D-Day on Mars (1966)

D-DAY ON MARS (1966)
Feature version of Serial THE PURPLE MONSTER STRIKES
Article 1862 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-20-2006
Posting Date: 9-17-2006
Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and Fred C. Brannon
Featuring Roy Barcroft, James Craven, Dennis Moore

The Purple Monster comes from Mars to take over the Earth.

THE PURPLE MONSTER STRIKES is one of the better serials out there, and because the opening footage in this feature version is from the interesting first episode, it gets off to a good start. However, if all too quickly falls into the same serial-to-feature-version pattern of jumping from plot point to fight scene to plot point to fight scene, etc. etc. This one seems particularly mechanical in the way it does it, and it just brings out how much serial plots are designed to lead to from one cliffhanger after another; it’s the cinematic equivalent of marking time. What works on an episode by episode basis doesn’t necessarily work strung together as a whole, and this feature version is a bore. This is one of several feature versions of serials that were put together in 1966 for TV distribution. There’s little to recommend here; you’re better off with the original serial watched an episode at a time.

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El Monstruo Resucitado (1953)

EL MONSTRUO RESUCITADO (1953)
aka The Resurrected Monster
Article 1861 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-19-2006
Posting Date: 9-16-2006
Directed by Chano Urueta
Featuring Miroslava Stern, Carlos Navarro, Jose Maria Linares-Rivas

A female reporter follows up an advertisement that leads her to meet a deformed and mad scientist who falls in love with her. Fearing her rejection, he resurrects a dead man and places the soul of a beast within it, and orders him to kidnap the reporter.

Much of this plot description came from the summary at IMDB; since this Mexican movie is in unsubtitled Spanish, I had a terrible time following the storyline myself. This is a shame, really; from the opening moments of this movie I found myself caught up in it despite being hopelessly lost story-wise; the acting and direction both felt surprisingly strong, and there’s something about the mood of it all that makes the movie genuinely unnerving. Any movie that can make an accordion player in the background seem ominous and threatening is doing something very right indeed, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this may be one of the very best of the Mexican horror movies. Even the less-than-convincing mask worn by the scientist doesn’t destroy the mood.

I think it’s getting about time that someone should gather up these Mexican horror movies and slap good English subtitles on them. If that ever begins happening, I hope they start with this one. Though I may be disappointed when I find out what the characters are actually saying, I have a strong hunch that this one might prove to be an undiscovered classic.

***NOTE*** This review was written several months ago. Since then, there have been some releases of these Mexican horror movies with subtitles. Let’s hope the trend continues.

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Double Door (1934)

DOUBLE DOOR (1934)
Article 1860 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-18-2006
Posting Date: 9-15-2006
Directed by Charles Vidor
Featuring Evelyn Venable, Mary Morris, Anne Revere

A wealthy old woman, angered at the marriage of her estate’s heir to a woman whom she considers common, does all she can to make the couple miserable and break up the marriage. When one scheme fails and the heir turns against her, she contives another more extreme plan…

Though it’s not quite a horror movie, this movie has a few elements of the “old dark house” movies of the time; in particular, a secret soundproof room, hidden by a double door with two combination locks, plays a strong part in the proceedings. A comment is made at one point about the house being haunted, but the only real terror here is the distinctly human monster played by Mary Morris, who does a wonderful job in the role of a scheming, manipulative and cruel matriarch. Kent Taylor plays the beleaguered heir to the estate; he would go on to appear in other genre movies such as THE PHANTOM FROM 10,000 LEAGUES , THE CRAWLING HAND , THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH , and BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. The acting is strong throughout, and the cast is excellent; it includes Anne Revere, Guy Standing and Halliwell Hobbes. The main problem I had with the movie is that the ending isn’t quite clear; I wasn’t sure whether the final event was an accident or intentional. All in all, this one is marginal, but quite enjoyable.

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Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969)

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE? (1969)
Article 1859 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-17-2006
Posting Date: 9-14-2006
Directed by Lee H. Katzin
Featuring Geraldine Page, Ruth Gordon, Rosemary Forsyth

After discovering that her deceased husband had lost his entire fortune before his death (and leaving her nothing but his stamp collection), a disgruntled heiress decides to make ends meet by employing personal companions and then murdering them for their life savings. However, her new hire suspects that something is up…

The cycle of horror films about “horror hags” (the popular term for horror movies featuring well-known elderly actresses) was one of the more interesting trends of the genre, but I often can’t quite bring myself to look at them as full-blown horror movies. Yes, they have some elements of the genre (this one has a serial killer, of course), but there’s generally a feel about a number of them that makes me want to shunt them off to the “marginalia” category. Still, I’m not sure whether there’s an easy genre classification for these eccentric exercises in gothic black-comedy that fits them any better. At any rate, they’re popularly considered as horror movies, so I’m covering them.

