Once Upon a Time (1944)

ONCE UPON A TIME (1944)
Article #1662 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-2-2005
Posting Date: 3-1-2006
Directed by Alexander Hall
Featuring Cary Grant, Janet Blair, James Gleason

When a show promoter is on the verge of losing his theater due to a string of flops, he hits upon a scheme to save it when he encounters a boy who has a caterpillar who dances to the tune “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby”.

The movie opens with a message about how wartime audiences needed escapist entertainment to help them cope with the difficult time. They must have needed escapist entertainment pretty badly if this idea was considered viable. Yet, it’s a tribute to Hollywood moviemaking that they almost make this one work; it’s almost jaw-dropping to see the amount of effort that went into bringing this slight premise to near-life. Certainly, the presence of Cary Grant, James Gleason and William Demarest go a long ways towards bringing this one to life, and I just marvel at the huge list of uncredited performers who appeared in this (not to mention those who had their scenes deleted). Unfortunately, the slightness and silliness of the concept undermine it at every step, and it really becomes hard to take when it gets incredibly weepy. It also fails to deliver the one thing the movie seems to promise; you can sit through the whole movie if you wish, but you will not once get to see Curly the Caterpillar boogie. And if you’re going to watch it, you’re really going to need to like “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby” a lot!

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Beginning of the End (1957)

BEGINNING OF THE END (1957)
Article #1661 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-1-2005
Posting Date: 2-28-2006
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
Featuring Peter Graves, Peggie Castle, Morris Ankrum

Chicago is threatened when grasshoppers eat radiated grain and grow to tremendous proportions.

At one point in this movie, Peter Graves tries to convince the military of the degree of the grasshopper threat by presenting a film of grasshoppers and giving a talk (this is SOP for big bug movies). He solemnly mentions at one point that grasshoppers attack humans. I can attest to the truth of this assertion. Let me now pass on to you my harrowing true life account of how I survived a grasshopper attack.

MY ENCOUNTER WITH THE GRASSHOPPER

“It was one of those summer days that seemed ideal for walking. Intent on trying to keep my weight down, I made my way to the nearest bike trail and began my walk. The grass on either side of the trail was teeming with insect life, and I would often see the little creatures making their way across the trail to feed on the tasty pickings on the other side.

“It was then that my path along the trail intersected the path of another traveller, but whereas I walked on foot, this one hopped. His goal was the other side of the trail, but my presence blocked his way. This was how it came to be that the grasshopper landed on the sleeve of my jacket.

“Our eyes met. We considered each other for a second. I thought to discourage my foe from continuing his attack by shaking my arm, but the grasshopper clung to me with tenacious determination. It was then that I knew that I was dealing with a grasshopper with great will.

“I considered brushing him off with my hand, but this would have involved invading his personal space, and even though this might have accomplished my immediate objective, my flouting of the Grasshopper Encounter Guidelines of the Geneva Convention would have clearly given the moral victory to my foe. Obviously, a more subtle form of strategy was needed.

“It was then that I realized that my best weapon of defense was patience. Sooner or later, the grasshopper would have to lessen his hold, and when that moment came, I would be able to go on my way unhampered. So I observed my foe for what seemed like eons, but was, in reality, a mere five seconds. At that time, the grasshopper leaped off, but not at my face as I expected, but across the trail to the other side. Obviously, I had intimidated him.

“I passed my way back down the path. To this day, we have never met again.”

THE END

Now, doesn’t that story make your blood curdle?

No?

Well, it shouldn’t. The worst problem I’ve had with grasshoppers is they tend to stick to you when they hop. Sure, they can be a threat if you get ten thousand of them together and they eat your crops, but that’s hardly the same type of gut-level threat that you get from bees or poisonous spiders.

In short, grasshoppers are not scary. Though to some extent, I admire Bert I. Gordon’s ambitions in trying to make a big bug movie on a tiny budget, he ended up choosing an insect whose fear value was on the level of ladybugs, butterflies, potato bugs, inchworms and fuzzy caterpillars. Let’s face it; they don’t even have a fearsome face, and every time I see a close-up of one of their faces in this movie, I get the same doleful sense I get when I look at the face of a basset hound. Granted, given Gordon’s special effects techniques, I understand why he chose grasshoppers for his insects; they were probably fairly safe to handle. I even don’t mind the special effects of having the grasshoppers climb up pictures of buildings, which is actually a pretty clever low-budget special effect idea; he just should have made sure they didn’t step off onto the sky. No, the main problem is that the movie just failed to make the grasshoppers seem scary and frightening.

