The Witch (1966)

THE WITCH (1966)
(a.k.a. THE WITCH IN LOVE/LA STREGA IN AMORE)
Article #1362 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-6-2005
Posting Date: 5-5-2005
Directed by Damiano Damiani
Featuring Richard Johnson, Rosanna Schiaffino, Gian Maria Volonte

A womanizer becomes curious about an old woman who appears to be following him around. When he tracks her down, she offers him a job translating the erotic literature in her library. He then meets her beautiful daughter, and finds himself embroiled in strange events.

This is supposed to be one of those movies that is alluringly mysterious, that toys with the viewer’s expectations and piques his curiosity by portraying a succession of odd and puzzling events intended to leave the viewer mystified until certain startling revelations bring it all into focus. These types of movies can be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, this one isn’t, largely because it damn near talks your ears off in the process of unfolding. It also doesn’t help much that the one short plot description I read blurted out the primary plot twist; really, if you’re going to write a three line plot-description of a movie, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to avoid major revelations. Not that the revelation is much of a surprise; the movie isn’t exactly subtle in doling out its hints. On the plus side, it does have a bit of an erotic charge to it, certain individual scenes are quite effective, the dubbing is better than average, and the ending isn’t quite what I expected. Still, I found this one a chore to sit through, and it falls short of its aspirations, though it is aiming somewhat higher than your usual horror movie. It’s ambitious, but ultimately, it’s a failure.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Robinson Crusoe on Clipper Island (1936)

ROBINSON CRUSOE ON CLIPPER ISLAND (1936)
Article #1361 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-5-2005
Posting Date: 5-4-2005
Directed by Ray Taylor and Mack V. Wright
Featuring Mala, Rex, Buck

A U.S. Intelligence agent is sent out to investigate sabotage on a remote island that was serving as a refueling base for a dirigible company.

Fantastic content: Touches of horror in the native ceremonies and touches of science fiction in the technology used by the villains. All in all, pretty marginal.

There are three different types of cliffhangers, which I describe thusly;

1 – The Honest Cliffhanger. The action at the top of the following episode does not modify or amend the action at the bottom of the previous episode in any way. This type of cliffhanger is rarer than you might think.

2 – The Cheating Cliffhanger. The action at the top of the following episode inserts scenes into the footage used from the previous episode. For example, if we see the hero in a runaway car that plows into a building and explodes, a scene will be inserted where the hero sees it coming and bails out of the car in time. This is the most common type of cliffhanger.

3 – The Lying Cliffhanger – The action at the top of the following episode omits scenes from the previous episode, replacing it with new footage that contradicts the cliffhanger. For example, the end of one cliffhanger clearly shows a plane crashing into the water (you see the splash and the explosion) while the top of the next episode shows the pilot pulling out of the dive just in time, and the footage of the crash is missing completely. Fortunately, these are even rarer than honest cliffhangers.

I mention these distinctions because one problem this serial has is that it is one of the worst offenders I’ve ever seen in terms of having Lying Cliffhangers; there are at least four or five episodes in which the cliffhanger if contradicted by the action in the next episode. It has some other problems; though he has a certain amount of charisma, Mala (an eskimo actor who ended up specializing in exotic native types) isn’t much of an actor (I don’t feel that he’s mastered the basic acting technique of articulation, for one thing), and he’s unconvincing as a U.S. Intelligence agent. Still, he’s comfortable in his loincloth, athletic, and makes a decent enough serial hero.

Still, even with its problems, this is a very entertaining serial. I’m glad it’s largely set on an island; when that happens, the writers have to be more creative than to just give us a string of “bailing-out-of-the-car” cliffhangers. It also has animals (Rex is a horse and Buck is a St. Bernard) who are quite helpful to Mala, two comic relief sidekicks who are also helpful (though not quite as much), a lot of native hijinks, some dirigible action, volcanos, abandoned castles, etc. There’s plenty of great spectacle in this one; this was made before the budgets really started to be cut for serials. Recommended, but watch out for those lying cliffhangers.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Juggernaut (1936)

JUGGERNAUT (1936)
Article #1360 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-4-2005
Posting Date: 5-3-2005
Directed by Henry Edwards
Featuring Boris Karloff, Joan Wyndham, Arthur Margetson

A doctor desperate for funding to complete a project before he dies is propositioned by a scheming heiress to murder her husband.

