Unearthly Stranger (1963)

UNEARTHLY STRANGER (1963)
Article 2810 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-16-2009
Posting Date: 4-23-2009
Directed by John Krish
Featuring John Neville, Gabriella Licudi, Philip Stone
Country: UK

Scientists on a secret space project (involving travel through space using thought projection) are mysteriously dying one by one by unusual methods. The man in security believes they may have been murdered by Russians, and he suspects the wife of the new director, especially after it is discovered that there is no record of her existence. However, the wife is from somewhere else entirely…

This is a fairly obscure British science fiction thriller that has developed a reputation as a sleeper, and is slowly becoming better known. It definitely deserves more attention; though it does have a fair amount of flaws (such as occasional lapses into hokey melodrama), it’s also unique and suspenseful. It’s very well acted by all concerned, and there are some great moments of sharp direction and clever editing; I particularly like the sequence where the new director tells his boss about how he met his new wife because of its clever blending of present day action and flashback. In some ways, it reminds me of the Quatermass movies, though it doesn’t quite have the same sense of scope. The ending is curious and even a little ambiguous, but it’s quite effective. This one is well worth searching out.

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Trilogy of Terror (1975)

TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975)
TV-Movie
Article 2809 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-15-2009
Posting Date: 4-22-2009
Directed by Dan Curtis
Featuring Karen Black, Robert Burton, John Karlen
Country: USA

Three tales of terror are presented. In the first, a student uses blackmail to seduce a teacher, but discovers a surprising fact. In the second, a prim woman seeks to murder her libertine sister. In the third, a Zuni fetish doll comes to life and terrorizes a woman.

If you’re a big Karen Black fan and also love TV-Movie horror anthologies, this is for you; she plays four different roles in three stories, and is pretty much the only significant acting presence in the movie. The movie seems to have a certain amount of popularity, given its 7.0 rating on IMDB. I’m afraid I’m less taken with it. I’m not a big Karen Black fan nor a TV-Movie fan, and as far as I’m concerned, only the third story works. The first one plays mostly like a soap opera, and though it does have an interesting twist, it’s quite dull. The second I found blatantly obvious; it’s one of those stories that probably works a lot better in print than brought to life on the TV tube. It almost seems as if only the third story is even trying to be scary, and despite the fact that it has its problems (the woman’s opening conversation with her mother goes on forever), it does get you on the edge of your seat. I suspect that this movie’s reputation lies with this segment; it looks like all the artwork I’ve seen for it prominently feature the doll. All three are based on Richard Matheson stories, but Matheson worked on the screenplay himself only on the third one. Incidentally, the French vampire film at the drive-in is actually THE NIGHT STALKER.

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Torso (1973)

TORSO (1973)
aka I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale
Article 2808 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-14-2009
Posting Date: 4-21-2009
Directed by Sergio Martino
Featuring Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont, Luc Merenda
Country: Italy

A strangler is on the loose killing college girls in Rome.

Of the giallos I’ve seen to date, this is the one that most resembles an American slasher movie, especially during the first two murders. It’s also one of the sleazier giallos I’ve seen, as well as one of the bloodiest. Yet, I must admit that I found it overall to be fairly uninspired as far as giallos go; I didn’t find it compellingly stylistic, and the revelations at the end about the causes of the killer’s psychosis seem very weak. Still, it does manage to work up a decent amount of suspense in the final third of the movie, when the killer sets about disposing of several bodies in a house while being unaware that there is still one other person on the premises who knows she’s in danger but is unable to escape; in some ways, this plot element reminds me of a similar one in the SEE NO EVIL. There’s lots of nudity here and the usual (almost obligatory for a giallo) lesbian encounters. This one is so-so.

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13 Ghosts (1960)

13 GHOSTS (1960)
Article 2807 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-13-2009
Posting Date: 4-20-2009
Directed by William Castle
Featuring Charles Herbert, Jo Morrow, Martin Milner
Country: USA

A family that is struggling financially inherits a house that they can only keep if they live in it. The house contains a fortune hidden by the former owner… and it also contains ghosts collected by him as well.