This was the third of Aldrich’s assays into the genre, though this time he’s only a producer rather than a director as well. It’s quite good, but I’m afraid I’m a little disappointed by it, largely because it reminds me so much of two other movies. It certainly has a similarity to WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE , and though both Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon do well enough, I just don’t feel the same fireworks as I do watching Bette Davis and Joan Crawford going at it. The other movie it reminds me of is SCREAM OF FEAR , and I’m afraid that this movie just doesn’t have the delicious twists of that one. In fact, this movie’s biggest twist (which I won’t give away here, but anyone who recognizes the movie from the plot description will probably remember it) is brought forward at an awkward, somewhat inappropriate moment that reduces its effect a little bit. Still, it’s a fairly clever movie, and if the occasional moment falls flat, there are some that work very well indeed. Still, I wonder what it would have been like had Aldrich actually directed it. Granted, that’s not a guarantee of quality, as THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE comes to mind. Still, it would have been interesting…

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It Grows on Trees (1952)

IT GROWS ON TREES (1952)
Article 1858 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-16-2006
Posting Date: 9-13-2006
Directed by Arthur Lubin
Featuring Irene Dunne, Dean Jagger, Joan Evans

When a dotty housewife buys a pair of unclassified trees to put in her backyard, she discovers they produce five and ten dollar bills. Her letter to the treasury department is treated as a gag by the Secretary of the Treasury, and she receives a letter telling her that the money is good. It is then discovered that the money falls apart after a short while, and complications ensue….

It seems that I’ve been having something of an Arthur Lubin film festival here lately; this, FRANCIS GOES TO WEST POINT and ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES are all directed by him. Of the three, I like this one the best, but that may be mostly because it doesn’t just feel like a rehash of a bunch of other movies I’ve seen, like the other two mentioned movies felt to me. It also helps that the movie has a little bit of satirical edge to it, largely due to the fact that several government officials get caught up in an unpleasant situation when their responses to what they believed were jokes backfire on them. Though she would make some TV appearances after this, this was Irene Dunne’s last motion picture; other genre movies that I’ve covered that feature her are A GUY NAMED JOE and THIRTEEN WOMEN . It’s basically a fantastically themed family sitcom-style movie, and it remains quite amusing throughout, if very silly. There are some interesting names in the cast; Dean Jagger would appear in both REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES and X THE UNKNOWN ; this movie is about halfway between the quality of those two. A young Richard Crenna also appears, as does the always dependable Les Tremayne and child actor Sandy Descher, who would also pop up in THEM! and THE SPACE CHILDREN . One curious thing I noticed is that this movie actually refers to (at least tangentially) to the other two movies I mentioned above; at one point, mention is made of the children in the movie having gone to see one of those Francis the Talking Mule movies, and the final gag in the movie involves the delivery of a package which contains a famed item from the Arabian Nights.

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Ghosts on the Loose (1943)

GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE (1943)
Article 1857 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-15-2006
Posting Date: 9-12-2006
Directed by William Beaudine
Featuring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan

The East Side Kids decide to help clean up a house for Glimpy’s newly married sister and her husband, and end up at the house next door, a supposedly haunted house actually peopled by Nazi propagandists.

This is the last of Bela Lugosi’s nine Monogram movies that I’ve gotten around to cover for this series, and among Lugosi fans, it is often considered his least interesting. And indeed it is; Bela Lugosi is barely in it and is given little to do; his most memorable moment involves the utterance of what surely sounds like a four-letter word during a sneeze. Nor do Frank Moran or Minerva Urecal (who both appeared with Lugosi in THE CORPSE VANISHES ) have much to do, either. Furthermore, the title is a cheat; there are no ghosts to be found, and the sequence of the movie involving the Kids being frightened in a haunted house is short, mild, and scareless. It’s no surprise that SPOOKS RUN WILD is the more popular Bela Lugosi / East Side Kids collaboration.

As an East Side Kids movie, though, it passes muster. I like the scene where some of the boys manage to get hold of a flower display without “stealing” it, there’s an amusing little reference to producer Sam Katzman, and I do find it highly amusing that a pre-stardom Ava Gardner is here playing Huntz Hall’s sister. Leo Gorcey is flirting a little with malaprops here as well. Serial fans will recognize Wheeler Oakman as one of Lugosi’s henchmen; in fact, he might have ended up with more dialogue than Lugosi did.

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From Russia With Love (1963)

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)
Article 1856 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-14-2006
Posting Date: 9-11-2006
Directed by Terence Young
Featuring Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Pedro Armendariz

James Bond goes to Istanbul, and, fully aware that he is falling into a trap of some sort, hooks up with a beautiful Russian agent in the hopes of getting his hands on a decoding device known as Lektor.

I’m not a big fan of the James Bond series, but if you ever felt the need to talk me into being one, this would be your starting point. For me, this is the best of the ones I’ve seen to date; it has an air of seriousness about the proceedings, it’s gritty and suspenseful, it has some truly great villains, and it avoids some of the pandering of other movies in the series as it spends more time telling the story than filling up the running time with his love conquests and cute action sequences. Oddly enough, though, the gritty seriousness of this one also takes it more out of the realm of science fiction to which most of the other entries of the series belong to at least marginally, as the reliance on gadgets is deemphasized here; the booby-trapped suitcase doesn’t quite qualify to me as a science fiction device, though the decoding device may. At any rate, this one has some memorable set pieces, especially a harrowing confrontation between Bond (Sean Connery) and the assassin who has been tailing him throughout the movie (Robert Shaw). Lotte Lenye also makes for one of the most memorable of Bond’s adversaries. I will always regret that the rest of the series didn’t keep going in the same direction as this one.