This is one of the few of Karloff’s genre movies from the thirties that I had yet to see. It’s often overlooked and rarely discussed, and there are reasons for this. Despite the fact that the plot involves a scientist killing people so he can continue his experiments (which makes it similar to several other Karloff vehicles which are indisputably horror), it’s not a horror movie. What’s missing is the experiment itself; if they mentioned the nature of his experiments, I missed it, and it really doesn’t play any role in the proceedings. Karloff’s murders are either for the money, or to cover up evidence. So it’s not really horror; it’s more of a crime movie, and not a very good one. The script is weak, the set-up is confusing, talky and protracted, and the whole affair comes across as rather silly. Karloff does the best he can, but for some reason he hunches over during the whole movie and it’s distracting. However, Mona Goya (who plays the second wife of Sir Charles Clifford) overacts blatantly. Incidentally, Nina Boucicault is the daughter of Dion Boucicault, who was the first Irish playwright to have his work produced in England.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

It Happens Every Spring (1949)

IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING (1949)
Article #1359 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-3-2005
Posting Date: 5-2-2005
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
Featuring Ray Milland, Jean Peters, Paul Douglas

A chemistry professor develops a liquid that, when rubbed over any object, will cause it to be repelled by wood. In order to make money to marry his sweetheart, he gets a job as a pitcher on a baseball team, and uses the substance on baseballs to help them win the pennant.

So what happens every spring? Don’t let the title, the romantic opening song, nor the pictures of amorous animals frolicking with each other during the opening credits fool you; as far as this movie is concerned, the love bug is not causing the illness of choice at this time of the year, it’s baseball fever. Sure, it has a love story in it, but that’s largely a plot device to get Ray Milland pitching a string of no-hitters. As I’m not a fan of sports, I don’t have a lot of use for sports fantasy films like this (though technically it is science fiction), but this one is well done, has great special effects and a good running gag (everyone thinks the liquid is hair tonic and keeps borrowing it; it works well enough at first, but when they try use a wooden brush on their hair, it makes them look like Moe Howard). Most of all, it’s well acted by all concerned, especially Paul Douglas as the team’s catcher. And I’m especially happy that it doesn’t contain a single kidnapping subplot.

On a side note, I always like talking about coincidental similarities between movies I watch in close succession, and the last six movies I’ve seen have a startling array of plot similarites. Here’s a list.

1) I’ve seen two movies which feature musical numbers interspersed with human sacrifices. (HELP!, HER JUNGLE LOVE)

2) I’ve seen two movies in which a liquid is concocted in the laboratory that is used to help the local sports team. (Baseball in IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING, Football in HOLD THAT LINE).

3) I’ve seen two ghost stories that open with conductors leading an orchestra (HALFWAY HOUSE, HOUSE OF DARKNESS).

4) I’ve seen two Ray Milland movies. (IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING, HER JUNGLE LOVE).

5) I’ve seen two movies which feature scenes of a man being shrunk down to less than his usual size. (HOLD THAT LINE, HELP!)

P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for Alan Hale Jr. (Skipper on “Gilligan’s Island”) as a college baseball player.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

House of Darkness (1948)

HOUSE OF DARKNESS (1948)
Article #1358 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-2-2004
Posting Date: 5-1-2004
Directed by Oswald Mitchell
Featuring Laurence Harvey, Lesley Osmond, Grace Arnold

A composer recounts the story of the haunted house that inspired his latest composition.

