Carousel (1956)

CAROUSEL (1956)
Article #1442 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-24-2005
Posting Date: 7-24-2005
Directed by Henry King
Featuring Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Cameron Mitchell

A man returns from the afterlife to help his daughter through a crisis situation in her life.

Rodgers and Hammerstein made an important contribution to the American musical; they took the musical out of the comedy / revue format within which it had been entrenched, and incorporated stories with darkness and tragedy into the form. Though I can appreciate this on an intellectual level, I’m afraid that I just don’t warm up to their musicals, largely because I don’t think they quite went far or dug deep enough; when push comes to shove, they fell back on feel-good inspirational platitudes, and I emerge somewhat unsatisfied.

This is one that I was pretty leery about. It’s based on the story of LILIOM, and I disliked and distrusted the early movie version I’d seen of that story because it seemed to be romanticizing domestic abuse; the “he hit me and it felt like a kiss” sequence disturbs me. Still, this movie version of the musical really does something right; it refuses to let that be the last scene in the movie, and makes it clear that the hit in question is indeed the wrong action. This goes a long way towards making this version of the story somewhat more palatable than the 1930 version.

Outside of my problems with this theme, I find the movie a mixed bag. A great musical wins me over even though I’m not particularly fond of the form, but this one does it only sporadically. The quieter, more intimate songs fail to hold my attention, but I really like some of the big production numbers, in particular the one that tells the story of the daughter’s humiliation and the “June is Busting Out All Over” number. It also has a likable cast, including Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Cameron Mitchell and Gene Lockhart. John Dehner plays a rich man who is the target of a robbery, but you never get a clear look at him. Tor Johnson and Angelo Rossitto are reportedly on hand here, but I didn’t see them; this is probably due, however, to the fact that I saw a pan and scan version of the movie, and the possibility that they only appeared for a short time on missing ends of the frame may account for that.

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The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962)

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE (1962)
Article #1441 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-23-2005
Posting Date: 7-23-2005
Directed by Joseph Green
Featuring Jason Evers, Verginia Leith, Leslie Daniels

A scientist experimenting with transplants manages to save and keep alive the head of his fiancee after a car accident, and then embarks on a plan to find a new body for her.

Some thoughts on THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE.

1) There seems to be a great deal of affection out there for this sleazy, exploitative horror movie, probably for the very reason that it is so sleazy and exploitative. I myself am not a fan of exploitation per se, so it should be no surprise that I do not look on this movie with affection. Still, there are some points to be made for good and bad, so I’ll touch upon those.

2) On the positive side, the movie does manage to work up a certain amount of tension. In particular, the monster in the closet is handled in such a way that it lets your imagination run wild as to how horrible it is. And when it finally appears, it isn’t a total disappointment, even if it looks a bit too lumpy.

3) If the movie is a pioneer of anything, I think it would be in the field of gore. There were movies with gory scenes before this one, but this was one of the first in which the gore was truly excessive; the movie wallows in its bloody scenes. The death of Kurt in particular stretches on far longer than is necessary; in fact, the initial shock gives way to giggles before he finally expires.

4) The biggest problem I have with the movie is its inability to decide just how it wants to be taken. Is it straight horror? Straight exploitation? Comic exploitation? A philosophical treatise on science? The movie tries all these things and never achieves a decent balance, and the jumps back and forth are annoying.

5) The movie is also devoid of likable characters. This in itself wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that all of the characters are potentially likable. The scientist is desperate to save the life of his loved one, but his sleazy predatory search for the woman with the right body renders him unpleasant. The fiancee who has been reduced to a single head could easily engender our sympathy if it weren’t for the fact that she wallows in bitterness and ugly vengeance. The assistant with the withered arm who dreams of having it replaced with a good arm is too condescending and sarcastic to garner much sympathy. And we fail to care for the model with the scarred face because of her stupid bitterness and the incidental fact that the actress playing her gives the worst performance in the movie.

6) I’m also a little annoyed that two of the characters who die in the movie do so as a result of their own monumental stupidity. They have a ferocious monster locked in a closet, and there’s a small latched opening in the closet door through which they give it food. They both unlatch (or leave unlatched) that opening, and then blithely turn their backs on it so that the monster can reach out for them. I wonder if they also stick forks in toasters while standing in puddles.

7) One thing that really drives me crazy is the jokiness of some of the scenes. While the scientist is stalking several of the women, he constantly finds his machinations foiled by the appearance of a potential witness who would be able to identify him as the last person to be with the woman in question. He always abandons his prey, but usually with some sort of clumsy ironical comment that he says aloud for all to hear, even though the comment often makes no sense unless you realize that he’s planning on killing someone. This kind of jokiness renders the movie highly unpleasant.

8) Near the beginning of the movie, the injured scientist scoops up head of his beloved, wraps it in a towel, and runs several miles with it as if he’s rushing for the goal line in a football game. No comment.

