The Remarkable Andrew (1942)

THE REMARKABLE ANDREW (1942)
Article #1762 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-10-2006
Posting Date: 6-9-2006
Directed by Stuart Heisler
Featuring Brian Donlevy, William Holden, Ellen Drew

When an accountant attempts to call attention to an imbalance in the public books, he finds himself the target of a trumped up charge of extortion by corrupt politicos. However, he has a friend trying to help him out of his predicament – the ghost of Andrew Jackson.

The John Stanley guide from which I drew this title describes it as a propaganda piece, and perhaps it is. However, despite the 1942 date on the movie, it is not wartime propaganda in the least; in fact, the only reference to the war mentions it in terms of something that the United States is currently not involved in. No, the target here is small-town political corruption, and the screenplay was wriiten by Dalton Trumbo (based on his novel), who would later be blacklisted in Hollywood.

I think the movie works best as a comedy. Given Andrew Jackson’s volatile personality, he’s probably not the best choice for a historical figure to help you solve your personal problems, especially when his recommendations usually involve hangings or duels. It is, however, highly amusing in this regard, even if it does end up relying in the most cliched of ghost comedy traditions by having much of the humor revolve around the fact that the hero is the only one who can see the ghost. The scene in which Andrew Jackson summons up the greatest law team in history is a definite highlight, as we get the ghosts of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Chief Justice John Marshall and Benjamin Franklin, as well as an unknown private from the revolutionary war and a highly anomalous Jesse James. As a drama, it’s less effective; even give a law team such as this one, I find it really hard to believe that the courtroom ploy used by our hero would actually have the results it has in this movie. Still, William Holden does a find job as the beleagered bookkeeper, and Brian Donlevy has a field day as Andrew Jackson. This is a unique, rather odd comedy, to be sure.

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Peter Pan (1953)

PETER PAN (1953)
Article #1761 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-9-2006
Posting Date: 6-8-2006
Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske
Featuring the voices of Bobby Driscoll, Kathryn Beaumont, Hans Conried

Peter Pan whisks away three children from their London home to the world of Neverland.

If I were to choose what differentiates Disney’s “great” animated features from the ones they did that are merely “good”, I would say that it was the sense of drama that pervades the great ones; they weren’t just exercises in humor and whimsicality, but had a way of touching the emotions that transcended the fact that you were only watching animated characters. By this criteria, PETER PAN belongs to the pantheon of merely good; it not only fails to add a sense of drama to the proceedings, but it doesn’t even aspire to do so, a fact that is underscored by the decision to treat Captain Hook as primarily a comic villain. Still, when Disney was good, they were very good, and there are some real pleasures among the characters here. In particular, the character of Tinkerbell steals the show; with nary a line of dialogue, she manages to project a variety of intriguing emotions, from her jealousy at the presence of Wendy to concern about the state of her figure. Furthermore, if you are going to have a comic villain, you couldn’t do any better than to go with Hans Conried, who would go on to provide the voice for the most famous comic villain of all, Snidely Whiplash. The sequences with the canine nursemaid Nana are also quite fun. And there is something truly magical about the flying pirate ship in the final scenes of the movie.

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The Spider Returns (1941)

THE SPIDER RETURNS (1941)
(Serial)
Article #1760 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-8-2006
Posting Date: 6-7-2006
Directed by James W. Horne
Featuring Warren Hull, Mary Ainslee, Dave O’Brien

Noted criminologist Richard Wentworth pits his abilities against an industrial saboteur known as The Gargoyle.

This is a sequel to the 1938 serial THE SPIDER’S WEB, which I’ve already covered for this series. I expressed a certain degree of disappointment with that serial, largely because the villain didn’t turn out to be as interesting as I hoped. The villain here is even less interesting; he’s mostly a rehash of The Octopus, but lacking even that villain’s gimmick. Yet, I found myself really enjoying this one more than the original, and it’s probably because I was really glad to see the return of my favorite character. No, it’s not Wentworth himself, though I do feel that Warren Hull made for a truly charming serial hero. Nor is it Wentworth’s alter ego, the Spider, who seems slightly tamer than he does in the earlier serial. No, it’s Blinky McQuade, Wentworth’s other alter ego, a seedy crook who tries to get in cahoots with the Gargoyle and his gang. McQuade is a hoot, and it seems to me that they figured out how well he went over in the original serial, and gave him a much greater role in the proceedings here.

In fact, this serial has a strong sense of humor throughout, and it makes it a lot more fun for me. The science fiction content is also much stronger, thanks to the Gargoyle’s inventor sidekick whose biggest creation is an X-Ray Eye Machine, which allows the Gargoyle to spy on anyone who is wearing one of his special belts. It looks like some bizarre tentacled robot, and when it’s warming up or malfunctioning, it vibrates and waves its tentacles around in a memorable but hilarious way. The cliffhangers are colorful as well, and it even includes a scene of Wentworth being tied to the railroad tracks! I haven’t had this much fun in a serial since I saw THE LOST CITY.

