Chosen Survivors (1974)

CHOSEN SURVIVORS (1974)
Article #1252 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-18-2004
Posting Date: 1-15-2005
Directed by Rafael Portillo and Sutton Roley
Featuring Jackie Cooper, Alex Cord, Richard Jaeckel

A group of people are placed in an underground complex to survive the onset of thermonuclear war, but find that the complex has been invaded by bloodthirsty vampire bats.

Question and answer time, folks!

Q: Why does this seventies science fiction movie shy away from dealing with the human conflicts and situations of people dealing with a crisis situation and turn into a movie about killer bats?
A: Because it’s easier to make a killer bat movie than one about human conflicts.

Q: If it’s really a killer bat movie, why the elaborate apocalyptic science-fiction setup?
A: So they can also have a trendy science fiction movie with which to make depressingly bleak comments about humanity, thus giving the movie greater commercial appeal to those who aren’t into killer bat movies.

Q: With the survival of the human race at stake, why does the government populate this compound largely with emotionally fragile people who crack up easily?
A: Because it’s easier for the killer bats to frighten them.

Q: Why do they drug the people before placing them in the compound?
A: To make them more emotionally fragile so they’ll be even more scared by the bats.

Q: Why do they include an annoying paranoid rich man who drinks too much and attempts to rape one of the women?
A: To demonstrate the dim view they take of humanity.

Q: Why is the paranoid annoying rich man who drinks too much and tries to rape one of the women the one who most accurately assesses the true nature of the situation?
A: Because I think he’s supposed to be the hero. Isn’t that depressing?

Q: Why does the soundtrack mostly consist of electronic pulses and blaring dissonant horns?
A: To annoy us.

Q: Why are the residents greeted every morning by the recording of the upbeat woman who constantly reminds them how well they’re cooperating with each other?
A: See the answer to the above question.

Q: Why does everybody yell at each other?
A.: Because, in some circles, this is considered good acting.

Q: Why did I watch this?
A: Because it was on the list.

Q: Is it better than NIGHTWING!
A: Yes. I had to say something good about it.

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Bluebeard’s Ten Honeymoons (1960)

BLUEBEARD’S TEN HONEYMOONS (1960)
Article #1251 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-17-2004
Posting Date: 1-14-2005
Directed by W. Lee Wilder
Featuring George Sanders, Corinne Calvet, Jean Kent

A Parisian antique dealer falls for a singer, but her expensive tastes causes him to turn to murdering rich widows for their money.

Actually, the title is a bit misleading; as far as I can tell, Landru never gets around to marrying any of these women, preferring to do away with them before the ceremony. It’s a good role for George Sanders, and between his performance and some of the witty touches of the script (in particular, Landru’s obsession of keeping track of his expenses) contribute quite a bit to making this far and away the best W. Lee Wilder movie I’ve seen to date. Its biggest drawback is its sluggish pace, but it does show an improvement for Wilder, and the ending is nicely edited. In terms of its fantastic content, it’s somewhat marginal, but the Landru story is generally considered to fall within the bounds of horror.

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Whispering Ghosts (1942)

WHISPERING GHOSTS (1942)
Article #1250 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-16-2004
Posting Date: 1-13-2005
Directed by Alfred L. Werker
Featuring Milton Berle, Brenda Joyce, John Shelton

A radio detective claims that he can solve a ten-year-old murder, but when his first guess proves incorrect, he must return to the scene of the crime to solve it again.

After the rash of extremely marginal movies I’ve seen lately, it seemed nice to finally see another movie with distinct horror touches. It’s your basic Old Dark House comedy, except it takes place on an Old Dark Houseboat. Despite the fact that Milton Berle is a bit of a legend, I’m really not too familiar with his work, and sad to say, I found this vehicle of his singularly short of laughs. Willie Best is also on hand, but there are just too many jokes made about his cowardice and his color that I just ended up feeling pretty uncomfortable. For me, the biggest laugh came from an unexpected source; if you ever wanted to see John Carradine do an imitation of a frog, this is the movie for you. You also get a chance to see John in his long johns, but that’s neither here nor there. After that, I will admit to a little fondness for Grady Sutton here.

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Betrayed (1944)

BETRAYED (1944)
(a.k.a. WHEN STRANGERS MARRY)
Article #1249 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-15-2004
Posting Date: 1-12-2005
Directed by William Castle
Featuring Dean Jagger, Kim Hunter, Robert Mitchum

A woman goes to New York to meet the salesman she married a month ago, but worries when he doesn’t appear. She does meet an old boyfriend, though, who helps her to find her husband.