9) At one point, two large breasted women have a drop-down knockout fight. We then see two hanging of cats on the wall. Someone goes “Meow”. No comment.

10) This movie is in public domain. Several places that advertise it claim they have the rare “complete” version of the movie with all the gore. Now, despite the fact that I care little for this movie, I have it several times over in my collection (due to my passion for collecting boxed sets with lots of movies in them), and every single version of them I’ve seen has the complete gory sequences in question. I’m beginning to think that it’s the prints without the gory sections that are the rare ones.

At least they never made a sequel.

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The Black Raven (1943)

THE BLACK RAVEN (1943)
Article #1440 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-22-2005
Posting Date: 7-22-2005
Directed by Sam Newfield
Featuring George Zucco, Robert Livingston, Wanda McKay

The proprietor of an inn that serves as a front for transporting criminals out of the country finds himself caught up in murder and a struggle to find a satchel with $50,000.

Though this is not a horror movie, it qualifies as marginalia thanks to some nice atmosphere and the presence of George Zucco. It’s really a mystery, and not a particularly good one, but somehow, that doesn’t really matter. I found myself enjoying some of the odd touches, such as having Glenn Strange play the comic relief character, and having our hero be George Zucco’s criminal proprietor; after all, it is his investigation that cracks the crime rather than those of the Sheriff (played here by perennial serial villain Charles Middleton). I also have to admit to liking the ham-fisted way the movie sets up its situation; that this particular combination of characters should all happen to converge at this one place is highly unlikely, but it does have its amusing side to it. So on top of the crooked but soft-hearted proprietor and his dumb assistant, we have the obligatory couple trying to elope, a desperate criminal trying to leave the country, an escaped convict bent on revenge, a bigwig with underworld connections, and a meek clerk who has actually embezzled a large sum of money. They’re all here because the bridge is washed out. It’s silly and obvious, but fun enough in its low-budget PRC way.

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Billion Dollar Brain (1967)

BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967)
Article #1439 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-21-2005
Posting Date: 7-21-2005
Directed by Ken Russell
Featuring Michael Caine, Karl Malden, Ed Begley

A retired spy is pulled back into the business when the theft of some new viruses gets him entangled with a plot to invade the U.S.S.R.

Fantastic content: The near-invasion of the Soviet Union and the use of a giant supercomputer push the movie into marginal science fiction territory.

It’s movies like this that make me understand why I never really took to the whole James Bond franchise. It’s because those movies are so jokey that they never surprise me; when they throw jokes, bizarre characters or odd plot twists at me, I’m not really surprised because I saw them coming and expected them. This spy thriller takes itself much more seriously; it, too, has jokes, bizarre characters and odd plot twists, but they serve instead to keep my attention and freshen up the story. Quite frankly, I found more real laughs here than in any of the James Bond movies that I’ve seen. It also has its own visual style that is quite engaging while being markedly different from that of the Bond movies, and I attribute this to the direction of Ken Russell, who had a definite talent for catching the attention. I like the whole cast of this one, but the best performances come from Ed Begley as a superpatriotic Texas billionaire and Oskar Homolka as a Russian colonel who takes a liking to Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer. And let’s face it; any movie that opens with a man being given puzzling directions to deliver a thermos full of eggs to Helsinki must get some sort of award for catching one’s attention.

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Sex Kittens Go To College (1960)

SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (1960)
(a.k.a. THE BEAUTY AND THE ROBOT)
Article #1438 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-20-2005
Posting Date: 7-20-2005
Directed by Albert Zugsmith
Featuring Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Mijanou Bardot

A robot chooses the new head of the science department, a woman with an IQ of 268 who just happens to look like Mamie Van Doren. Hilarity ensues.

Let’s face it; with a title like SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE and a director like Albert Zugsmith, you won’t be expecting anything along the lines of CITIZEN KANE. Therefore, I can honestly say that this one didn’t catch me off guard, especially given the fact that I knew the basic premise of the movie ahead of time. It’s bad, but no worse than I thought it would be; in fact, it may be a hair better, though this should be balanced out by the fact that I thought this would be really bad.

Still, bad doesn’t necessarily mean immemorable, and there are several things here I that I won’t forget. Such as –

– Seeing Jackie Coogan engaging in a W. C. Fields impersonation.

– Watching Brigitte Bardot’s sister Mijanou coming on strong to a gangster called Legs Raffertino in order to do scientific research.

– Watching John Carradine do the Charleston with Mamie Van Doren.

– Watching John Carradine do the tango with Mamie Van Doren.

– Watching John Carradine, Louis Nye, Jackie Coogan and Irwin Berke engaging in the same sexy dance moves being used by Mamie Van Doren which ends with a kick line on top of the bar.

– Watching the augmentation of the above kick line by the addition of a monkey.