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It Happened at Nightmare Inn (1973)

IT HAPPENED AT NIGHTMARE INN (1973)
(a.k.a. NIGHTMARE HOTEL / UNA VELA PARA EL DIABLO)
Article #1759 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-7-2006
Posting Date: 6-6-2006
Directed by Eugenio Martin
Featuring Judy Geeson, Lone Fleming, Blanca Estrada

When a woman goes to an inn in a small Spanish town to visit her sister, she is told by the two sisters that run the inn that the woman left the previous day. In truth, she has been murdered by the two sisters, who kill anyone who stays there that does not live up to their moral standards.

My copy of this movie is the TV print that runs only sixty-eight minutes; IMDB lists the running time at a solid two hours. I can only conclude that I’m missing quite a lot of the movie here. Still, this version of it is efficient, to say the least. Actually, it may be worth the effort to hunt up the longer version; the acting is quite good (even if the dubbing is substandard), there are character touches that add more dimension than you might expect, and there is a decent amount of suspense during the final scenes. I rather enjoyed this one, though I do wonder if its appeal might wear thin during the longer version.

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The Oblong Box (1969)

THE OBLONG BOX (1969)
Article #1758 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-6-2006
Posting Date: 6-5-2006
Directed by Gordon Hessler
Featuring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies

An aristocrat keeps his brother locked in an attic after his face is mutilated in a voodoo ritual. An attempt to release the brother from his captivity misfires when he is buried alive, but he is saved when body snatchers exhume him. He then seeks revenge on those that abandoned him to his fate.

Though I like this one better than MURDERS OF THE RUE MORGUE or CRY OF THE BANSHEE, I must admit that (with the exception of his having directed one of the best episodes of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”) I just don’t enjoy Gordon Hessler’s forays into horror. Outside of the presence of a coffin at one point, this has precious little to do with Poe’s story, though I must admit that the original story is tame even by Poe’s standards. It starts out well enough; the voodoo ceremony is extremely effective, and the early scenes work well enough. Nonetheless, I start having problems as the movie progresses. I find the pace just a little slower than necessary, and the movie really doesn’t make very good use of his cast; in particular, most of Vincent Price’s scenes don’t really give him much to work with from an acting standpoint. I also find the big scenes in the movie singularly disappointing. For example, when a movie features two horror stars such as Price and Christopher Lee, you look forward to any scenes they have together, but the one they have here is too brief to satisfy. Furthermore, our long-awaited chance to see how the brother looks is really a letdown, and the final twist is nothing special. All in all, I find that Hessler’s horror movies lack the sense of fun I get from, say, Roger Corman.

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Night of Bloody Horror (1969)

NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR (1969)
Article #1757 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-5-2006
Posting Date: 6-4-2006
Directed by Joy N. Houck Jr.
Featuring Gerald McRaney, Gay Yellen, Michael Anthony

A man who suffers blackouts (as portrayed by a psychedelic blue spiral) finds that his sexual partners are murdered during these blackouts.

I just can’t tell you how glad I was to watch another movie about a psycho sex killer with an incestuous undertone right on the heels of watching THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED. (Please be aware that the preceding sentence contains a palpable amount of sarcasm.) As a rule, I tend to distrust horror movies whose titles seem to consist of nothing but horror movie buzzwords, and this movie does little to convince me that I’m wrong in this regard. The marketing campaign claimed that it was “Filmed in Violent Vision”, and theater patrons were insured for one thousand dollars against death by fright while watching the movie. It’s a measure of the movie’s derivitiveness when even its marketing campaign was lifted from another film, and Joy N. Houck Jr. has none of the fun directorial qualities of William Castle. The first murder is the best; the rest of them are fairly substandard ax murders, and though Gerald McRaney (who would later gain in the TV series “Simon & Simon” and “Major Dad”) tries his best in the lead role, but the script can’t decide whether his character is sympathetic or repellent, and so you end not caring one way or another. Anybody who has seen PSYCHO won’t be surprised by the revelations at the end of the movie.

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The House That Vanished (1973)

THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED (1973)
(a.k.a. SCREAM…AND DIE!)
Article #1756 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-4-2006
Posting Date: 6-3-2006
Directed by Jose Ramon Larraz
Featuring Andrea Allan, Karl Lanchbury, Maggie Walker

When a model follows her burglar boyfriend into an old house in the country, she inadvertently becomes a witness to a murder by a psycho killer. Though she escapes from the killer (whose face she doesn’t see), her boyfriend vanishes, and when she discovers a photo of herself missing from the portfolio she left in the car abandoned near the property, she knows that the killer knows who she is.

