DRACULA (1973)
TV-Movie
Article 2716 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-11-2008
Posting Date: 1-19-2009
Directed by Dan Curtis
Featuring Jack Palance, Simon Ward, Nigel Davenport
Country: UK

Dracula comes to England with the intent of finding a woman who resembles his lost love and making her a vampire and companion.

I’ve seen enough of Dan Curtis’s TV-Movies to know they are hit-or-miss affairs, but when he’s on, he’s incredibly effective. He’s on with this one, and it’s great to see Jack Palance working with him again after their effective take on the Jekyll and Hyde story. Palance is fascinating in the role; he underplays his line deliveries, but with such conviction that he’s absolutely chilling. Furthermore, the supporting cast is very strong indeed; Nigel Davenort in particular is well cast as Van Helsing. Having appeared in an especially faithful play production of the story, I’ve developed a fascination with the ways various filmmakers have amended and modifed Bram Stoker’s story over the years, not from the point of view of condemning them for not being faithful to the novel (which, to my mind, has some problems), but with real interest in the various approaches that have been taken to adapting the story. This version jettisons Quincy Morris (perhaps the single major character most likely not to appear in the various versions of the story), Dr. Seward and Renfield. The latter two omissions are a little surprising (if for no other reason that Renfield is such an interesting character), but I can also see how the whole Renfield storyline can be a distraction from the main story. It retains the characters of Jonathan Harker and Lucy’s mother, though both suffer different fates. Dracula is given a greater motivation for his choice of Lucy as his victim, a move that gives his character a bit more depth as well as giving Palance more screen time. The ending also spends a lot more time in the interior of Dracula’s castle, and though the denoument is a bit disappointing, it is better than the ending of the novel. What I like best is the wonderful atmosphere Curtis adds to the production, and the way certain visual moments manage to convey such a great deal of impact; I love the scene where we see the captain lashed to the wheel of the beached ship while Dracula looks on from the shore. Oh, it has its flaws (such as some unconvincing day-for-night scenes), but overall, I found this version very well done.

DIE! DIE! MY DARLING! (1965)
aka Fanatic
Article 2713 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-7-2008
Posting Date: 1-16-2009
Directed by Silvio Narizzano
Featuring Tallulah Bankhead, Stefanie Powers, Peter Vaughan
Country: UK

An American woman agrees to visit the mother of her deceased fiance, unaware that his mother is a religious fanatic. The mother, appalled at the worldliness of her son’s intended, holds her prisoner with the intent of forcing her to reform.

This is another of Hammer’s entries in the “horror hag” cycle that became popular in the sixties, in which aging Hollywood actresses were given top billing in horror movies. I don’t find this one as fun or as interesting as the two Bette Davis ones they did (THE NANNY and THE ANNIVERSARY), though it’s not a bad movie. It goes into the category of what I call “frustration horror”, in which most of the running time seems to be concerned with abortive attempts of a heroine to escape danger, and after a while you get frustrated because you know the movie has been set up so that there’s no way she is going to escape until the end of the movie (that is, if she escapes at all). This was Tallulah Bankhead’s last on-screen movie role (she would do voice work on THE DAYDREAMER). Unfortunately, I found her performance to be too mannered and theatrical for her to be really effective here; it’s okay when she’s terrorizing the heroine, but when the movie starts digging into her psyche and tries to garner some sympathy for her, her performance gets in the way. I think it works best at the beginning before the heroine is made a prisoner; it has a nice sense of humor up to that point. It’s also another opportunity to catch Donald Sutherland in an early character role, that of a dimwitted handyman.

THE DEVIL’S MISTRESS (1966)
Article 2712 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-6-2008
Posting Date: 1-15-2009
Directed by Orville Wanzer
Featuring Joan Stapleton, Robert Gregory, Wes Moreland
Country: USA

Four outlaws come upon a cabin in Apache territory and are fed by a mysterious old man and a mute woman. Two of the outlaws kill the man and rape the woman, and then take her along with them. Then, one by one, the outlaws begin to die in mysterious ways…

This low-budget horror western reminds me in some ways of MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE, but I wouldn’t take that comparison to heart; I think this movie is much better. It’s not a lost classic, mind you, but it manages to make positive use of its extreme low budget; there’s something about the turgid pacing, the dearth of action, the static presentation, and the lack of music, when placed against some of the splendid western settings and in the context of a horror story that has a fair amount of subtlety and ambiguity that gives the movie a haunting feel. I will give the movie credit for not outstaying its welcome; it runs just a little over sixty minutes, and it disposes of the outlaws in just the right order; it gets rid of the sadistic outlaw with the annoying laugh just at the point when I was getting sick of him, and the outlaws die in the reverse order in which they were responsible for the murder/rape at the beginning of the movie. In fact, you’ll be hoping that the naive innocent may be spared in the final reel, but you’ll also be nagged by the realization that, even if he didn’t take part in the brutality, he nonetheless did nothing to prevent it. My biggest problem with the movie is that it decides to make the horror quite blatant at the end of the movie; the movie would have worked much better overall if it had found an ending that allowed it to retain its eerie ambiguity. This is the sole film credit for director/writer Orville Wanzer, and I find myself wishing he had made another one; whatever its flaws, it managed to capture something unique.

DESTROY ALL MONSTERS (1968)
aka Kaiju soshingeki
Article 2711 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-5-2008
Posting Date: 1-14-2009
Directed by Ishiro Honda
Featuring Akira Kubo, Jun Tazaki, Yukiko Kobayashi
Country: Japan

A mysterious force invades an island known as Monsterland, where all of the Earth’s monsters are being held for safekeeping. Soon, it becomes clear that the monsters have been taken over by aliens, and are invading the cities of the Earth.

For years, this was my Holy Grail of Japanese Giant Monster movies; I’d long known of its existence, but for some reason it never popped up on TV in my area. It was only after I had already seen most of the other Godzilla movies that I managed to find a copy of this one on home video… and was underwhelmed. For me, the big disappointment was that the movie adopted the overly familiar plot line of having space aliens take over the monsters and force them to do their bidding; I’d already seen that plotline in several of the other movies of the series, and, even though I know this one predated most of them, it was still a letdown. Watching it now, it still feels like a letdown; until the final battle, the monsters are used sparingly and in unsatisfying snippets, and most of the movie is focused on the muddled and uninteresting hunt for the hiding place of the aliens. Still, I can’t fault the movie entirely; with the final battle, the movie finally delivers on its promise, and we get a true battle royale of Earth’s monsters against the extraterrestrial monster Ghidorah. Even Minya gets a smoke ring attack before it all winds down. I do think it’s a bit of a shame that we only get the caterpillar version of Mothra, but that’s personal preference on my part. And even though I think the movie could have been a lot better, I’m still glad it’s around, and I certainly prefer it to GODZILLA: FINAL WARS.