– Watching Tuesday Weld con Woo Woo Grabowski out of his fraternity pin by telling him she needs to fix her bra strap of else she’ll “fall to pieces”.

The movie also features a full-figure bra saleswoman, a robot called S.A.M. Thinko, a gangster who mistakenly keeps a violin in his violin case, Martin Milner, Conway Twitty and Vampira.

So who gives the best comic performance here? I’d pick Woo Woo Grabowski as the captain of the football team who faints every time Mamie Van Doren is around because he can’t handle the opposite sex. His line to Tuesday Weld is priceless, to wit—”It’s too bad you’re not a guy. Then we could have some fun together.”

Incidentally, IMDB lists this movie at 94 minutes. My print runs 101 minutes. I suspect this is because a seven-minute sequence in the middle of the movie which features several topless dancers in quick succession was added after the fact. The reason I believe this was added after the fact is that only two of the regular cast members appear in this sequence with them, and they’re the two who would seem to me to be the least likely to object to appearing in these scenes; namely, the robot and the monkey.

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The Bat (1959)

THE BAT (1959)
Article #1437 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-19-2005
Posting Date: 7-19-2005
Directed by Crane Wilbur
Featuring Vincent Price, Agnes Moorehead, Gavin Gordon

A mysterious murderer known as The Bat is after some money hidden in an old dark house.

I’m not a big fan of the two other versions I’ve seen of this old chestnut, though I do believe they have their good points. Perhaps the oddest thing here is that this old-fashioned old dark house movie was remade at all; it certainly seems out of place with the other horror movies of the fifties. I find it more coherent than the other two versions I’ve seen (THE BAT [1926] and THE BAT WHISPERS [1930]), but as far as I’m concerned, that’s really the only improvement. Whereas these earlier movies do maintain the mood throughout, this one does not; by spreading the action over several nights, the movie loses the intensity of the other versions. It also lacks the humor of the earlier versions. I also miss the exciting beginning of those other two movies; whereas they began with a thrilling murder from the outside of a skyscraper, this one just sets up its situation with a series of dull and awkward expositional scenes. I also have some problems with the performances. Vincent Price hits the proper pitch as the suspicious doctor, but Agnes Moorehead was miscast, and her overtheatrical performance here is a major distraction. It’s not horrible, but it falls somewhat short of what it could be.

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Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1964)

ATTACK OF THE MAYAN MUMMY (1964)
Article #1436 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-18-2005
Posting Date: 7-18-2005
Directed by Rafael Portillo and Jerry Warren
Featuring George Mitchell, Rosa Arenas, Ramon Gay

A scientist discovers a woman who responds to his experiments with hypnosis and reincarnation, and this leads him to a Mayan temple.

Though both of its sequels made it more or less intact to this country through the courtesy of K. Gordon Murray, THE AZTEC MUMMY was not so lucky; it ended up in the hands of Jerry Warren, who used chunks of its footage for FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF as well as this little atrocity. For those of you not familiar with Warren’s technique for bringing foreign movies to us, here’s a brief description. From the original movie, he would only keep scenes that required minimal dubbing which he could then run along with voice-over narration. He would then write his own story around these scenes and shoot his own footage. This footage usually consisted of two characters sitting across from each other and engaging in long-winded and painfully boring conversations. He would shoot these scenes with a flat, static style that merely underlines the dullness of the conversation. It takes phenomenal willpower to actually sit through these scenes, much less pay attention to them. And as a writer, Warren is one of the worst; rather than have his characters quickly move us to the next plot point with an efficient exchange of information, he would have them engage in extended conversations in which they would talk about almost everything else in the world except the story.

This is probably his worst effort in this regard. There’s not much of the original left, and Warren’s footage takes over. It is, in fact, one of the most droningly dull movies ever made. The only scene of Warren’s that has a smidgen of interest is the one where a scientist visits a soda shop with dancing teens to meet a girl who is his connection to the boy in the footage from the original movie. It’s not really any better than his other scenes; the conversation tells us nothing. However, you won’t be listening to the conversation; the scene is full of girls in tight pants wiggling their butts for the benefit of the camera. Yes, it’s distracting, but it’s also the only thing of Warren’s in the movie that catches your attention.

The very last shot of this movie before THE END pops up is a closeup of a wastebasket. I think this speaks for itself.

P.S. Since this review was first written, the original version of THE AZTEC MUMMY has come to light. I will be covering that one at a later date.

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Attack From Space (1964)

ATTACK FROM SPACE (1964)
Article #1435 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-17-2005
Posting Date: 7-17-2005
Directed by Koreyoshi Akasaka, Teruo Ishii and Akira Mitsuwa
Featuring Ken Utsui, Sachihiro Ohsawa, Junko Ikeuchi

Starman must help the earth to defeat an invasion of an outer space race known as the Superions.

