Master Minds (1949)

MASTER MINDS (1949)
Article #1592 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-24-2005
Posting Date: 12-21-2005
Directed by Jean Yarbrough
Featuring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell

When Sach develops precognition as a result of a toothache, the Boys decide to cash in on this ability by having him make predictions for money. This catches the notice of a mad scientist, who decides that he must use Sach’s superior mental abilities by placing them in his monster, Atlas.

I would have to rank this as one of the best of the Bowery Boys movies. Here are the reasons.

1) Leo Gorcey is particularly inspired with the malaprops this time around.

2) Huntz Hall hits just the right note in his comic performance. Usually, he gives in to too much shameless mugging, but here he keeps it to a minimum.

3) It isn’t just the Leo and Huntz show; both Billy Benedict and Gabriel Dell are given real characters and a substantial part of the action.

4) The movie also features a fun cast, including Alan Napier doing his best John Carradine impersonation, Skelton Knaggs and a cameo from Minerva Urecal.

The story itself is somewhat similar to that of ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN; I mean, what other movie features an attempt to place the mind of a member of a comedy team into a character played by Glenn Strange? This movie takes it one step further, though; the transfer actually happens. Which of course leads us to the best thing about this particular movie, namely –

5) Glenn Strange’s performance as Atlas the Monster with the mind of Sach (Huntz Hall). Yes, I know that Strange was dubbed by Hall for the part, but his physicalization of the role at this point (i.e. his body language and gestures) does such a fine job of capturing the mannerisms of Huntz Hall that it becomes drop-dead hilarious. It may well be Strange’s most inspired performance. It makes me wonder what it would have been like had the brain transplant in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN had taken place, and we had seen Strange’s performance of the Frankenstein monster as Lou Costello. That would have been something to see!

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Nyoka and the Tigermen (1942)

NYOKA AND THE TIGERMEN (1942)
(a.k.a. PERILS OF NYOKA) (Serial)
Article #1591 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-23-2005
Posting Date: 12-20-2005
Directed by William Witney
Featuring Kay Aldridge, Clayton Moore, Lorna Gray

A team of scientists are looking for the lost tablets of Hippocrates because they contain a cure for cancer. They run up against the villainous Vultura, who wants the tablets for herself because they lead to a priceless treasure.

Given the fact that I’m not a big fan of knock-down drag-out fistfights (even the Republic warehouse-destroying ones wear thin after a bit), I tend to gravitate to serials with a greater degree of novelty value. That’s a big reason I like this one. Nyoka is one of serialdom’s rare female heroes; she takes an active part in the fight scenes, and is sometimes the rescuer rather than the rescuee. Clayton Moore is also on the side of the good guys, though I have trouble recognizing him without the mask. The villainness also keeps a pet man-in-a-gorilla-suit named Satan (would he have been so mean if she had named him Cuddles?). The cliffhangers are entertaining and creative, and I prefer serials like this that get me out in the open air than the more city-bound ones. Of course, my question about the whole setup is this; just how dependable is a cure for cancer from an ancient Greek? Yes, Hippocrates was one of the most advanced physicians of his time, but I still keep envisioning his cure being something along the lines of rubbing the cancerous area with a liniment made up of crushed herbs and goat’s dung and then making a healthy contribution at the altar of Apollo (or whoever the Greek God of medicine was). I also wondered if the tablets would prove to be tablets not in the Ten Commandments sense, but in the Tylenol sense.

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Love Slaves of the Amazons (1957)

LOVE SLAVES OF THE AMAZONS (1957)
Article #1590 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-22-2005
Posting Date: 12-19-2005
Directed by Curt Siodmak
Featuring Don Taylor, Gianna Segale, Eduard Ciannelli

An archaeologist agrees to make an expedition into the jungles of Brazil to find a lost city of Amazons.

Here it is, three days running and I’m still in the jungle. I think I’ve contracted jungle fever as well. This might explain why I was unable to pick up the early clues to the real nature of this movie. The first is the title itself; just how seriously can you take a movie with this title? The second is the fight scene that occurs about one-third of the way into the movie. When a fight scene largely consists of people being thrown into mud, it’s more of a sign of comedy than drama. No, I was taken in by the fact that the movie more or less carries itself with a certain amount of seriousness and dignity for its first half. Still, even if I had heeded the clues, I don’t think I would have been prepared for the quantum leap in goofiness the movie takes once our hero is captured by the Amazons, and a scene where the hero is forcibly given a bath by a gaggle of giggling elderly Amazon women left my mouth hanging open. The next twenty minutes consists largely of giggling and catfighting (on the part of the Amazons) and leering and gawking (on the part of the hero). Sure, the movie makes a half-assed attempt to take itself seriously again once he escapes, but by that time you pretty much know you’ve watched a comedy. Incidentally, this movie was shot in Brazil, with what looks like an assortment of Brazilian actors in the cast. This goes a long way towards explaining why several of the characters sound like Paul Frees.

