The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case (1930)

THE LAUREL-HARDY MURDER CASE (1930)
Short
Article 3160 by Dave Sindelar
viewing Date: 2-7-2010
Posting Date: 4-9-2010
Directed by James Parrott
Featuring Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Frank Austin
Country: USA
What is is: Comic “old dark house” story

When a rich old man by the name of Laurel dies, Ollie convinces Stan they can make it to easy street by having Stan pose as the heir. They arrive at the spooky old mansion of the deceased to discover that, instead of attending a reading of the will, they are under suspicion of murder. Furthermore, the real murderer wants them out of the way…

The title implies that this will be a parody of a Philo Vance movie, but it’s really that old friend, the “old dark house” movie. It’s not even really a parody; most of the movies of this ilk were half-comedies already. It does strip the mystery aspect from the story and emphasizes the comedy. Nevertheless, this isn’t really the duo at their best; too much of the short is concerned with the side characters, and once again there is an overreliance on “Oh, I’m scared!” type of humor. Still, there are moments; one of my favorites has Ollie threatening to walk out on Stan that illustrates one of the great things about the characters; you never really know what Stan is going to say or do next. For horror fans, though, it does have some nice atmosphere, and the butler is definitely a great comically creepy character.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Haunted House (1929)

THE HAUNTED HOUSE (1929)
Animated short
Article 3159 by Dave Sindelar
viewing Date: 2-5-2010
Posting Date: 4-8-2010
Directed by Ub Iwerks
Featuring the voice of Walt Disney
Country: USA
What is is: Animated comic horror

Mickey Mouse is forced to seek shelter in a spooky house during a storm. There he is terrorized by skeletons who force him to play the organ.

I found this cartoon on one of Disney’s tin box collections; this one covers Mickey Mouse’s black and white cartoons. Rather than appearing in the main menu, it is consigned to the “From the Vault” section because it indulges in some racist stereotyping; at one point, Mickey is in total darkness, and all you can see is the white around his face, and he breaks into a few calls of “Mammy!” I’m glad the company chose to present the cartoon uncut, albeit in a section of the DVD where a child would be less likely to stumble across it; it would have been easy to just remove the offending section (which must run no more than three seconds) without compromising the whole cartoon (though some of the others on the set might well prove more difficult).

In the opening section of the DVD, Leonard Maltin talks about the reasons for the popularity of Mickey Mouse in particular amongst the cartoon characters of the era. Part of it may be due to the fact that Mickey was the star of the first talking cartoon. Maltin suggests it may have been his similarity to Chaplin in some regards. My own belief is because he was the central character of the studio when they were in the animation vanguard, while many of the other animation studios of the same era were mostly using cartoons with clear imitations of Mickey. This type of imitation just reinforces things; when you watch a cartoon featuring an imitation of a famous character, you rarely find yourself more impressed by the imitation than the original.

The cartoon itself is plotless, but quite tight. It mostly consists of skeleton dancing gags. You’ve seen this sort of thing before, but the presentation is tighter and more streamlined. Some of the humor is a bit on the bawdy side, including an obsession with chamber pots, the discovery a male and female skeleton in bed together, and an outhouse gag, but these are also common for the time. It’s a fairly fun Mickey Mouse cartoon.

1 CommentLeave a comment

Frankenstein’s Cat (1942)

FRANKENSTEIN’S CAT (1942)
Animated short
Article 3158 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-4-2010
Posting Date: 4-7-2010
Directed by Mannie Davis
Voice actors unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Mighty Mouse cartoon (sort of)

When a robot cat kidnaps a newborn bird, Super…er Mighty Mouse comes to its rescue.

The early version of Mighty Mouse was called Super Mouse, and when this cartoon was brought to television, it was modified to replace “Super” with “Mighty”; in fact, when he is first introduced in the cartoon, you can almost here the word “Super” before a slightly different voice comes in and says “Mighty”. The fact that the villain is a monster cat modeled after the Frankenstein monster gives this cartoon a little more horror content, and it does add a few nice little horror touches; the cat lives in a big castle, and when birds and mice march on the castle, they do it in classic quintessential angry-villagers-with-torches mode. Still, the cartoon is perfunctory; it’s neither very exciting or funny. It’s also weird to hear Mighty Mouse with a Brooklyn accent as well.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)

THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1933)
aka Le testament du Dr. Mabuse
Article 3157 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-3-2010
Posting Date: 4-6-2010
Directed by Fritz Lang and Rene Sti
Featuring Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Thomy Bourdelle, Karl Meixner
Country: Germany
What it is: Crime movie with supernatural undertones

A series of nearly perfect crimes seems to be the result of arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse, but he’s committed to an insane asylum. So who is the mastermind behind them…?

