Blood Relatives (1978)

BLOOD RELATIVES (1978)
aka Les liens de sang
Article 2960 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-15-2009
Posting Date: 9-21-2009
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Featuring Donald Sutherland, Aude Landry, Lisa Langlois
Country: Canada / France

When a young woman is murdered in an alley, her cousin, the only person who witnessed the crime, turns up at the police station bloody from knife wounds. She offers a description of the assailant, but then changes her story by accusing her own brother of the crime. The detective on the case hopes to learn the truth of the matter by reading the diary of the murdered girl… if he can find it.

This is not a horror movie; its horror content is mostly due to the savage murder that starts the plot rolling. The biggest clue to what this movie was going to be like comes early on, when the credits mention that it is based on a novel by Ed McBain, a mystery writer who specializes in police procedurals. And indeed, that’s what it is; we follow the investigation of the crime as the police finger several suspects, hunt down clues, interview people, and try to piece the puzzle together. The surrounding details and the final solution turn out to be very dark indeed; I suspect that the movie’s R rating is more for the nature of the plot elements (which include incest and child molestation) than for the actual murder details, which are nowhere near as bloody as they could have been. I was able to figure out who the murderer was going to be, but that didn’t destroy my pleasure with the movie, because it gave me a chance afterward to explore the various plot details and figure out why certain events happened when they did; for one thing, you’ll figure out exactly why the witness changed her story when she did. The cast is quite good, though Donald Pleasence is particularly memorable in a cameo as one of the suspects.

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Carol for Another Christmas (1964)

CAROL FOR ANOTHER CHRISTMAS (1964)
TV-Movie
Article 2959 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-14-2009
Posting Date: 9-20-2009
Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Featuring Sterling Hayden, Ben Gazzara, Steve Lawrence
Country: USA

A wealthy isolationist is bitter over the loss of his son in the war, and has chosen to politically and personally detach himself from the world. However, on Christmas Eve, he is visited by three ghosts that seek to have him re-explore his life.

Rod Serling was a great writer. He was also given to preachiness, which makes some of his work a little difficult to sit through. In this, his updated revamp of Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”, he’s got a message, and those who don’t want to hear what he has to say will find this one tough going. However, for me, he’s a good enough writer that I’m willing to listen to what he has to say, especially when the vehicle he uses to say it is impeccably directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and features an impressive cast that features Sterling Hayden, Eva Marie Saint, Ben Gazzara, Steve Lawrence, Pat Hingle and Britt Ekland, with special kudos to Robert Shaw and Peter Sellers in their respective roles. The message is quite relevant to the modern world; in the age of airplanes, radio, satellites and nuclear war, we can no longer embrace a policy of isolationism (either politically or as an individual) and hope to survive, and Serling argues the point very well through his various mouthpieces. It’s talky, all right, but the talk is intelligent and engaging, and the performances add to enjoyment here. And, lest we forget, it is relevant to Christmas as well, as it is the time for “goodwill to all men”. This is one of the better “loose” adaptations of the Dickens story out there.

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Drums of the Congo (1942)

DRUMS OF THE CONGO (1942)
Article 2958 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-13-2009
Posting Date: 9-19-2009
Directed by Christy Cabanne
Featuring Ona Munson, Stuart Erwin, Peggy Moran
Country: USA

An American agent is sent to Africa to find the location of a newly-discovered radioactive mineral. Unfortunately, foreign spies are also after the mineral.

What happens when you cross the Gizmo Maguffin plot with the Double-Stuffed Safari-O? If your answer was “not a hell of a lot”, you’d be right. About the only novelty in this forgettable jungle adventure is that the search for a woman’s missing father is just a ruse by the spies; other than that, it’s the same old safari adventure, chock-full of story-stopping stock footage. The cast also features Turhan Bey (as a quick-to-die villain) and Dorothy Dandridge.

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Alfalfa’s Aunt (1939)

ALFALFA’S AUNT (1939)
Short
Article 2957 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-12-2009
Posting Date: 9-17-2009
Directed by George Sidney
Featuring Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer, Marie Blake, Barbara Bedford
Country: USA

Alfalfa believes his aunt means to murder him when he reads a paper she dropped, unaware that it is a page from a mystery novel she is writing. He calls in the gang to help scare her out of the house.