The only fantastic content in this movie is a certain dark and scary atmosphere at points that gives it a slight horror feel. In other words, it’s pretty marginal. It’s so marginal, in fact, that I feel the need to reiterate at this point that this series of write-ups on fantastic (science fiction, fantasy and horror) movies compiles its watching lists from other sources that claim to cover the same genres; in this case, the movie is listed in John Stanley’s “Creature Features Strikes Again Movie Guide”. If I end up watching a movie that is this marginal, I cover it anyway, if for no other reason than to say that I don’t think it qualifies.

With that out of the way, I do have to say that this one is pretty good. It also has some fine performances, especially from Robert Mitchum. It’s also, by coincidence, the second movie in a row directed by William Castle from his pre-horror period, and unless I’m mistaken, (and I don’t appear to be if IMDB is correct), he manages to get his own face into the movie in the form of a photograph that is mistakenly used to identify the killer. For fans of noirish crime films, this is highly recommended, with my main warning being that you shouldn’t think too much about the story, as the premise hinges on a coincidence that becomes more and more unbelievable the more you think about it.

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Voice of the Whistler (1945)

VOICE OF THE WHISTLER (1945)
Article #1248 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-14-2004
Posting Date: 1-11-2005
Directed by William Castle
Featuring Richard Dix, Lynn Merrick, Rhys Wiliams

When a lonely, dying millionaire passes out in a cab, the cabbie takes care of him and urges him to change his suspicious nature and distrustful ways.

One of the books that I use as a reference to choose movies for this series claims that in this movie, hypnotism is used to cause someone to commit murder. If they thought so, it’s no surprise they included it; however, there’s no hypnotism at work in this movie, though we do have a man who is tempted into a murder by another man’s suggestion. In truth, the only fantastic elements in this movie are the existence of the Whistler, that strange, shadowy character who sees all, knows all and tells all (though in a purely passive sense – in other words, he plays no role other than that of narrator) and a certain horror atmosphere towards the end of the movie. In short, this movie is another false lead.

On its own terms, I found it quite engrossing, though not necessarily in terms of its murder story; If considered merely in that aspect, the movie takes far too long to get going (which is why my plot description doesn’t touch on it at all). No, it’s the human drama and the themes that made it interesting for me; it deals with loneliness and how it is bred by distrust, and how distrust arises from having to cope with fame or riches and consequently not being able to tell a true friend from a false one. It’s handled somewhat simplistically, but I found it engaging nonetheless. In fact, I was even a little disappointed when the movie does turn into a murder story in the latter part of the movie, since it is somewhat at odds with the rest of it. Of course, I can’t say that I’m surprised; if murder weren’t involved, this wouldn’t be a Whistler movie. Still, the murder setup is rather clever, and the ending is quite sad. Ultimately, I must admit I really enjoyed the movie, even if I don’t think it quite works as a whole.

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The Unseen (1945)

THE UNSEEN (1945)
Article #1247 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-13-2004
Posting Date: 1-10-2005
Directed by Lewis Allen
Featuring Joel McCrea, Gail Russell, Herbert Marshall

A woman takes on a job as a governess to two children, only to discover that they’re harboring some mysterious secret involving an unsolved murder and an empty house next door.

Despite the fact that the movie really has no fantastic content (other than the sinister mood of the movie and the fact that the strange visitor remains a shadowy figure until the end), this movie is generally considered a follow-up to THE UNINVITED. This is no doubt due to the fact that both movies were directed by Lewis Allen, and that they have similar titles. A number of people consider this a disappointment, and I can see why; the beginning of the movie is awkward (with some very clumsy narration), and it ends rather flatly. Nonetheless, I found the rest of the movie to be rather engrossing; the first half plays like a variation of “The Turn of the Screw”, and it’s a lot of fun to see how the mysterious details in the first half all start to fall together in the second half. I was able to figure out who the villain would be fifteen minutes before it ended, but it does a good job of keeping you in the dark as to the motivations of many of the characters until the proper time. It’s not perfect, but I found it quite entertaining.

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Terror Out of the Sky (1978)

TERROR OUT OF THE SKY (1978)
Article #1246 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-12-2004
Posting Date: 1-9-2005
Directed by Lee H. Katzin
Featuring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Dan Haggerty, Tovah Feldshuh

When killer bees infiltrate a bee raising institute, the director must race against time to prevent the development of a deadly swarm.