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The Lost Tribe (1949)

THE LOST TRIBE (1949)
Article #1589 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-21-2005
Posting Date: 12-18-2005
Directed by William A. Berke
Featuring Johnny Weissmuller, Myrna Dell, Elena Verdugo

Jungle Jim tries to keep greedy white men from despoiling a hidden city in the jungle that contains a great deal of wealth.

From QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS to THE LOST TRIBE, huh? I guess once you step into the jungle, it’s hard to find your way out. Still, for a Jungle Jim movie, it’s pretty good, even if the plot is as old as the hills. It moves quickly, has lots of animal encounters, and builds up to a bizarre but memorable ending which must have used every gorilla suit they could get their hands on. It’s probably a pretty average movie all around, but it looks really good compared to QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS; I’m just grateful that you don’t overdose on the stock footage.

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Queen of the Amazons (1947)

QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS (1947)
Article #1588 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-20-2005
Posting Date: 12-17-2005
Directed by Edward Finney
Featuring Robert Lowery, Patricia Morison, J. Edward Bromberg

A woman hires a party to go into the wilds of Africa to find her lost husband. She hires a guide who considers women a nuisance who is also searching for ivory poachers.

I was going to dismiss this one as a Double-Stuffed Safari-O, but frankly, that classification is too good for it. Rather, this is an example of what I think of as Stock Footage Clearing House Cinema. Now, I can understand the use of stock footage to flesh out and add atmosphere to a movie in a cost-effective way. However, when a movie seems to only exist to make use of stock footage, you have the cart ahead of the horse. Yet, that seems to be the case here; the movie is filled with bits that seem designed to set up the use of stock footage. Certainly, the scenes of exposition and plot development are shot in such an uninvolving way (characters stand still and talk to each other) that I never felt that anyone cared about the story, and this is only enhanced by the fact that there’s very little in this hackneyed compendium of cliches to care about. As a result, the best part of the movie is, unsurprisingly, the stock footage. The fantastic aspect is little more than the mild fantasy value of having a tribe of Amazons on the loose.

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Futz! (1969)

FUTZ! (1969)
Article #1587 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-17-2005
Posting Date: 12-16-2000
Directed by Tom O’Horgan
Featuring John Bakos, Seth Allen, Peter Craig

This movie is about a man who is in love with a pig. I also found it to be well nigh unwatchable. The amazing thing is that these two facts aren’t really connected. As offensive as the bestiality story line is, the movie is so stylized and packed with audience distancing techniques that you never once really believe that you’re watching real people engaging in real acts; as a consequence, it never seems real enough to offend. No, the reason I found it nearly unwatchable is that stylization is so excessive the movie becomes actively annoying. It’s based on an avant-garde stage play that tried to combine stylized acting, music, poetry, dance and contortionism to create a thrilling new art form; in other words, it’s pretentious and self-indulgent. It may have worked better on stage than it does on the screen, but I certainly wouldn’t waste my time trying to mount a stage production of it to find out if that’s true; I can only see so many scenes of people delivering lines and making pig sounds while standing on their heads before my mind rejects the experience. I also suspect that the message of the movie may be a little too trite to merit this level of artiness, but I’m not even sure there is a message or whether I’m just reading something into it. The only reason I’m covering it for this series is that the ending has some horrific touches to it, but it’s by no means a horror movie. It’s not even good for campy laughs, for that matter. This one is only for fans of screen versions of avant-garde theatre.

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The Yellow Cab Man (1950)

THE YELLOW CAB MAN (1950)
Article #1586 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-18-2005
Posting Date: 12-15-2005
Directed by Jack Donohue
Featuring Red Skelton, Gloria DeHaven, Walter Slezak

An accident-prone inventor tries to demonstrate his new unbreakable elastiglass to a cab company, but finds himself beset by industrial spies who want the formula for themselves.

Red Skelton is often referred to as a great clown, and I have no trouble with this assessment as long as the word “clown” is understood to refer to a practitioner of a very specific type of comic discipline. Red Skelton’s use of comic pratfalls and expressions is very much the stuff of clowns, but I find clowns only mildly amusing, and as a result, despite the fact that I have a certain nostalgia for him (his TV show was a mainstay in my house when I was young), I don’t quite put him in the front row of the great comedians as I would W. C. Fields. Still, I really liked this movie a lot, largely because it aspires to a certain type of Fieldsian lunacy and surrealism at time, and also because Skelton shares the screen with a number of truly enjoyable character actors. James Gleason, Jay C. Flippen, Edward Arnold and Walter Slezak are all on hand here, and they all have wonderful parts and great moments. At least one sequence is truly great; an attempt by novice cabbie Skelton to pick up his first cab fare results in a twisted series of events that leads to perceptions of both a bomb scare and a kidnapping. And some of the dream sequences are really strange; in one he finds himself at the North Pole talking to Walter Slezak in a walrus costume, and in another he has nightmare visions of all sorts of motor vehicles and pedestrians warped out of proportion (thanks to trick photography). In fact, the set pieces show a real inventiveness throughout this movie, and this adds a lot to the proceedings. I haven’t seen a lot of Skelton’s cinematic work so far, but from what I’ve seen so far, this is the best.