Yes, folks, it’s Starman again, and those of you might remember EVIL BRAIN FROM OUTER SPACE will find this one either more or less satisfying than that one. It’s certainly more coherent, but that’s due to the fact that it pillages only two episodes of the Super Giant featurettes rather than the three that went into EBFOS. Certain things haven’t changed; Starman still has a tricky way of changing costumes, his gender is still completely unquestionable (apparently this is due to padding, since one of the producers felt that Starman would appeal more to female viewers if his manhood was more impressive), and the fight scenes still leave you with the sense that no one really got hurt. The down side is that the movie lacks the wild creatures of the other movie; the Superions all look very human, and other than a short segment showing the residents of the planet that sends Starman out on his missions, there’s not an atomic mime to be seen. Still, it’s kind of fun, and Starman seems to really enjoy fighting; he engages in gymnastics, throws people around as if they’re big rag dolls (which they probably are), grabs the enemies guns for his own use and engages in a little western-style gunslinging, warps back and forth from one area of the fight to another, and when he gets tired of this, he’ll stand somewhere laughing with his hands on his hips and let the enemies shoot bullets at him. Let’s face it; there’s something charming and fun about Starman that makes him a lot more interesting than a lot of other Japanese superheros. I just want to see more of the atomic mime.

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Atomic Rocketship (1936)

ATOMIC ROCKETSHIP (1936)
(a.k.a. ROCKETSHIP, FLASH GORDON)
Article #1434 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-16-2005
Posting Date: 7-16-2005
Directed by Frederick Stephani and Ray Taylor
Featuring Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton

Flash Gordon flies to the planet Mongo to keep it from colliding with the earth.

Yes, it’s another feature-length version of the FLASH GORDON serial, compressed to a length of about seventy minutes while trying to keep the whole plot intact. I’ve gone on about feature versions of serials before, and little has changed my mind. To my mind, they’re like Cliff Notes versions of serials. The trouble is, Cliff Notes largely exist to help students to get familiar with novels they’re supposed to read in their literature classes without going through with the trouble of actually reading them. You don’t read Cliff Notes for fun; you read them in order to pass a test, and I don’t think anybody’s going to be testing you on FLASH GORDON in the near future. Still, watching this story for what amounts to me as the fourth time, I can’t help but admit that I’ve become attached to the character of King Vultan, the hefty winged ruler of the Hawkmen who laughs at his own bizarre jokes and fights by bumping into people with his stomach. This guy is just too strange for words.

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Adam and Eve (1956)

ADAM AND EVE (1956)
(a.k.a. ADAN Y EVA)
Article #1433 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-15-2005
Posting Date: 7-15-2005
Directed by Alberto Gout
Featuring Christiane Martel, Carlos Baena, Carlos Martinez Baena

Adam and Eve are created and placed in Eden, where they are tempted by the serpent to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.

Biblical epics do fall under the category of fantastic cinema, since miracles are indeed fantastical happenings. In fact, the story of Adam and Eve is probably the best known in the Bible. It is so well known, in fact, that despite the fact that this movie was in Spanish without subtitles, I didn’t have the slightest problem following it. Of course, it helps that there is very little dialogue to begin with; except for some opening and closing narration, and a couple of comments from God, there is no dialogue to this movie. It is also one of the best looking Mexican movies I’ve seen to date, and it has a wonderful soundtrack to it. There are some definite pleasures here.

However, there’s a cinematic problem with telling the story of Adam and Eve that I’ve barely touched on so far, so let me give you the naked truth: it’s very difficult to tell this story visually and keep the viewer in the properly reverent state of mind. To phrase this another way (while remaining annoyingly coy in the process) let me just say that you will most likely get caught up in the fact that an accurate telling of this story puts very little strain on the clothing designer, and that in order to compensate for the relative easiness of this crewperson’s task, we must give extra work to the casting director (“We need a woman with long hair!”), the hairdresser (“These strands go down the back, but these need to hang down in front.”), the cameraman (“Yes, we need to shoot it from THIS angle!”), the choreographer (“Make sure when you’re walking from point A to point B that you hand is positioned just so!), and finally, the foliage wrangler (‘So how much waist-high foliage do you need in this scene?”) Actually, the clothing designer isn’t completely idle, but it’s still a fairly easy job; for the first half of the movie, you just need certain garments of small size and specific color, and for the second half of the movie, you can consult with the foliage wrangler.

The movie does start wandering a bit at the fifty minute mark; that’s when Adam and Eve are evicted. Let’s face it, there’s just not a whole lot of story left, but there’s twenty minutes of movie to go. So we get a lot of wandering in the desert. And here’s a game for Biblical scholars; spot the Biblical error that occurs shortly after Adam invents shade. (Hint: Adam and Eve see something that hasn’t been created yet.)

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