Hey, wait a minute…didn’t I already cover this movie? Yes and no. I’ve covered the German language version, but I discovered that at the same time he was directing that one, Fritz Lang was also directing, on the same sets, a French language version with a mostly different cast (I think Rudolf Klein-Rogge is the only actor among the major roles to appear in both). This was a common practice during the early thirties. When this version first entered my list, I suspected that I would probably not be able to find it, but I was wrong; the recent Criterion release of the movie features both versions. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the original version, so I can’t do a strong compare of the two, though this one is a good twenty-seven minutes shorter. Still, it’s nice to see it again; this is one of those movies that follows so many threads of the plot at once that it can be a bit overwhelming on first viewing, and repeated viewings do help sort them out. Watching both versions together would, at the very least, probably give us a good idea of how editing can effect a movie.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Curious Dr. Humpp (1969)

THE CURIOUS DR. HUMPP (1969)
aka La venganza del sexo
Article 3156 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-2-2010
Posting Date: 4-5-2010
Directed by Emilio Vieyra and Jerald Intrator
Featuring Ricardo Baulo, Gloria Prat, Aldo Barbero
Country: Argentina
What it is: Sexed-up mad science

A mad scientist is kidnapping men and woman and performing sexual experimentation on them. Apparently, the sex produces a serum that gives him eternal life.

When this Argentine horror movie made it to the states, the purchasers decided it would sell best in the “Adults Only” market, so they added about seventeen minutes of softcore inserts. So many of the inserts occur during the first fifteen minutes of the movie that I was beginning to wonder if there was any of the original movie left. The movie is bad, but not near as bad as its title would lead you to believe. For one thing, there are some odd touches of surrealism to the movie that make it a little more interesting, especially with one of the scientist’s automatons who has become enamored with one of the doctor’s subjects. And, for what it’s worth, some of the insert footage is incorporated rather cleverly into the movie. For those looking for a good laugh, some portions of the dialogue are very silly, and that inflatable disembodied brain in the beaker is fairly ridiculous. Other than that, this is pretty much for the adults only crowd.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Huis clos (1954)

HUIS CLOS (1954)
aka No Exit
Article 3155 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-1-2010
Posting Date: 4-4-2010
Directed by Jacqueline Audry
Featuring Arletty, Franck Villard, Gaby Sylvia
Country: France
What it is: A vision of hell

Three people go to hell, where they share a room together. They soon discover that hell has no demons or torturers of their own, and that it is they themselves that will perform those functions on each other.

This movie was based on a one-act play by Jean-Paul Sartre, and it is the source of a famous four-word phrase (in English, that is) that announces its theme. I knew before watching the copy I came by that it was going to be in French with German subtitles, and that it was going to be heavy with talk and light with action, but since the play is well-known, I managed to read about half of it before I watched the movie, so I was better prepared for it than some others. Since the play was only a one-act, has only four characters (the fourth is a valet that pops up to make sure the guests are (un)comfortable), the movie opens things up by giving us a sequence before the characters enter the room, where they spend time in the lobby of hell and learn such things as the uselessness of bribery. It also gives them a window in the room out of which they can see events taking place in the world of the living after their deaths; in the play, they only see visions, while here, we see them too. The theme (and for those of you not familiar with the phrase, it is “Hell is other people.”) is handled convincingly; we all know people we would hate to be trapped in a room with for eternity, and the presence of three gives the opportunity for shifting temporary allegiances where two characters can gang up on the third, but no victory is ever permanent and all will get the chance to be victimized. The title’s meaning is simple enough and the meaning becomes significant by the end of the movie. It’s interesting, but it does get a little tiresome; after all, there’s a reason the play was only a one-act.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

A Night of Magic (1944)

A NIGHT OF MAGIC (1944)
Article 3154 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-31-2010
Posting Date: 4-3-2010
Directed by Herbert Wynne
Featuring Robert Griffith, Marian Olive, Gordon Ray
Country: UK
What it is: Sheer horror/fluffy British musical

A man receives a sarcophagus with a three thousand year old mummy from his uncle. However, the mummy is very much alive, female, and thrilled to find a man after all those years.

