Satanas de todos los horrores (1974)

SATANAS DE TODOS LOS HORRORES (1974)
aka Satan of All Horrors
Article 2450 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-17-2007
Posting Date: 4-27-2008
Directed by Julian Soler
Featuring Enrique Lizalde, Enrique Rocha, Carlos Lopez Moctezuma
Country: Mexico

A man visits the home of his beloved, and finds her under the sway of his strange brother in a crumbling mansion.

I was caught off guard by this movie, as I didn’t know my print was going to be in unsubtitled Spanish, but, heck, it’s not like I haven’t been here before. Still, I had some help; the titles indicated that it was based on something by Edgar Allan Poe, and it didn’t take much thinking to figure out that the source was “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Granted, that particular story tends to lend itself to talkfests, and, sure enough, there’s lots of talk in this one, and when it’s in a language you can’t understand, it’s even worse. Still, the movie tries to jazz things up, though I’m not sure I care much for the changes; an evil manservant is thrown into the mix, as well as a dose of black magic dabbling and demon summoning. There’s also a plot twist that I’d probably understand better if I knew what the dialogue was saying, but I’ll not reveal it in case it would be a spoiler; it certainly caught me off guard. However, I really like one aspect of this one; it’s the only version I’ve seen that really emphasizes the crumbling state of the house itself; there are cracks in the walls, and the whole house shakes on occasion. There’s an especially memorable sequence involving a picture on a wall. Throw in some rats and decaying corpses to add to the fun. Really, as far as watching foreign movies in their original language goes, this was one of the more benign experiences I’ve had.

 

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Angel on Wheels (1959)

ANGEL ON WHEELS (1959)
aka Angel on Earth, Ein Engel auf Erden
Article 2449 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-16-2007
Posting Date: 4-26-2008
Directed by Geza von Radvanyi
Featuring Romy Schneider, Henri Vidal, Michele Mercier
A race car driver encounters a woman who claims to be his guardian angel. The angel, trying to prevent his marriage to a self-serving socialite, takes the form of an airline hostess who is in love with the race car driver.

ANGEL ON WHEELS? I don’t know where they concocted that title for this slight romantic comedy; the race car driver isn’t the angel, and though the angel does ride in wheeled vehicles on occasion, it’s hardly a significant plot element. As for the movie itself, it’s cute but rather dull, and the most interesting thing about it is the presence of Jean-Paul Belmondo one year before BREATHLESS was a hit of the French New Wave. He plays the hero’s sidekick, and he’s really not given much to do. Easily stealing the movie is Margarete Haagen as the chief angel; dressed as one of those nuns that you don’t want to mess with, she has the best parts of the movie, such as when she takes over the other angel’s duties at an auto race. Other than that, this is a fairly forgettable angel-on-earth story.

 

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Whistling in Dixie (1942)

WHISTLING IN DIXIE (1942)
Article 2448 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-15-2007
Posting Date: 4-25-2008
Directed by S. Sylvan Simon
Featuring Red Skelton, Ann Rutherford, George Bancroft

A radio personality known as “The Fox” goes to Georgia to help solve a real-life crime in which a man was murdered, but the body then disappeared.

This was the second of three comedies in which Red Skelton played radio detective Wally Benton; I’ve already covered WHISTLING IN THE DARK , but I will most likely not be covering the third (WHISTLING IN BROOKLYN), as it apparently has no fantastic content. In fact, this one doesn’t have much either outside of a little spooky atmosphere on occasion. The movie is moderately funny, though it’s not quite up to the level of the previous one. Still, it does have one wonderful moment of comic suspense when Red places himself in chopping distance of a guillotine, unaware that he has just set his cigarette down in a place that is slowly burning the rope that holds the blade up. Ann Rutherford also returns from the previous movie, as does Rags Ragland, who not only reprises his tough guy role from the earlier movie, but also plays his twin brother. The movie gets a fair amount of comic mileage out of the confusion between the two brothers. All in all, a good, but not great, comedy.

 

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Star Virgin (1979)

STAR VIRGIN (1979)
Article 2447 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-14-2007
Posting Date: 4-24-2008
Directed by Howard Ziehm
Featuring Kari Klark, Kevin Thompson, Tracy Walton

The last of the human species, a female, quizzes her robot mentor about sex.