I will give Gordon credit for the title of the movie, though; if there’s one thing he learned from THEM, it was that a vague title would make the nature of the threat more of a mystery. On the other hand, maybe he realized that was the only way to effectively sell the movie; I don’t think he could have seriously called it ATTACK OF THE BIG HONKIN’ GRASSHOPPERS.

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Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)

BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (1973)
Article #1660 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-30-2005
Posting Date: 2-27-2006
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Featuring Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy

After nuclear war has destroyed human civilization, apes try to build a new society based on not killing each other, but find themselves dealing with internal dissension, mutants from a destroyed city, and humans who have only a second-class status in ape society.

This was the last of the “Planet of the Apes” movies, and it is generally considered the weakest. My memory of having seen it years ago was somewhat kinder; though I considered it a weaker entry, I had fond memories of the way it closed up the series, and I felt rather warm towards it in much the same way I would feel about sending in the last payment of a long-standing loan. If anything, I liked it better than BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES.

However, on re-viewing, I do believe this one goes on the bottom of the heap. It has some good ideas, but the problems overwhelm it. The acting is uneven; probably the best performance comes from Lew Ayres as Mandemus, the keeper of the armory, whose questioning of Caesar’s motives for requesting armaments is the highlight of the movie. Roddy McDowall is also quite good, but he’s had plenty of experience with these roles as well. Paul Williams does a serviceable job as well as Virgil. However, the villains are particularly weak; Claude Akins never conjures up the aggressive sense of authority he needs to pull off the role of General Aldo, and the mutants of the underground city are never convincing, though this is less to do with the acting and more to do with the fact that the script develops them as nothing more than symbols of man’s violent nature and then gives them the most horrible dialogue of the movie. I don’t think anyone could have pulled off these roles. Furthermore, the direction is listless and unimaginative, and sometimes downright poor; in particular, the final confrontation between Caesar and Aldo is weakly handled. The cast also includes John Huston as The Lawgiver (he narrates the movie) and an early screen appearance from director John Landis. All in all, it’s a tired and uninspired end to the series.

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The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962)

THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (1962)
Article #1659 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-29-2005
Posting Date: 2-26-2006
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Howard Vernon, Conrado San Martin, Dina Lorys

Dr. Orloff and his robot-like assistant Morpho are kidnapping and killing young women in an attempt to restore the beauty of Orloff’s daughter. The police investigate the crimes.

How awful is it? Well, the movie IS directed by Jesse Franco….and I feel the need to say right off the bat that that comment is a cheap shot. A large percentage of Franco’s movies are stinkers, but this is one of the exceptions. The worst problem with the movie isn’t even Franco’s fault; I doubt that he’s responsible for the horrible dub job done on this movie. Other than that, the worst problem is that the story line is hardly original, but I’m willing to let that slide, since I’m just glad he bothered to pay attention to the story at all. By just having a story to follow, the movie makes it easier for me to appreciate Franco’s visual inventiveness, which is quite strong here. The character of Morpho is also effectively creepy; Ricardo Valle does a fine job in his performance of the character, but since he never says anything, he has the advantage that his performance isn’t compromised by the dubbing. On a purely visual level, Howard Vernon is fairly scary himself as the title character, and if you can see past the dubbing, the performances do seem solid throughout. Of the movies I’ve seen of Franco’s for this series so far, this is easily the best of the lot, and I bet there are a few other worthy ones out there as well.

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The Andromeda Strain (1971)

THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN (1971)
Article #1658 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-28-2005
Posting Date: 2-25-2006
Directed by Robert Wise
Featuring Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson

When a downed satellite results in the death of all but two of the residents of a small town, a team of scientists is gathered to participate in a top secret project to discover the cause of death.

To give you an idea of how big a gap there is between the writing of these MOTDs and the posting of them, the writing of this one occurred only two weeks after the death of this movie’s director, Robert Wise. I think one of my favorite things about him was that he didn’t turn his back on genre efforts, even after having big hits with his forays into musical territory that resulted in WEST SIDE STORY and THE SOUND OF MUSIC; of his last seven movies, two were Science Fiction and one was Horror. His first directorial work was as one of the directors on THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, and over the years he gave us such genre efforts as THE BODY SNATCHER, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and THE HAUNTING. I dedicate this review to him.