I’m not a big fan of the Our Gang/Little Rascals series, probably because I’m not big on cute kid antics. Still, I will give this short some credit; at only ten minutes, it never runs the risk of being boring. It also doesn’t leave time for more than a handful of scare-the-aunt gags, as most of the running time is dedicated to setting up the plot. For those who want to keep the kids straight in their minds, Alfalfa is the one with the rogue cowlick. Passable and painless.

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The Fear Chamber (1968)

THE FEAR CHAMBER (1968)
Article 2956 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-11-2009
Posting Date: 9-17-2009
Directed by Jack Hill and Juan Ibanez
Featuring Boris Karloff, Julissa, Carlos East
Country: Mexico / USA

A scientist discovers a living rock in the depths of the earth, and connects it to computers in the hopes of discovering its secrets. However, in order to keep it alive, it has to be fed with a substance that is only produced in the bodies of people in mortal terror. Eventually the scientist ends the experiment, but two of his assistants decide to continue…

This is the last of the four Mexican films Boris Karloff made at the end of his life that I’ve covered for this series. If anything, I’ve been a little too nice to these awful movies, and I’ll probably be so with even this one, which is the one I loathe the most. Visually, it’s the most interesting; in fact, it’s almost arty at times. I also like the concept of scientists attempting to converse with an intelligent rock. Nevertheless, beneath the novel concept, we have that basic concept of scientists driven to commit atrocities in the pursuit of knowledge. Furthermore, the idea that people (usually beautiful young women in various states of undress) must be nearly frightened to death to produce a substance to feed the rock is extremely contrived, and that idea contributes to the sadistic mean-spiritedness of the movie that renders it rather repellent; it’s this joyless nastiness that makes me loathe the movie. In short, this movie has none of the charm I would associate with either Boris Karloff movies or Mexican horror movies. Karloff does what he can, but it’s not enough.

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Face of Terror (1962)

FACE OF TERROR (1962)
aka La cara del terror
Article 2955 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-10-2009
Posting Date: 9-16-2009
Directed by Isidoro M. Ferry and William J. Hole Jr
Featuring Lisa Gaye, Fernando Rey, Virgilio Teixeira
Country: Spain

A scientist tests a new method of plastic surgery on a horribly scarred young woman. However, he is unaware that the woman is an escapee from a mental institute…

In some ways, I really admire this movie. It has one of the greatest Spanish actors in the role of the mad scientist (Fernando Rey), and the character is given more rounding and fullness than it might have gotten otherwise. This greater attention to character includes the woman escapee as well; once she’s had the operation, she just doesn’t go out and begin killing people, but sets out initially to live a normal life. Still, despite these touches, the story is utterly humdrum and predictable, and at least one scene is extremely bad; really, if you were in the midst of blackmailing an escapee from a mental institute, would you force open a pair of elevator doors to stare down the open shaft with the escapee right behind you? The dubbing is merely passable for the most part (it sounds like everyone is in an echo chamber), though the dubbing for Rey is quite good; I wonder if he dubbed himself here.

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Slaughter (1976)

SLAUGHTER (1976)
aka Dogs
Article 2954 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-9-2009
Posting Date: 9-15-2009
Directed by Burt Brinckerhoff
Featuring David McCallum, Sandra McCabe, George Wyner
Country: USA

In a small California college town that is the home of a secret government experiment, dogs start banding together to kill people.

Sometimes you can just tell, can’t you? Though this is not a TV-Movie (it’s far too bloody for that), there was something about this the one (the style of photography, the pacing, the choice of music, etc.) that just screamed TV-Movie, and a quick check on Burt Brinckerhoff’s oeuvre shows only a tiny handful of feature films and a huge amount of TV work. There’s one or two chills here, but the rest is a cheesy concoction made of one part NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, one part FROGS, and a bit of JAWS (and I’m willing to bet that somewhere along the line somebody was thinking of calling it PAWS). No explanation is ever given for the dogs acting this way, though I’m sure the film-makers assumed you would tie it to the secret government project about which we know nothing. Two things in particular stood out on the negative side of things here; Sandra McCabe has one of the worst screams in cinema history (it sounds like she’s auditioning badly for an opera), and the ending (which implies that another group of pets will also start going on the rampage) made me snicker rather than shudder. This one makes THE PACK look pretty good.