One thing you can be pretty sure about any movie with the word “virgin” in the title; the movie is going to have precious little to do with virginity, especially if he movie can only be found in that section of the video store that prominently displays multiple iterations of the 24th letter of the alphabet. You can also be confident that, despite the existence of certain fantastic content incidental to the plot (and I use the word loosely) will have very little to do with what the movie is really about, and such is the case here. So we have a setting in the future, a robot, the devil, and a vampire in a spooky old castle, but the movie is more interested in other (very explicit) details. As such, there’s little more for me to say about this one.

 

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King of the Mounties (1942)

KING OF THE MOUNTIES (1942)
Serial
Article 2446 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-13-2007
Posting Date: 4-23-2008
Directed by William Witney
Featuring Allan Lane, Gilbert Emery, Russell Hicks
Sergeant King of the mounties must do battle with axis forces in Canada who are trying to soften up North America for an upcoming invasion. Towards that end, the axis powers have come up with a super airplane that cannot be detected by radar.

It’s easy to confuse this one with KING OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED , partially because of the extreme similarity of the titles, and partially because this one borrows a hefty amount of footage from that one. Still, this one wasn’t immune from having footage stolen from it as well; FLYING DISC MEN OF MARS borrowed its share of footage from this one. This is in actuality a sequel to KING OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED, and it seems decent enough; on the plus side, the fights wreck a decent amount of furniture in the great Republic style, and, on the minus side, it uses horses less so we get a greater share of bail-out cliffhanger resolutions. Still, I wouldn’t recommend this one to any but the hardiest and most dedicated of serial fans. This is because the serial is in pretty bizarre shape; about two-thirds of the soundtrack is missing, and one episode (number two) has the complete soundtrack, but no visuals. Most of the other episodes are completely silent, except for some poorly grafted music and sound effects culled from another part of the serial; whenever you hear gunshots but don’t see anyone shooting, you’ll know you’ve hit one of these stretches. Sure, following it is a bit of a mess, but I’m not sure it really matters with a serial as much; it’s certainly easier to piece together than UNA AVENTURA EN LA NOCHE .

 

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Una aventura en la noche (1948)

UNA AVENTURA EN LA NOCHE (1948)
aka An Adventure in the Night
Article 2445 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-12-2007
Posting Date: 4-22-2008
Directed by Rolando Aguilar
Featuring Luis Aguilar, Miroslava Stern, Carlos Villarias

Two men pick up two female hitchhikers and take them home. They begin to suspect that the women are ghosts. Their investigation leads them to a creepy old mansion.

I managed to get the above plot description from IMDB; otherwise, it would be a shot in the dark as to what the storyline is, as my copy of this one is in unsubtitled Spanish. Still, I knew the plot line had something to do with ghosts in advance, as one of other sources mentioned the presence of ghosts, and as soon as I saw the scene with the two hitchhikers, I suspected I was watching a variation on an old urban legend, the same one that inspired RETURN TO GLENNESCAUL . This one looks pretty good, and there’s an eerie seance at one point, an interesting scene with a record player, and an attempt to shoot test footage of one of the ghosts. There may also be a touch of science fiction to the proceedings; there’s a science lab in the spooky old house, and one man has a pair of glasses that burns things. Still, there’s not much I can say about this one until a dubbed or subtitled copy comes along, as most of the plot is handled verbally.

 

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The Cage (1966)

THE CAGE (1966)
Pilot Episode for “Star Trek”
Article 2444 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-11-2007
Posting Date: 4-21-2008
Directed by Robert Butler
Featuring Jeffrey Hunter, Susan Oliver, Leonard Nimoy

Starship Captain Christopher Pike attempts to rescue survivors from a crashed expedition on a distant planet, only to find out that the survivors were an illusion and himself a prisoner of a race of beings with super mental powers.

I don’t know if this qualifies as a “movie”, but nevertheless, here it is, the first pilot for what may be the most famous science fiction TV series of them all. It was never aired as such, though ample footage of it was used to fill out the two part episode of the series, “The Menagerie”. If you’ve seen that episode, there really isn’t much in the way of surprises here. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to speculate on the differences between this and the series; Jeffrey Hunter gives the role of the captain a different flavor than William Shatner did, and I wonder if Spock would have developed the way he did; here, he shows marked emotions on occasion. It’s a little hard to gauge on some levels; since this version incorporates unaired black and white footage along with the color footage used in “The Menagerie”, you can tell that changes were made; the voice of one of the Talosians changes noticeably from one scene to the next, for example. The basic feel of the series remained intact, though only two members of this original cast remained, and one of them (Majel Barrett) would be given a decidedly different role. Perhaps the best thing about this is seeing how strongly Gene Roddenberry was willing to go against the grain to suit his vision, by allowing a multiracial crew and concocting a story that allowed him to deal with concepts a little too adult and sophisticated to be generally allowed on TV at this time. Even in its earliest stages, it’s easy to see why this series would catch the imagination of a devoted audience.