This thriller doesn’t quite rank with his best work, but it is still a very worthy entry into his oeuvre. In particular, I like the fact that he cast his leads with stage actors largely unknown to the movie-going public (the only actor likely to engender immediate recognition is David Wayne); they all give fine performances, especially Kate Reid. In fact, her casting was particularly surprising; how many other movies would feature a rather dumpy middle-aged woman as the female lead, especially considering that some of the scenes feature near nudity? The special effects are top notch, and the movie does an excellent job at making the science in the story understandable. It also builds up to a truly memorable climax. I do have a couple of problems with the movie. One is the length; at 131 minutes, it does strain my attention span a little, but at the same time, I’m not sure what I’d cut. The most obvious choice is the long decontamination sequence, but I find these scenes so amusing and witty that I would really miss them. My other problem is that it overplays the paranoia angle just a bit too much; quite frankly, the story is scary enough that adding extra dollops of paranoia seems unnecessary. Amazingly enough, the movie had a G rating.

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Trauma (1962)

TRAUMA (1962)
Article #1657 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-27-2005
Posting Date: 2-24-2006
Directed by Robert M. Young
Featuring John Conte, Lynn Bari, Lorri Richards

Upon witnessing the murder of her aunt, a young woman is struck with amnesia. Years later, she returns to the old home with her new husband in the hopes of sorting out what happened on that night.

For a good deal of its running time, this movie’s good qualities do battle with its bad qualities for dominance of this film, and for the first half of the movie, it looks as if the latter will win. However, its better qualities take over during the second half of the movie, and the turgid pacing and confused exposition give over to a decent amount of mystery and suspense. The acting is uneven, with the best performance given by Lynn Bari as the socialite aunt; this somewhat atones for the fact that the only sequence in the movie to feature the aunt is the extended prologue at the beginning of the movie (we don’t get the opening titles until fifteen minutes in, and you feel every minute of it), and that the aunt’s main function in the story is to be murdered. Fortunately, there is the occasional suspenseful moment to tide you through to the second half, where the mystery elements start to come to the fore, and you find yourself really wondering about the intentions of the husband, the nature of the extension added to stable, and the secrets surrounding the handicapped son Everett who didn’t die when everyone said he did. The last twenty minutes are the best in the movie. This was the sole directorial effort of Robert M. Young, who would go on to a successful career as a TV writer as well as penning other genre efforts such as THE CRAWLING HAND and ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN.

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Altered States (1980)

ALTERED STATES (1980)
Article #1656 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-26-2005
Posting Date: 2-23-2006
Directed by Ken Russell
Featuring William Hurt, Blair Brown, Bob Balaban

A scientist experiments with hallucinogenic drugs and isolation chambers, and ends up tapping into primal forces that cause him to alter his body’s physical make-up.

Paddy Chayefsky disowned his screenplay (based on his own novel) for this movie, and it is credited under the pseudonym of Sidney Aaraon. I haven’t read his novel, so I don’t know what his objections were to this adaptation, but given that the most common complaint I’ve heard about this movie is how the ending seems like a cop-out after the ambition and intelligence of the rest of the movie, I’m guessing it has something to do with that. Still, I find the ambition and the intelligence go a long ways towards making this movie a fascinating experience, and Ken Russell’s surreal visuals only add to the fascination; this movie has some of the trippiest sequences this side of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I’m also fascinated by the fact that the movie strongly touches upon all of the fantastic genres; it alternates between fantasy, science fiction and horror with an amazing ease. For me, the ending is a bit of a problem, but the image that makes for the final scene in the movie is powerful enough that it goes a long ways towards selling the concept to me. For me, the worst problems consist of some fairly clumsy dialogue; it’s rather difficult not to laugh when people are having yelling matches with each other over scientific concepts, and the movie suffers a bad case of what Roger Ebert calls “Mamet Damnit”, that phenomenon by which some movies can have the characters cuss up a blue streak and you can accept it as part of the atmosphere, whereas in other movies, each cuss word grates on your ear. Sadly, this movie has the latter experience. Still, movies that aspire to this level of intelligence are rare enough that I find this one a welcome addition to my collection.

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Yongary Monster of the Deep (1967)

YONGARY MONSTER OF THE DEEP (1967)
(a.k.a. TAEKOESU YONGGARY)
Article #1655 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-25-2005
Posting Date: 2-22-2006
Directed by Ki-duk Kim
Featuring Yeong-il Oh, Jeong-im Nam, Sun-jea Lee

Korea is threatened by a giant monster that drinks gasoline.