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Circus of Fear (1966)

CIRCUS OF FEAR (1966)
(a.k.a. PSYCHO-CIRCUS)
Article #1585 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-17-2005
Posting Date: 12-14-2005
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey
Featuring Christopher Lee, Leo Genn, Anthony Newlands

Detectives investigate a robbery that resulted in the murder of a guard. Their investigation leads them to a circus populated by any number of sinister characters.

It is best to warn horror fans from square one; despite the title and certain horror elements (the presence of Christoper Lee as a lion tamer who wears a hood to hide his hideously scarred face, several knife murders), this is far more of a crime / mystery thriller than a horror piece. Actually, this isn’t so different from the common practice in the thirties to pass off old dark house mysteries as horror films, so it’s hard to get really offended over this. For a crime / mystery thriller, it’s not too bad; it has a few decent surprises and some interesting moments. It’s not particularly well done, though, and it misses a few opportunities; much as I like the fact that one scene involves two people having a fight in a ring filled with trained elephants, I don’t think the director made this moment as exciting as it could have been. Still, I have to grouse about one thing, and that is how often Klaus Kinski is wasted in movies like this; he’s a great actor with a memorable face, but he seems to be used for cameos more than anything else when he should be front and center. For the record, the movie’s most disappointing moment is getting our first look at the animal trainer’s hideous countenance.

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The Possessed (1965)

THE POSSESSED (1965)
(a.k.a. LA DONNA DEL LAGO/THE LADY OF THE LAKE)
Article #1584 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-16-2005
Posting Date: 12-13-2005
Directed by Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini
Featuring Virna Lisi, Peter Baldwin, Philippe Leroy

A visitor arrives in a small Italian town in search of a woman. He finds the inhabitants acting strange.

The above plot description is vague because I myself am vague about what happens in the movie. The plot descriptions on IMDB and in the John Stanley book say they’re acting like zombies, but I certainly didn’t see anything that resembled either the voodoo or the Romero variety of zombie, though a few people seem distant. There’s a lady involved, of course, and there’s a lake, a deal of love-making, a mysterious house, and lots of talk. Unfortunately, the key to it all is hidden in that talk, and since my copy of the movie is in unsubtitled Italian, the key remains currently out of my reach. It uses sound effectively at times, has some genuinely moody moments, and does seem to be off the beaten path somewhat. But until I see a print I can understand, I have little to say.

For those of you following this series in the hope that I’ll have more to say about these movies than I sometimes do, I apologize. The fact of the matter is that the project is a bit on the expensive side, and it’s also time-consuming. As nice as it might be to hold off on reviewing these until I can find a copy in English, I would then have to watch a whole second movie to keep up with the series, plus take the trouble to actively hunt out new sources. If this project were my livelihood or my sole hobby, I might do so, but such is not the case. Maybe someday I’ll return to movies like this and be better able to describe them, but until that time, this rather vague coverage will have to do.

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Planet Outlaws (1953)

PLANET OUTLAWS (1953)
Article #1583 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-15-2005
Posting Date: 12-12-2005
Directed by Ford Beebe, Saul A. Goodkind and Harry Revier
Featuring Buster Crabbe, Jackie Moran, Anthony Warde

Buck Rogers does battle with Killer Kane.

This movie opens and closes with a commentator talking about flying saucers, aliens from other planets, and the need to use our scientific knowledge to help us defeat extraterrestrial invaders. To illustrate his point, we are then subjected to a sixty-minute edit of the BUCK ROGERS serial. Unfortunately, I think the message gets gummed up in the process. Despite the fact that BUCK ROGERS does include humans at odds with aliens, the context of the serial (where the aliens are helping good-guy revolutionaries do battle with the evil-regime status quo) is utterly different from the context of the commentary (where bad-guy aliens are trying to destroy our good-guy status quo). Now, I’m tempted to fault the movie for failing to effectively deliver its message, but in truth, I never believed for one moment that this movie was made -er- edited with the intent to deliver any such message. Rather, I think the message was slapped on to try to add some sort of trendy touch to footage taken from a fourteen-year old serial. Sure, it’s lame, but I don’t honestly think they ever thought anyone was going to pay attention anyway.

As for this attempt to make a feature out of a serial, I’ll say it’s better than DESTINATION SATURN but not much. It’s biggest advantage is that it’s shorter and less intent on getting all the action in, making it easier to watch. Still, it is like trying to read a Cliff’s Notes version of the serial but skipping every other paragraph in the process, and it’s hard to follow. Still, this one is somewhat less painful than this form usually is.

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