Who is the killer? Is it the creepy new boyfriend with the incestuous relationship with his aunt whose theme song is “Fur Elise”? Is it the weird man who has moved into the same building as her who raises pigeons? Is it – er – is it – hmm, we seem to have run out of suspects. Hint: the one who is not the psycho killer is an undercover cop.

Chances are, you’ll have no trouble figuring out who the killer is. For that matter, you’ll have no trouble figuring out what’s going to happen for the length of this utterly predictable movie. There’s gratuitous nudity and sex to spice up the proceedings, but I certainly didn’t see any houses vanishing (and the model’s inability to find the house isn’t the same thing). And for those interested in logical errors, try figuring out (given an approximate timeline of events), just what kind of condition a human killed at the beginning of this movie would be at the end of it.

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The Haunting of Julia (1977)

THE HAUNTING OF JULIA (1977)
(a.k.a. FULL CIRCLE)
Article #1755 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-3-2006
Posting Date: 6-2-2006
Directed by Richard Loncraine
Featuring Mia Farrow, Keir Dullea, Tom Conti

A woman who feels guilty about the death of her daughter leaves her husband and moves into an old house. However, the house seems to be haunted by a the spirit of a malevolent little girl.

This movie is based on a novel by Peter Straub, and if anything, the movie makes me interested in the novel. This is not to say that I found the movie itself satisfactory; it’s more to say that it hints at a more complete and intriguing story than the movie itself delivers. Though I can appreciate the attempt of the movie to take a leisurely, thoughtful pace in telling its eerie story, all too often in this case there are scenes which just drag out the running time without really adding much to character development or plot. For example, we know the mother is grieving about the death of her daughter; we don’t need to have her break into tears three times to establish this. There are also scenes that just seem to pad out the running time; the scene of Julia building a house of cards and the one where she traces designs in the carpet don’t really help me to connect with her psyche as much as make me check my watch to see how long it will be before we get back to the story. The second half of the movie is better, largely because the plot finally starts moving at this point. In short, this movie is just too slow-moving to be really effective.

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Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

DRACULA A.D. 1972 (1972)
Article #1754 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-2-2006
Posting Date: 6-1-2006
Directed by Alan Gibson
Featuring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Stephanie Beacham

Dracula is resurrected by a disciple in 1972, and decides to take vengeance on his old enemy Van Helsing by destroying the daughter of one of his descendants.

There’s something about the way this movie is marketed that might lead you to believe that Hammer had started playing the series for laughs. Certainly, the tag line on the cover of the DVD about Dracula having an eye for London’s hot pants seems more comic than horrific, and the first still I recall seeing from the movie had Christopher Lee as Dracula looking like he had a headache while being surrounded by scantily clad women. Fortunately, the movie itself decides to play it straight; as a matter of fact, the movie could have easily been put in the period setting. All in all, it’s not a bad entry in the series; though I don’t care for the jazzy/funky music that pops up in the soundtrack, I will admit that’s more of a personal quibble than an artistic one. Actually, if there’s any element of this one that does border on camp for me, it’s the over-elaborate series of circumstances that have to occur to kill the vampires; when one vampire stumbles into a bathroom to get away from the sunlight shining through the window, he inadvertently pulls the curtain that opens up the overhead skylight, which makes him scream and fall into a bathtub, inadvertently hitting the tap mechanism, so now he has to deal with running water as well. This is the type of thing I’d expect from a Jerry Lewis vampire. I’m also really tired of the use of the “Alucard” name; it was clever in SON OF DRACULA, but it’s popped up way too often since then.

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Crimes of the Future (1970)

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (1970)
Article #1753 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-1-2006
Posting Date: 5-31-2006
Directed by David Cronenberg
Featuring Ronald Mlodzik, Jon Lidolt, Tnai Zolty

In the future when a disease is killing off women who have reached puberty, a researcher who moves from occupation to occupation finds himself haunted by the memory of his former mentor, for whom the disease is named.

Heaven only knows what I would have thought of this bizarre art film if David Cronenberg were not now a well-known director whose various areas of obsession and interest were not well-documented. I think it would have been tempting to dismiss the film in that case, but there’s no doubt that it’s a lot more fascinating precisely because one sees so much of the thematic interests of later Cronenberg in the movie. It might take a few viewings to figure out the details of the storyline, though it is obvious that there is a unity holding it all together. The bio for Cronenberg on the DVD of this movie claims that he is trying to find the right balance between the intellectual and the visceral in his movies, and that certainly applies here; it is interesting to work out the details, while at the same time, I do find myself somewhat repelled by some of the subject matter, in particular the theme of pedophilia that pops up in the second half of the movie. According to the bio, Cronenberg himself saw that this type of art film led him to a creative dead end; he would eventually turn to the horror genre to help him flesh out his visions.

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