What we have here is your basic ghost story, and it’s one that has a number of overly familiar situations at that. Certainly, I’ve seen the storyline about an old man (with a heart condition) threatening to disinherit the younger man (who knows he has a heart condition) several times before, and the story as a whole doesn’t have a whole lot in the way of surprises. Yet somehow it works, and it may well be due to Laurence Harvey’s performance. This surprised me, because in some ways I don’t really like his performance here; he seemed too sneeringly slimy to be taken seriously. Yet, somehow, as the movie continues towards its final climactic scene, his performance ends up so in sync with the movie’s mood that the final sequence in the main storyline is extremely effective. Of course, the scene is also helped by the effective use of music, and the musical motif serves as the framing story. I recommend this one to ghost story enthusiasts who aren’t put off by Harvey’s performance in the first half of the movie.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Hold That Line (1952)

HOLD THAT LINE (1952)
Article #1357 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-1-2004
Posting Date: 4-30-2004
Directed by William Beaudine
Featuring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, John Bromfield

When Sach develops a formula that makes him incredibly strong, he becomes a football star at an ivy league college.

Most Bowery Boys movies are fairly plotless affairs, and it took this movie to help me realize that I liked it that way. Not that plotlessness is the best thing for them necessarily. It’s just that I figured that any plots that they might concoct wouldn’t be worth following. Now this movie is pretty much your typical Bowery Boys movie for the first two-thirds of the way, but once I heard the conversation between two thugs where they discuss how much gambling money they could rake in if the college loses the big game, I knew exactly where the movie would be going for the rest of the running time, and sure enough, I was right. Still, it does have its moments; including a scene where Leo Gorcey spouts mile-a-minute gibberish in an English class, and another where we meet the Bowery “girls”. And I must admit that the final big play of the football game was far more clever than I expected. All in all, another festival of malaprops and mugging.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Her Jungle Love (1938)

HER JUNGLE LOVE (1938)
Article #1356 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-30-2004
Posting Date: 4-29-2004
Directed by George Archainbaud
Featuring Dorothy Lamour, Ray Milland, Lynne Overman

Two pilots get stranded on a desert island in the south seas. There they meet a beautiful woman and a monkey, and have to tangle with natives on a nearby island who like sacrificing white men.

For the second day in a row I find myself watching a color movie with musical numbers interspersed by human sacrifices. Now, I’ll admit it’s no novelty that HELP! was in color, but this one was made before color was de rigeur, so I’ll hazard some guesses as to why they chose to shoot this one in color.

– Those beautiful blue skies.

– Dorothy Lamour’s sarong and red lipstick.

– The lush south sea island scenery.

– J. Carrol Naish’s cool headdress when he sacrifices white men to the crocodile of the grotto.

– J. Carrol Naish’s red coat when he greets newcomers.

– The colorful pageantry of the skirts of the natives.

I certainly don’t think that the lame script or the tired comic relief of Lynne Overman were big selling points, even if the makers of the movie did include a chimpanzee to help with the latter. Nonetheless, it does build to a big climax involving a volcanic explosion and a whole mess of crocodiles that gives the movie its horror element and makes the rest of the silliness worth wading through.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Help! (1965)

HELP! (1965)
Article #1355 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-29-2004
Posting Date: 4-28-2004
Directed by Richard Lester
Featuring The Beatles, Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron

The head of a sacrificial cult tries to recover a sacred ring that has found its way onto Ringo’s finger.

Fantastic content: A bit of horror with the sacrificial cult plot, and some science fiction with a variety of strange inventions and a scene where Paul McCartney shrinks to a tiny size.