William Castle was the king of the gimmicks, but, if you look at his movies, for the most part the gimmicks were momentary side issues to the plot; the floating skeleton in HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL affected only one scene, the “choose the ending” scenario in MR. SARDONICUS only came into play at the end of the movie, as did the Coward’s Corner gimmick for HOMICIDAL, etc. This is the most significant exception; the glasses could be used several times throughout the movie, and it seems to me that the movie was actually built around the use of the gimmick. I think this is somewhat responsible for my dislike of this movie; I was extremely disappointed by it on first viewing, and though I’ve given it couple of other chances, I think it falls flat. One of the problems is that many of the ghost scenes end abruptly, which somehow kills any suspense that it may have built up. Another problem is that the dialogue sounds forced and phony; someone like Vincent Price might have made it work, but he’s not in the movie, and the cast here looks rather lost with most of it. In the end, I just don’t find it anywhere near as much fun or as scary as his better films, and I suspect the primary appeal of the film depends on the gimmick; it’s probably a lot more fun if you have the glasses to play with. Still, it doesn’t help that the glasses used in the movie itself look pretty silly. Margaret Hamilton plays the housekeeper, and though some talk is made about her being a witch, it just doesn’t really hold much water here. I consider this one of Castle’s bigger disappointments.

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The Terminal Man (1974)

THE TERMINAL MAN (1974)
Article 2806 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-12-2009
Posting Date: 4-19-2009
Directed by Mike Hodges
Featuring George Segal, Joan Hackett, Richard Dysart
Country: USA

A man suffers from a mental condition that causes him to become homicidal on occasion. Scientists install chips in his brain designed to stop the violent episodes when the conditions that bring them on appear. The operation appears to work, but the scientists discover a flaw in the concept that could make him even more dangerous. Unfortunately, by that time, the man has escaped from their care and is on the loose…

You don’t need to be an expert on Michael Crichton to know about his basic theme of technology going wrong, and if you keep that in mind when watching this movie, you know basically what’s going to happen very early on. The appeal is in the details, of course, and I find the description of the central flaw in the process to be a very compelling little detail that sounds quite convincing. In fact, once this point in the story is in reach, the movie has the makings of a neat and tense little thriller. Unfortunately, the movie is shot with a somewhat arty feel to it that is a little too distancing, and it remains distant when it should really be pulling you into it. Furthermore, the arty touches make the movie feel like it should be more complex and original than it is; all in all, the story is very standard, and it jars a little with the artiness, especially when the movie breaks into cliche territory. It’s a shame; this could have been a tense little variation on the serial killer theme.

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The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973)
aka El Espiritu de la colmena
Article 2805 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-11-2009
Posting Date: 4-18-2009
Directed by Victor Erice
Featuring Fernando Fernan Gomez, Teresa Gimpera, Ana Torrent
Country: Spain

A young girl in a rural Spanish village in 1940 becomes obsessed with the Frankenstein Monster after seeing the movie FRANKENSTEIN. She begins to imagine that she can conjure his spirit, and he becomes a part of her fantasy life.

It’s a Spanish art film rather than any sort of a horror movie, and I won’t pretend to have a thorough understanding of everything that goes on in this one, but if you’re familiar with the James Whale version of FRANKENSTEIN, you might well find this as fascinating as I did. In particular, I like the way several incidents parallel or recall incidents in that movie. For example, there’s a scene in a schoolroom where the kids are called upon to put the missing organs back on a cardboard cutout of a man (called Don Jose), a scene which recalls the creation of the monster. The movie gets deeper and deeper into the girl’s fantasy life, and much of this is no doubt brought about by the distance that so many people put between themselves and others; outside of the two sisters, we rarely see any of the members of the family in the same frame with each other. The fantasy life reaches a crucial turning point when an escaped criminal hides out in the abandoned house where the little girl believes the spirit of the Frankenstein monster lives. It’s really an indescribable movie, and must be seen to be appreciated.

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Quintet (1979)

QUINTET (1979)
Article 2804 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-10-2009
Posting Date: 4-17-2009
Directed by Robert Altman
Featuring Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey
Country: USA

During an ice age after the apocalypse, a drifter arrives at a city to find the residents obsessed with a game called Quintet. When his pregnant female travelling companion is killed in a bombing, he tries to track down the killer, only to find a list of people involved in a Quintet tournament who are being killed off one by one.

I’ve not heard good things about this Robert Altman movie, but I found it to have its uses. Granted, most of the things I like best are on the periphery; I like the detail of what happens to dead bodies in the city, the recurrence of the number five in various details, the use of a multi-national cast (on the cast list on IMDB, I had to go down all the way to the tenth name to find someone who came from the same country as one of the other actors, and I couldn’t help but notice that the character played by that actor is impersonated by another character in the movie who happens to be from the same country. I also have a great admiration for director Robert Altman; he doesn’t pander, and he takes risks. Unfortunately, taking risks sometimes backfires, and when one of his movies fails to connect, it’s a big problem. This one is far too long, and it has a fair amount of dead space (particularly in the first half). Conversation is often so sparse that Altman’s actors don’t get much of an opportunity to engage in the energetic improvisation of some of his other movies. The mystery isn’t very mysterious, and the movie is totally dull whenever it tries to be vaguely “meaningful”. Nevertheless, I don’t feel I came away from this one empty-handed, and I would be curious to know what the rules are for the game Quintet; though it’s clearly a fictional game, I wouldn’t put it past Altman to have actually constructed a clear set of rules for it.