When people complain how the Godzilla movies have bad special effects, I point them to the Gamera movies (of the sixties, that is). When they complain that the Gamera movies have bad special effects, I point them to the Korean giant monster movies. When they complain that the Korean giant monster movies have bad special effects, I agree.

So here we have a Korean attempt at a kaiju, and it looks like they threw a number of giant monster movies into a blender, and then assembled what came out into a movie. Yongary is characterless clone of Godzilla with a few touches of Gamera thrown into the mix. The dubbing is awful, the miniatures are frightfully bad, and the soundtrack is ineffective. Somehow, it manages to have this dreamlike, surreal quality that detaches you from the action, and though this does give the movie a little bit of flavor, it also threatens to lull you into a deep slumber. Still, the movie is in better shape when it tries to copy other movies than when it makes attempts toward originality; the scenes where the monster boogies to a rock and roll tune and where he goes into a big scratching fit rank with some of the most ridiculous scenes I’ve ever seen.

I will say this, though; it’s better than A*P*E.

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The Magnetic Monster (1953)

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER (1953)
Article #1654 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-24-2005
Posting Date: 2-21-2006
Directed by Curt Siodmak and Herbert L. Strock
Featuing Richard Carlson, King Donovan, Jean Byron

A scientist must find a way to destroy a deadly isotope that feeds itself on anything around it.

When I saw this movie as a kid, I was extremely unhappy with a fact that a movie with the word “monster” in the title didn’t have a monster; as far as I was concerned, that radioactive isotope just didn’t count. Still, I never quite forgot the movie, and I was really glad to finally get around to seeing it again thirty years later with different expectations. It has some flaws; the acting and the script are uneven, and some of the attempts at humor fall flat. Nonetheless, a crisp pace, some odd touches and an unusual story give this movie a lot more power than it might otherwise have had. It’s also one of those movies that really effectively uses extensive footage from other sources; much of the climax of the movie uses footage from the old German science fiction film GOLD, and the movie does a very good job of integrating the footage with the movie. The only problem I had with this older footage is that one final plot twist (a Canadian scientist goes mad and tries to hoodwink the project) seems to exist solely to allow them to use even more footage from the original film. Two odd touches bear mentioning; I find it rather charming that the concept of overfeeding manages to connect both the main storyline and the subplot about the scientist’s wife, who, despite being four months pregnant, is still skinny. His solution with both the wife and the monster is the same – feed them more than they want; honestly, Weight Watchers should condemn this movie. And another odd touch is that the super-computer used by the scientists in the movie has that most odd of acronyms – MANIAC. Hence you get lines like “I’ve got to consult the MANIAC.” and “The MANIAC is never wrong.” Still, I have the perfect response to comments about them feeding the information to the MANIAC, and that is “A maniac with a lot of knowledge is a threat!” And the first person who can tell me the source of THAT quote wins a DS Pat on the Back!

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The Golden Blade (1953)

THE GOLDEN BLADE (1953)
Article #1653 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-23-2005
Posting Date: 2-20-2006
Directed by Nathan Juran
Featuring Rock Hudson, Piper Laurie, Gene Evans

A young man from Basra named Haroun vows to avenge his slain father. In his quest, he comes upon a sword that makes him invincible.

No, you won’t want to confuse this movie with Bert I. Gordon’s THE MAGIC SWORD. This is an Arabian Nights movie with its most interesting aspect being that the sword of the title (which isn’t really used all that much) ends up being stuck in a wall and playing something of the same role that Excalibur plays in the King Arthur legends. George Macready makes a fine villain (and when doesn’t he?), Piper Laurie is suitably cute (and what princess in an Arabian Night movie isn’t?), it’s all very colorful (and what Arabian Nights epic isn’t?), but the best thing about it is Rock Hudson’s performance, as he manages to strike just the right balance between seriousness and fun. It’s actually quite well done and may be one of the better movies of this ilk, but to be honest, I’ve pretty much had my fill of Arabian Nights adventures at this point, and unless one pops up with an unusually compelling plot (which this one doesn’t have) or has the presence of someone like Harryhausen (ditto), I’m afraid I’ll be a little bored by it. Incidentally, one of the handmaidens to the princess is Anita Ekberg.

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