I won’t argue that Richard Lester has earned a place in cinema history; he was one of the pioneers of the swinging sixties cinema style, and his handling of the musical numbers here makes him one of the forerunners of the music video. Nor do I have any problem with the music; I’ve always loved the work of the Beatles, and this movie has a number of favorites (particularly the title song, “Ticket to Ride” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”). Nonetheless, I come out of this one with a certain sense of disappointment because it doesn’t quite succeed as a comedy. Not that it’s disastrously unfunny; it’s mildly amusing throughout. I just think that it was trying to be a lot more than “mildly amusing”; I think it was trying to be an anarchically wild knee-slapper, like what you would expect with Monty Python or the Marx Brothers. And despite the fact that they have a great deal of charm, the Beatles aren’t the Marx Brothers; they were primarily musicians, not comedians. As a result, I feel the movie strains for big laughs at times, and they don’t come. Still, some of the ideas are funny enough; in particular, I like the fact that the cult can’t kill Ringo until they paint him red, so all their plots to do him in must also involve a way of covering him with red paint.

On a side point, I recall having read somewhere that John Lennon hated this movie, though my memory may be playing tricks on me. If he did, I think it shows in his performance; there are moments here where I sense a nasty edge to some of his comments. At any rate, the Beatles’ next movie (MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR) would be their own production.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Halfway House (1944)

THE HALFWAY HOUSE (1944)
Article #1354 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-28-2004
Posting Date: 4-27-2004
Directed by Basil Dearden
Featuring Mervyn Johns, Glynis Johns, Sally Ann Howes

Assorted travelers find themselves meeting at a halfway house that was believed to have burned down a year ago but seems to have been mysteriously rebuilt.

From the basic setup of the story, my first impulse was to suspect that I was watching a British variant on the “Outward Bound” story; in other words, that everyone at the inn was already dead and awaiting judgment. Though this does not prove to be the case, its similarities are fairly strong. I can’t give away the true nature of the situation without engaging in spoilers, but I will point out that the primary difference between the two stories is that in “Outward Bound”, the people have come to the end of their lives, whereas in this one, the guests at the inn are all at a crossroads in their life where the decisions they make can turn the tides of their ultimate fates. Much of it is relevant to the war; we have one couple who is being torn apart by the death of their son in the war, a man who is becoming rich by dealing with black market war materials and an Irishman who is planning to become a consul to Germany (Ireland was neutral during the war) against the wishes of his lover. There are also other characters; a couple is planning to divorce against the wishes of their daughter, a man recently released from prison (for a crime of which he was innocent) is toying with actually turning to crime, and an orchestral conductor is trying to come to terms with a terminal illness. The movie is a little slow out of the gate; it’s a good twenty-five minutes into the movie before we reach the inn, and that’s too long. It’s also a bit dry at times, and manages to be both more complex than ‘Outward Bound’ (the characters being in transitional states of their lives) and more simplistic (let’s just say that certain problems work themselves out too conveniently). Still, the ending is strong, the acting is solid, and it makes the best use of the 23rd psalm that I’ve ever seen in a movie.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Enchanted Forest (1945)

THE ENCHANTED FOREST (1945)
Article #1353 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-27-2004
Posting Date: 4-26-2004
Directed by Lew Landers
Harry Davenport, Edmund Lowe, Brenda Joyce

A hermit who lives alone in a forest finds a child floating in the river (he fell into the river during a train wreck), and brings him up in the forest.

Fantastic element: The hermit is able to talk with the animals and hear the voice of the forest.

This was quite an ambitious task to come out of PRC; it was shot in Cinecolor on 16mm and expanded to 35mm for theatrical release, and it was probably the only way they could afford it. You can see they didn’t have a lot of money to play with when you watch it, but it doesn’t matter. The movie has a great deal of charm. Much of this comes from the warmth and simplicity of the story, from the unaffected performance of Harry Davenport as Old John the Hermit, and from the excellent use of trained animals. The movie is filled with memorable touches; the hermit kindly admonishing the crow for stealing his glasses, the hermit explaining about guns and killing to the grieving child, and then conducting a burial of a squirrel, and the moment when the hermit leaves the newly discovered baby alone for a couple of minutes only to have a cougar enter the living quarters. There are also good performances from everyone else, including Brenda Joyce (the mother of the lost child) and Edmund Lowe, who plans on building a sanitarium in the forest.

0 CommentsLeave a comment