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Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE (1974)
Article 2803 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-9-2009
Posting Date: 4-16-2009
Directed by Brian De Palma
Featuring William Finley, Paul Williams, Jessica Harper
Country: USA

When his rock cantata is stolen by a legendary music impresario, a musician seeks revenge, but gets horribly mutilated in a record pressing machine. He dons a mask and haunts the rock palace constructed by the impresario, but gets drawn into a pact with the devil when he seeks to have a female singer perform his music.

Given my general dismissive attitude towards musicals, my ambivalence about the oeuvre of Brian De Palma, my dislike for THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, and the fact that I have little use for singer/composer Paul Williams, one might well be expected to conclude that I would dislike this one intensely. Well, surprise of surprises, I really liked this one for the most part. I’m not particularly taken with the music (to its credit, THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW wins out in this regard), but I think De Palma keeps his most irritating habits in check with this one; the style underscores the comedy quite well, it uses split screen effectively, and the Hitchcock references don’t seem forced. In fact, the reference to PSYCHO is one of my favorite laughs in the movie. Furthermore, I like speculating on who might be the models for the various characters in the story; I suspect Swan is Phil Spector, the group The Juicy Fruits is Sha Na Na, and Winslow Leach is (at first, anyway) a take on Elton John. There’s also a general parody of the shock rock/glam rock world of Alice Cooper and David Bowie thrown in. Unlike THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, it has a story; it’s a mutated cross between the Faust story and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. And however I feel about Paul Williams’s music, he gives a hell of a performance as the narcissistic Swan. Still, I did say “for the most part” above, and I have to admit that the movie starts to unravel in the final reel; it loses its comic edge and becomes just weird. Nevertheless, I think ultimately its strengths win out, and this goes under the list of De Palma films I really like.

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Patrick (1978)

PATRICK (1978)
Article 2802 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-9-2009
Posting Date: 4-15-2009
Directed by Richard Franklin
Featuring Susan Penhaligon, Robert Helpmann, Rod Mullinar
Country: Australia

A woman, separated from her husband, gets a job nursing a young man who went into a coma after murdering his mother and her lover. She begins to suspect that he’s not entirely dead to the world… and may have developed psychic powers.

Though it has a somewhat offbeat approach and doesn’t feel like a ripoff of any other movie (calling it a cross between COMA and THE FURY just doesn’t do it justice), I found this Australian thriller curiously uninvolving. Part of the problem may be that, with a central character who spends the entire movie lying in bed and staring off in the distance, it’s a little difficult making him compelling. Most of the action falls onto the shoulders of the character of the nurse, and she spends most of the movie doing the one thing that is most likely to weary me; she spends it trying to convince people that the events she’s witnessing are real and ends up only making herself look crazy. Overall, the movie feels somewhat confused and oddly edited, but, given that the movie was cut from an original running time of 140 minutes, that’s understandable. Still, it’s hard for me to believe that this movie could have sustained that length; I started to get antsy and bored early on waiting for things to start rolling. The movie must have been popular enough, though; it inspired a sequel, albeit one that was made in a different country. On a side note, this is the second movie in a row to feature a troubled woman having bad experiences involving a typewriter.

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The Nesting (1981)

THE NESTING (1981)
Article 2801 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-7-2009
Posting Date: 4-14-2009
Directed by Armand Weston
Featuring Robin Groves, Christopher Loomis, Michael David Lally
Country: USA

A woman writer who suffers from agoraphobia moves into a country house which she discovers for the first time, despite having described it in detail in a novel she’s written. It soon becomes obvious the house is haunted and the ghosts want revenge, but upon who? And why?

Despite the fact that the movie crosses two very familiar horror storylines (the haunted house and the revenge from the grave plots), it still manages to be offbeat enough to hold my interest, and manages to have some interesting details. This is good, because the movie definitely suffers in several regards; some of the acting is quite weak, the dialogue is often clunky and some of it is quite awful, there are plot elements that are never explained (why do the ghosts go after the doctor?), and it has a big ending where none is needed. There are some nice touches, though; I love the scene where the writer is talking on the phone in the foreground while we see a central character appear in the background, listen to the conversation, and depart before she knows he’s been there. John Carradine does a good job in a role that gives him a bit more to play with than most of his other roles at the time. This was also Gloria Grahame’s last movie, and she might have been more effective if her big scene wasn’t one of the clunkiest in the movie. Despite certain nice touches, this movie has a very poor reputation (its rating on IMDB is 2.7), so let the viewer beware.

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