THE COLLEGE GIRL MURDERS (1967)
aka Der Monch mit der Peitsche
Article 2950 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-5-2009
Posting Date: 9-11-2009
Directed by Alfred Vohrer
Featuring Joachim Fuchsberger, Uschi Glas, Grit Boettcher
Country: West Germany

Someone is killing off college girls with a special poison. There’s also a red-robed figure on the loose attacking people with a bullwhip. The police try to track down the murderer.

It’s another Edgar Wallace krimi, and this one is particularly goofy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. This one is something of a sequel to THE SINISTER MONK, though I always wonder why people consider a red KKK outfit to be a monk’s garb. The plot involves a poison gas, a whip-wielding figure in red, a competition between two detectives to see which method (psychological or traditional) will solve the case, a mysterious man who barks orders from a chair in an aquarium, and murderers who are recruited from prisons to go out and kill and then return to the prison to elude suspicion. The plot won’t hold up to close inspection, the comic relief is a matter of taste, and I wouldn’t bother trying to solve the mystery in advance because it doesn’t work that way. Nevertheless, its sense of fun will keep you going.

THE CLOWN MURDERS (1976)
Article 2949 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-4-2009
Posting Date: 9-10-2009
Directed by Martyn Burke
Featuring Stephen Young, Susan Keller, Lawrence Dane
Country: Canada / USA

Four friends hatch a scheme to dress up like clowns and kidnap a businessman’s wife to prevent him from closing a land deal. Though the scheme is intended as a prank, it takes an ugly turn when real violence is used at the kidnapping. As the kidnappers deal with the fallout from their actions, it becomes apparent that an outside party (also in a clown costume) is stalking them.

About ten minutes of this one is a horror film; the rest is a potentially interesting variant of the heist film. I say “potentially” for a reason; the movie’s concept of having each member of the group deal with the stress of having gotten in over their heads is much more interesting than its execution. One problem is that the characters aren’t quite as complex as they need to be to make the movie really compelling. Another is that parts of the movie are incredibly improbable; I find it particularly hard to believe that none of these people ever considered that their kidnapping would be considered a crime. Add to this the problem that the beginning exposition scenes are more confusing than elucidating, that it takes nearly twenty minutes before the plot starts to move, that the direction is flat and dull, and that the identity of the clown stalking the characters near the end of the movie is obvious, and you have what amounts to a missed opportunity. Of course, what the movie is most known for anymore is for giving us an early John Candy role, but I suspect that fans of the comedian will be disappointed here; though he gives a good performance, it’s a fairly humiliating role in which far too much time is spent commenting on his size and his eating habits, and the scene where he’s bound, roughed up and humiliated by the most psychotic member of the group is just unpleasant. The ending is rather unsatisfying as well. There’s a much better movie in here fighting to get out.

THE CLONE MASTER (1978)
TV-Movie
Article 2946 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-1-2009
Posting Date: 9-7-2009
Directed by Don Medford
Featuring Art Hindle, Robyn Douglass, John Van Dreelen
Country: USA

A master of biochemical engineering is hired by the government to do secret research on cloning. However, when his only government contact suffers injuries that leave him a vegetable, and his assistant is kidnapped, he begins to wonder about the real situation. It soon becomes apparent that he is not being financed by the government. However, the man financing the scientist is unaware of one thing; the scientist was much farther along in his cloning experiments than anyone imagined…

About halfway through this TV-Movie, I began to suspect that we were once again dealing with a potential series pilot, and, by the end of the movie, I was convinced it was so. Still, I have to admit that this one might have made an interesting series; basically, it’s an exponentially multiplied variation on “The Fugitive”, in which one man and his twelve clones (with whom the scientist is telepathically linked) are on the run for their lives, scattered over the globe. Given that the movie established that the clones are not strictly identical and would grow more different with time, I found myself pondering the possible plot lines that could develop. Well, it never became a series, though I think it made a dandy enough thriller, albeit one with a few problems. It does make very good use of its concepts, and works itself up to a clever and satisfying ending. This is one TV-Movie I really enjoyed.

CANDY (1968)
Article 2945 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-31-2009
Posting Date: 9-6-2009
Directed by Christian Marquand
Featuring Ewa Aulin, John Astin, Marlon Brando
Country: France / Italy / USA

Candy, who may or may not be an alien from outer space, finds herself assaulted and ravished by various individuals.

This movie was based on a novel cowritten by Terry Southern, the man who gave us the screenplays for BARBARELLA and DR. STRANGELOVE. It was a satirical novel modeled off of Voltaire’s “Candide”. I’ve not read the Southern novel, so I can’t compare this movie with it. I will say this, though; this is one of those movies that really tries to blow your mind… and fails. One problem is that it’s all just too obvious; if there’s a running theme in this one, it’s just that everyone wants to seduce the title character, and that’s hardly enough to make a two-hour-plus movie intriguing. It’s biggest problem, though, is that it slathers all of its elements on so shamelessly (cast of big-name stars, psychedelic visuals, surreal weirdness, jerky hand-held-camera-style cinematography, jagged editing) that it constantly crumbles under the weight of its own excesses. If I were to describe this movie in one sentence, I would say that it’s the IT’A A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD of psychedelic art movies, and that’s no compliment. For me, the big question was this – which of the big name actors embarrassed themselves the worst here? I’d opt for Richard Burton myself, with John Huston and Walter Matthau coming across the best, and Marlon Brando giving a performance so weird as to be undefinable. Quite frankly, this movie made me appreciate the restraint and subtlety of BARBARELLA.

LA CORONA NEGRA (1951)
aka The Black Crown
Article 2941 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-27-2009
Posting Date: 9-2-2009
Directed by Luis Saslavsky
Featuring Maria Felix, Rossano Brazzi, Vittorio Gassman
Country: Spain / France

A woman loses her memory after killing her husband. Her former lover shows up to try to get her to reveal where her husband kept some jewelry.

I have to thank the author of a user comment on IMDB for the above plot description; I couldn’t make heads or tails of the story from my copy, which is in unsubtitled Italian. It’s based on a story by Jean Cocteau, and had Cocteau directed, it would have been at least more visually compelling than this one is. Obviously, I can’t evaluate this one at all, so I’ll just say that the fantastic content itself is pretty slight; it’s mainly relegated to a dreamlike opening sequence and some fortune-telling that crops up at one point.