This revue musical is such a piece of fluff that I probably wouldn’t much like it even if it was good. However, such is not the case; the movie is, in a word, ghastly. If anything, it made me realize just how difficult it is to whip up a piece of fluff; you need smoothness, confidence, and a show of effortlessness. Every second of this movie feels forced, static, self-conscious and awkward; every joke falls flat, every dance feels under-rehearsed, etc. The writing is truly wretched; it’s one of those movies where you can see what the writer was trying for while being made exquisitely aware that it failed to accomplish its task. What is most surprising of all is the horrible acting; usually, the one thing you can guarantee in a British film is that the acting will be solid, but not this one. The two leads in particular are awful; the leading man couldn’t project an emotion if he had one, and the leading lady’s face seems cemented in a toothy smile that conjures up images of Gwynplaine in THE MAN WHO LAUGHS. This may be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. By the way, I’m going to give away the ending; it turns out that it is all a dream. For once, this type of ending is welcome, because not only can you then dismiss the whole thing as a nightmare, but take heart that the movie is over.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)

THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936 (1935)
Article 3153 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-30-2010
Posting Date: 4-2-2010
Directed by Norman Taurog
Featuring Jack Oakie, George Burns, Gracie Allen
Country: USA
What it is: Hollywood hodgepodge

A two-bit radio producer tries to deal with his creditors by stealing an amazing invention called a Radio Eye. However, he ends up kidnapped by a countess who has fallen in love with him. Can he use the invention to save himself?

This was part of a series of movies made during the thirties; they featured an assortment of musical numbers, comedy bits, and even dramatic scenes featuring popular stars of the day. The primary purpose of the invention in question (which is something of a combination between a TV set and a radio transmitter) is to provide a conduit for the various acts while the producer is trapped on an island. The plot is pretty negligible (as you might expect), so your enjoyment of this one will hinge on how you feel about the various acts, which include Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson and the comedy team Willie West and McGinty, among others. For me, the movie is stolen by Gracie Allen, who can’t open her mouth without saying something that will make me laugh; her trying to send a recipe over the airwaves is a highlight of the movie.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Old Scrooge (1913)

OLD SCROOGE (1913)
aka Scrooge
Article 3152 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-29-2010
Posting Date: 4-1-2010
Directed by Leedham Bantock
Featuring Seymour Hicks, William Lugg, Leedham Bantock
Country: UK
What it is: Could it be… another version of “A Christmas Carol?”

Scrooge is a skinflint who hates Christmas. But on Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his partner, who may make him change his ways…

I remember griping about the 1935 Seymour Hicks version of this story because it reduced Marley to a spoken voice who appears only momentarily. Maybe it was to balance out this version, where not only does Marley appear, but he takes the place of the other three spirits and does all the ghosting by himself. This one also features Seymour Hicks (who had made a career of playing Scrooge on stage), and he gives a good performance. The structure is pretty odd here; it only runs about forty minutes, and I found it odd that at the twenty minute mark, Scrooge was still hanging around the office and no ghost had appeared. As a result, the movie rushes through the visions of the past, present and future, and spends most of its time in the pre- and post-ghost sections of the story. It also features an introductory piece about Dickens, which gives a bit of a history of the story itself. I was a little confused by the date; IMDB lists 1913, and my print lists 1926, but the later date results from a re-release thirteen years after it was made.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Test Pilota Pirxa (1978)

TEST PILOTA PIRXA (1978)
aka Test Pilot Pirx
Article 3151 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-28-2010
Posting Date: 3-31-2010
Directed by Marek Piestrak
Featuring Sergei Desnitsky, Boleslaw Abart, Vladimir Ivashov
Country: Poland / Soviet Union
What it is: Science fiction space/robot drama

A test pilot is sent on a mission to the rings of Saturn with a crew of of five other people, one of whom is a actually a robot, but the pilot does not know who. The mission is a test of whether it will be safe with humans to work in tandem with robots, or if robots will endanger the humans.

The plot description above should be taken with a grain of salt; it’s compiled from a few sources which give only a cursory sense of what the story is about, and since I viewed this movie on YouTube in Russian with no English subtitles, my own viewing didn’t necessarily clear things up. I did gather the movie had something to do with robots interacting with humans, and I suspected that one or more of the crew would turn out to be robots. There are a few striking scenes, including one involving a car chase and another in which a robot’s hands become detached from its body. However, it’s a conversation-heavy movie, and I couldn’t figure out a lot of the plot details. It’s based on a book by Stanislaw Lem, and since I’ve liked what I read by the author, I might see if I can find the book. As for the movie, I’ll have to reserve judgment, though I did notice that the special effects were rather uneven; in some instances, they could even be described as cartoony.

0 CommentsLeave a comment