namely, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (about the Titanic) and THE BRIDES OF FU MANCHU), one of which was in black and white? I’d say it was either a sign of desperation or a sign of laziness, but in truth, it was probably the sign of an extremely low budget and the fact that nobody seemed to really care about the production. Most of the rest of the movie is full of dead space; do we really need to see the complete coffin-transportation scene to grasp that the doctor and his nurse have been kidnapped by Fu Manchu? Still, in the movie’s defense, I can say this; despite its obvious weaknesses, it never becomes unwatchable, despite the snail’s pace. And one must also remember that much of this movie’s reputation is due to MST3K fans who are judging it solely from its appearance on that show, where certain scenes are missing and some plot points get lost in the shuffle; the movie does have a plot that can be sorted out, and a certain amount of your attention can be occupied trying to do so. In short, as weak as it is, it’s not one of the worst movies ever made. And one should keep in my mind that my copy is NOT the recent DVD release by Blue Underground, which is reported as having given the movie a much better presentation.

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Visions of Evil (1975)

VISIONS OF EVIL (1975)
aka So Sad About Gloria
Article 3201 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-22-2010
Posting Date: 5-20-2010
Directed by Harry Thomason
Featuring Lori Saunders, Dean Jagger, Robert Ginnaven
Country: USA
What it is: Disturbed woman in a scary house movie

An heiress is released from a mental hospital and tries to rebuild her life. She meets a man and marries him, despite her uncle’s misgivings. They move into a house that was the setting of an axe murder. Soon she’s hearing sounds and having strange visions…

For what it’s worth, this movie manages to take a storyline that usually annoys the hell out of me and keeps it from bothering me, which is something of an accomplishment. Nevertheless, the movie has a whole other set of problems. The dialogue is clumsy, often belaboring cliches, tossing in odd literary references (to Tolkien and Shakespeare, for instance), or breaking into a semi-poetic mode that just sounds odd. The pace is painfully slow at times; though the axe murder scene during the first twenty minutes is bit on the gratuitous side, it may be the only thing during the first hour of the movie that will make you stick with it till the end. One big problem is that director Harry Thomason has too much of an affection for the romantic montage, a problem that afflicted the previous movie I’ve seen of his, ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN. Dean Jagger is also saddled with a character who ultimately becomes unworkable; you won’t buy his last scene. Still, when it works, it works, and the woman’s recurring dream about a man trying to open a crate with an axe at a railway station actually does come to an interesting conclusion. Still, once the movie shows its hand, you’ll probably be able to anticipate its very final twist.

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