GOLIATH AGAINST THE GIANTS (1961)
(a.k.a. GOLIATH CONTRO I GIGANTI)
Article #1340 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-14-2004
Posting Date: 4-13-2005
Directed by Guido Malatesta
Featuring Brad Harris, Gloria Milland, Fernando Rey

Goliath must return to his native country to dethrone a tyrannical usurper.

If there’s any type of movie that needs to be in color, it’s a sword-and-sandal movie. As far as I know, all of them are, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some black and white prints floating around, and apparently I’ve managed to snag one of those for this movie, and I do have to admit that it tempers my enjoyment of this one somewhat. The usurping king plot is probably the most common of the sword-and-sandal storylines, and this one really doesn’t add much new to the formula. Still, you can sit back and enjoy Brad Harris taking on crowds of soldiers as well as various beasties, including a sea serpent, a lion, a strange ape-like creature, a dragon, and several big chunky guys with bad skin conditions (I think these are the “giants” of the title). He rescues his friend and his girl from torturous executions (the one with the wheel of knives looks pretty nasty). He also picks up big heavy things and throws them. However, he doesn’t bend the bars back; instead, in a real show of he-manship, he pulls the whole network of bars out of the cave wall. There’s the occasional rather odd lyrical moment here and there, and the sea monster sequence uses some truly eerie special effects. All in all, pretty standard sword-and-sandal fare.

Oh, and I also figured something out. If you were a stunt man who had wanted to work in a sword and sandal movie, what talent would you most need to develop? My answer would be to find creative ways of falling off of a wall / cliff / any high place, especially after being shot with an arrow. This movie is chock full of scenes of men tumbling off of high places.

GLEN OR GLENDA (1953)
(a.k.a. I CHANGED MY SEX / HE OR SHE / I LED 2 LIVES)
Article #1338 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-12-2004
Posting Date: 4-11-2005
Directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.
Featuring Edward D. Wood, Jr, Bela Lugosi, Lyle Talbot

A policeman consults a psychiatrist in order to understand the causes behind the suicide of a transvestite.

Fantastic content: This expose on transvestism and sex changes features Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist/ commentator, and the devil features prominently during a bizarre dream sequence.

“There’s no mistaking the thoughts in a man’s mind!” Bela Lugosi intones at one point in the proceedings of this, Ed Wood’s first movie. Though I think the statement in itself is open to question, somehow it seems appropriate when dealing with the work of Ed Wood. As a writer, he rarely edited his words; they flowed out of his mind onto the paper and stayed that way. His direction and editing only enhanced the sense of a wandering mind jumping around a subject in no logical fashion. His plea for the understanding and tolerance of transvestites and transsexuals is impassioned and sincere, but his attempts at logic and reason are ridiculous; in particular, the attempts to find a connection between tight hats and baldness is more likely to elicit horselaughs than serious thought. Still, there is no doubt that this is Ed Wood’s most personal movie. It’s also his most surreal, especially during the dream sequence where Wood faces the demons that plague him.

On the other hand, a question does come up for me; just how much of the movie I’m watching was actually the work of Wood himself? I recently purchased the DVD of this movie after having had a VHS copy of it for years. I found that some scenes were omitted, new ones added, and I don’t think it was Ed Wood himself that did this. It is known that George Weiss wasn’t all that happy with Wood’s work, and that the movie was rereleased over several years with different titles. I’m willing to bet that a lot re-editing went on as well. Here are a couple of differences I noted.

1) The DVD had a scene where Bela Lugosi and Ed Wood react to a series of lurid bondage and S&M footage (fairly tame). The music is totally different from the rest of the movie during this sequence. I do not believe that this scene was part of the original movie.

2) There is a scene where two working men discuss the sex change headline (I assume they work at a steel mill and that the shots of white-hot metal bars going in and out of narrow openings isn’t intended solely as sexual suggestion). On the DVD, the scene ends with one saying goodbye to the other. On the VHS, there is an extra moment; the other man returns the goodbye, only in a woman’s voice. In short, the DVD version removes the punch line to the scene.

There are other differences, but I think this illustrates them. I wonder if there are several different edits of this movie out there under various titles. I wonder if someday some researcher might take the time to go through the various copies of this movie and map out the various differences. I suspect that my VHS version is much closer to Wood’s original vision.

THE GENIE OF DARKNESS (1962)
(a.k.a. NOSTRADAMUS, EL GENIO DE LAS TINIEBLAS)
Article #1335 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-9-2004
Posting Date: 4-8-2005
Directed by Federico Curiel, Alberto Mariscal, et al.
Featuring German Robles, Domingo Soler, Julio Alemain

The professor once again pits his wits against the cunning will of the vampire Nostradamus.

Hey, I’ve figured out the gimmick behind naming this vampire after the famed prophet; he keeps predicting the deaths of his victims! All right, I’ll admit that I feel pretty slow in taking so long to come to that revelation, but at least I’m not scratching my head about it anymore.

This is the third of the four Nostradamus the Vampire movies. Each movie was edited out of several episodes of a serial, and as usual, it is best to keep that in mind when watching these movies, because if you take the movie as a single entity, it doesn’t work; it seems bizarrely plotted, incomplete and confusing. It’s only if you take it as part of series that it starts making sense, with some plot threads that run through several episodes. At the same time, each episode makes a certain amount of sense on its own terms, with a story arc that gives it its own sense of unity.

As usual, it’s a bit of a struggle, but I think it’s worth the effort; as a whole, the Nostradamus series has some fun ideas. The dubbing is quite awful, with highly inappropriate voices; Leo the hunchback sounds entirely too much like Goofy, and his mother the witch (whose death scene is the highlight of this movie) has a thick New York accent. Of course, the chances of anyone bothering to put out a decent subtitled copy of the whole serial are highly slim, so you may have to make the best of it.