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The Death Train (1978)

THE DEATH TRAIN (1978)
TV-Movie
Article 2953 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-8-2009
Posting Date: 9-14-2009
Directed by Igor Auzins
Featuring Hugh Keays-Byrne, Max Meldrum, Ralph Cotterill
Country: Australia

An insurance investigator comes to a small town to investigate the death of a man insured by his company. The local residents believe his death was caused by his being run over by a ghost train. However, the investigator is sure there is a more rational explanation…

If there were limits to the amount of quirkiness allowed in a movie, this one assuredly would have passed that limit, and those who are allergic to quirkiness should steer clear. Those with a weakness for that sort of thing (such as me) are in for a treat; between the bizarre mystery, the supernatural overtones, the array of offbeat characters, and the surreal comic air of several of the scenes, I was delighted and charmed. Among the strange characters that inhabit this movie are the policeman who uses the hunt-and-peck method to fill out the reports, the carrot-juice swilling long-time companion of the deceased, the overly-descriptive doctor who performed the autopsy on the deceased, and the woman in the Sandman station wagon who picks up stray men. We also have key scenes in which the investigator searches for a pair of glasses in a chicken coop, a scene where the reporter tries to evade a rampaging piece of machinery while dressed in his underwear, and the scenes where he encounters the unhelpful residents of the town, including the barmaid who won’t help him because he’s sitting at the wrong end of the counter. Then there’s the reporter himself, who constantly has a cigarette in his mouth but refuses to light it and constantly lets his suspected murderer know that he’s hunting for the evidence to put him away. Then there’s the tiny hotel room with the spacious bathroom, which may be my favorite gag in the movie. Of course, the big question is whether the final revelation will prove supernatural or merely bizarre, and I won’t give that away except to say that I left the movie smiling.

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Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969)

DADDY’S GONE A-HUNTING (1969)
Article 2952 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-7-2009
Posting Date: 9-13-2009
Directed by Mark Robson
Featuring Carol White, Scott Hylands, Paul Burke
Country: USA

When a woman breaks up with her psychotic boyfriend and aborts their baby, the boyfriend plots an insidious revenge; once the woman marries and has a child, he plans to force her into killing that one as well.

Had I only watched the first half of this movie, I would have dismissed it as a misfired attempt at a Hitchcockian thriller marred by stridency and occasionally poor acting. However, once you know the boyfriend’s plot, the story starts the click, the screws start turning, and the movie becomes very suspenseful, even if you never do warm up to the female lead, who, to my mind, never really becomes a convincing character. Still, Scott Hylands proves to be quite effective as the psychotic boyfriend, and director Mark Robson does manage to tap into some Lewtonian ambiguity in the first half when you’re not quite sure whether the woman is being stalked or suffering from an overactive imagination. For those into sly references, take note of the theatrical offering that the woman tries to buy a ticket for. The story and script are from Larry Cohen, who would gain fame for another movie about a baby – namely, IT’S ALIVE.

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The Curse of the Yellow Snake (1963)

THE CURSE OF THE YELLOW SNAKE (1963)
aka Der Fluch der gelben Schlange
Article 2951 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-6-2009
Posting Date: 9-12-2009
Directed by Franz Josef Gottlieb
Featuring Joachim Fuchsberger, Brigitte Grothum, Pnkas Braun
Country: West Germany

A secret cult wants to acquire an artifact called the Yellow Snake, as its possessor on a given date will have an invincible army.

If yesterday’s Edgar Wallace krimi was goofy but fun, this one is merely dull. Part of the problem may just be my print, which is so dark that it’s hard to make out some of the action, but I don’t know if it’s just my print or the movie itself. Still, even at that, this is rather predictable for an Edgar Wallace movie; it’s ersatz Fu Manchu, but without characters near as interesting as Fu Manchu or Nayland Smith. They attempt to throw in a lot of complications (involving planned marriages and business blackmail), but the movie never becomes as mysterious, atmospheric, or fun as the better movies of the series. As it is, the comic relief character (a chatterbox antique dealer) is the most memorable character here, and that’s never a good sign, as he’s mildly funny at best. This is far from the best of the series.

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