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Francis Goes to West Point (1952)

FRANCIS GOES TO WEST POINT (1952)
Article 1855 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-13-2006
Posting Date: 9-10-2006
Directed by Arthur Lubin
Featuring Donald O’Connor, Lori Nelson, Alice Kelley

After saving a military plant from sabotage (with the help of Francis the talking mule), Peter Stirling is sent to West Point where it is believed he will be of help to the military. Francis also goes to West Point as a mascot and begins tutoring Stirling while giving tips to the coach of the football team. Hilarity ensues.

I think my main problem with the “Francis, the Talking Mule” series is that it got pretty lazy with its concept. Of the four I’ve seen so far, this is the third with a military setting, and I suspect that the reason the series kept going back to that milieu was so that it would be easier to recycle the same gags from the first movie in the series. The series was also pretty mild; given the wild premise of a talking mule, the movies remained almost aggressively tame, never really trying for big laughs but only for small chuckles. The movies didn’t stink, but they remained harmless and rather forgettable. Of more interest than the plot here is the list of supporting players, which included Gregg Palmer, Les Tremayne, David Janssen, James Best, Lori Nelson and Leonard Nimoy (he’s one of the football players). The best part of the movie is the beginning when the sabotage effort is foiled; the movie actually develops a little suspense and atmosphere at this point.

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Dressed to Kill (1946)

DRESSED TO KILL (1946)
Article 1854 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-12-2006
Posting Date: 9-9-2006
Directed by Roy William Neill
Featuring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Patricia Morison

Sherlock Holmes investigates the murder of a music box collector and the theft of a seemingly worthless music box. He soon discovers that the music box is part of a set of three, and that somehow they are tied with the theft of duplicate five-pound plates from the Bank of England.

The Harris Lentz guide that I use as one of the sources for this series includes all of Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes movies despite the fact that not all of them have fantastic elements. I’m not sure whether this one has or not; at one point in the proceedings, an attempt is made to kill Holmes with a device that releases poisoned gas when attached to an automobile, and this device might possibly nudge the movie into the realm of science fiction. If it doesn’t, there’s really nothing of fantastic content in this one.

This is a fairly entertaining one in the series, largely because the puzzle of the music box is a good one, and the movie makes good use of it. Patricia Morison’s villainness makes a good match for Holmes, as she too uses disguises and even pulls the same trick on Watson that Holmes had used on Irene Adler in “A Scandal in Bohemia”, which is mentioned on occasion in this entry. Still, one can tell that Rathbone was getting a little tired of the series by this point; he’s good, but lacking a bit of the spark he had in some of the earlier entries. Still, it provides a dignified farewell for the series.

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Down to Earth (1947)

DOWN TO EARTH (1947)
Article 1853 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-11-2006
Posting Date: 9-8-2006
Directed by Alexander Hall
Featuring Rita Hayworth, Larry Parks, Mark Platt

Angry about the production of a play that paints her as a trollop, Terpsichore comes down to earth from Parnassus (with the help of Mr. Jordan) and attempts to force the writer of the play to make it more accurate.

How I wish this movie wasn’t connected in any way with the sublime HERE COMES MR. JORDAN ; maybe I’d be able to judge it a little nicer on its own rather fluffy terms. I’d also be spared from the embarassment of seeing some of my favorite characters misused, paritcularly that of Max Corkle. James Gleason was truly hilarious in that role in the original film; here he tries desperately to play up the humor in some truly bad comic dialogue, and rather than laughing, I find myself just feeling sorry for him. The movie occasionally has a moment that works for me; the opening musical number is so intentionally awful (the character of Terpsichore sings “I put the ants in the pants of the dancers”) that I fully understand why Terpsichore would want to deep-six the production. Still, the whole plot is so devoid of real soul that I found myself not caring one whit about any of the characters or their fates, and this becomes a major problem when the movie tries to get all dark and serious in the second half (with a subplot involving gambling debts, suicide notes and gangsters). The presence of some of my favorite comic actors (Gleason and Edward Everett Horton) fails to appease me at all due to the lameness of their bits, and George Macready is wasted in a role that shouldn’t even be in the story. Sure, Rita Hayworth is lovely, and its rating of 6.2 on IMDB does indicate that the movie does have its advocates, but as far as I’m concerned, the only positive thing I can say about this one is that it didn’t besmirch the career of Claude Rains, thanks to his not reprising his role of Mr. Jordan here.

Amazingly enough, this movie was remade in 1980 as XANADU, with Olivia Newton-John, roller-skating and disco added to the mix. I gather that these elements were supposed to improve the movie. Still, gathering from how I feel about the original version here, maybe they did. I’ll know when I see it.

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