Bees make good horror animals; the thought of being stung to death by a swarm of them does get to you on a gut level. Consequently, any killer bee movie will put you on edge at least a little. Nonetheless, I can’t really say that I’ve seen a killer bee movie that I would actually describe as “good” (though THE SWARM is entertaining in its own way). This TV-Movie was a sequel to THE SAVAGE BEES, which I thought was merely average. I thought this one was quite bad. I got very annoyed at the foolishness of some of the characters, the horrible dialogue, and the formulaic plot elements. The director of the institute refuses to share his knowledge with the authorities, and the fact that this undercuts his ability to stop the bees apparently does not occur to him. There’s also a by-the-numbers love triangle which is resolved in the most cliched of fashions. I also don’t have much respect for the woman who decides that the people most fit to undertake the perilous task of tracking down the killer bees is a troop of boy scouts. Another major problem I have is this; in order to save the townspeople at one point, the woman hides in a school bus (with the troop of boy scouts) and continually toots the horn to lure the bees towards the bus, saying that loud noises attract them. Then, after the bus is driven out of town, nobody can figure out how to lure the bees away from the bus. Why didn’t they just plant a boom box a distance away from the bus, crank up the volume, and lure them away? This is the type of sloppy plotting that I have little use for.

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Secret Beyond the Door (1948)

SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (1948)
Article #1245 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-11-2004
Posting Date: 1-8-2005
Directed by Fritz Lang
Featuring Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere

A woman with a large inheritance is wooed by a mysterious man who is in desperate financial straits. After she marries him, she begins to suspect that he may have murdered his first wife for her money.

For a man who contributed so much to the fantastic genres during the silent and early sound eras, I’ve had little call to cover any of Fritz Lang’s later work as he really didn’t work in those genres much afterwards. This one gets by on the skin of its teeth; though it’s not a horror movie, the theme of madness and the presence of considerable ground fog in one scene do tip it in the direction of marginalia. I was initially excited to be catching another of his movies, and the movie starts off well enough. However, there came a point where my attention began to flag. The constant self-conscious narration, the psychological babble, and the protracted buildup—instead of nudging me to the end of my seat, it had the opposite effect of annoying and distracting me. By the time the big ending came, I had lost interest, and the big psychological revelation scene almost made me laugh, and that’s not a good sign. Fritz Lang has given us a lot of fine movies, but this isn’t one of them. Now, if only FURY or THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW were within my chosen genres…

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Run for the Sun (1956)

RUN FOR THE SUN (1956)
Article #1244 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-10-2004
Posting Date: 1-7-2005
Directed by Roy Boulting
Featuring Richard Widmark, Trevor Howard, Jane Greer

A reporter tracks down a writer who has given up his craft and moved to Mexico. The two of them end up stranded on a plantation owned by men with a secret.

This thriller is well acted, will directed and quite satisfying. For the purposes of this series, though, its inclusion here is somewhat problematic; the fantastic content here is negligible, and it largely gets in by being something of a remake of a movie that does qualify. I hope I’m not giving away too much by saying that that other movie is THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. The problem here is that this variation on the story strips away most of the content that edged that movie into the horror genre; our villain here is not the insane huntsman tracking down men for the mere sport of it, but one whose motivations exist much more in the realm of the mundane, and who has logical (if unethical) reasons for his behavior. All of this really just goes to show how hard it is to pin down some of these movies; despite the surface similarity to TMDG, this is a standard, straightforward thriller with no horror content, unless the fact that it takes place in the jungle counts. Chalk this one up as another false lead.

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The Malpas Mystery (1960)

THE MALPAS MYSTERY (1960)
Article #1243 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-9-2004
Posting Date: 1-6-2005
Directed by Sidney Hayers
Featuring Maureen Swanson, Allan Cuthbertson, Geoffrey Keen

A woman just released from prison (for a crime she didn’t commit) becomes involved with a mysterious recluse known as Malpas.

From the style of the beginning and ending credits of this movie, as well as its length (my print runs a mere 53 minutes), I’m guessing that this mystery-thriller based on an Edgar Wallace novel actually was from a TV production, but I can’t really find much information to confirm or deny this. Though not a horror movie per se, its horror elements are quite striking; the mysterious Malpas wears a mask to disguise his features, and he sits alone in a dark room and controls the doors and lights in his house by remote control. These elements give an eerie sense of dread to the proceedings that really catches your attention. This is good, because as a whole, the movie feels confused and rushed; I suspect that 53 minutes is just not long enough to effectively tell this tale. I also felt somewhat disappointed by the revelation of Malpas’s identity, not so much for who it is (which turns out to be extremely logical), but for its timing; it lets the cat out of the bag, but then continues for several more minutes acting as if his identity is still a mystery, and this left me feeling a little frustrated. It’s not bad overall, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark.

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