 

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Alien Massacre (1965)

ALIEN MASSACRE (1965)
aka The Wizard of Mars
Article 2443 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-10-2007
Posting Date: 4-20-2008
Directed by David L. Hewitt
Featuring John Carradine, Roger Gentry, Vic McGee

Four astronauts get stranded on Mars. They wander around. There’s more plot, but I don’t like to give away the last twenty minutes of the movie.

One thing you’re guaranteed of when you see the name of David L. Hewitt heavily featured on the opening credits of a movie is that the budget just might be big enough to allow you to purchase new shoelaces. And I will give him some credit; every once in a while, there is a moment that shows some imagination or captures a little of that sense of wonder. But, those moments aside, this movie mostly consists of the astronauts wandering around in caves or in the desert. When they’re not doing that, they’re either engaged in pseudo-scientific gobbledygook or having their ears bent by the disembodied head of John Carradine. If you’re lucky, you’ll wake up to enjoy the scene where they discover a Martian encased in a wall, easily the best scene in the movie. If you want to, you can speculate on the similarities between this movie and THE WIZARD OF OZ ; there’s a girl named Dorothy with three companions (unfortunately, instead of a scarecrow, a tin woodsman, and a cowardly lion, she only has three bores), a yellow-brick road, and a disembodied head, and that should engage your attention for all of thirty seconds. And since we’re on the subject of time, let’s talk about that. The movie is seventy-eight minutes long, and it purportedly takes place over a four-day period which turns out to be only two minutes long. Those times are significant; there is about two minutes of plot here, but the movie certainly feels like four days.

And, on a side note, the original title of this movie is THE WIZARD OF MARS. My copy is called ALIEN MASSACRE. This change was accomplished by replacing the main title of the movie. Unfortunately, right before this is the credit “John Carradine as”. Hence, it reads like “John Carradine as Alien Massacre”, which, unlike “John Carradine as The Wizard of Mars”, makes no sense. Someone obviously didn’t care.

 

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The Wicker Man (1973)

THE WICKER MAN (1973)
Article 2442 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-8-2007
Posting Date: 4-19-2008
Directed by Robin Hardy
Featuring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento

A policeman arrives on Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a girl. He finds the residents are extremely uncooperative and given to pagan rituals. He begins to suspect that the girl is being held as a human sacrifice in their upcoming May Day rituals.

There are many who consider this cult horror movie to be an absolute classic, but there are also quite a few out there who consider it highly overrated. Me, I’m captivated by it. Part of it is the plot itself; it’s written by Anthony Shaffer, who also gave us the script for SLEUTH, and this has at least one great plot twist that recalls that movie. Part of it is the interesting characters and the fine acting; this is certainly one of Christopher Lee’s best performances. But I think what I like best is the use of music, dance and nudity to establish the settings, situations and atmosphere. In many movies, these elements come across as gratuitous; in this one, they transport us to a different world, one which Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie is singularly ill-suited to deal with. The cast also features Britt Ekland (whose nude scene is especially effective) and Ingrid Pitt. The jarring images and the great dialogue linger in the memory. In short, I align myself with those who consider it a classic. I’ve not seen the 2006 remake of the movie, but from what I’ve heard, the less said about that one, the better.

 

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While I Live (1947)

WHILE I LIVE (1947)
Article 2441 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-7-2007
Posting Date: 4-18-2008
Directed by John Harlow
Featuring Sonia Dresdel, Carol Raye, Tom Walls

An old woman believes that an amnesiac who appears unexpectedly at her house is really the reincarnation of her dead sister.

My print of this movie runs just less than an hour. The time listed on IMDB is eighty-five minutes. This may explain why I found the movie somewhat confusing, so I can’t really criticize it for that. However, I wasn’t particularly impressed with what I did see; the dialogue and the script just didn’t do much for me, the acting felt indifferent to me, and I never found the story engrossing enough to really hold my attention. Still, I do feel compelled to give this one another try sometime, especially if I can find a complete version of it, though I doubt that I’ll feel much different about it.

 

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