Pandora’s Box (1929)

PANDORA’S BOX (1929)
(a.k.a. DIE BUCHSE DER PANDORA)
Article #921 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-22-2003
Posting date: 2-19-2004
Directed by G.W. Pabst
Featuring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer

A free-living woman brings tragedy to all who become involved with her.

I’ve covered a couple of movies by G. W. Pabst already; this one is considered his masterpiece, though I think this may be even more the result of Louise Brooks’ unforgettable performance as Lulu, a woman who never really considers the consequences of her actions until disaster occurs and the price must be paid. It’s not a horror movie, but a drama in which horror elements only come in to play near the end when Jack the Ripper becomes part of the action. It’s full of surprising touches, unexpected plot twists, and strong performances. Francis Lederer is also on hand; he would later appear in THE RETURN OF DRACULA and TERROR IS A MAN.

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Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders (1953)

CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS. ATOMIC INVADERS (1953)
(Serial)
Article #920 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-21-2003
Posting date: 2-18-2004
Directed by Franklin Adreon
Featuring William Henry, Susan Morrow, Arthur Space

A mountie does battle with spies intent on setting up a missile base in the wilds of Canada.

All right, I’ll admit I’m used to serials having only slight science fiction elements as most of them do, but with a title like CANADIAN MOUNTIES VS. ATOMIC INVADERS, I certainly expect the ‘Atomic Invaders’ to have something science fictional about them. In truth, they’re just spies, and the fact that they’re in Canada to build a secret missile base for use in an attack on the United States is the only thing even remotely science fictional about this one, and it’s not near enough. It’s even devoid of the entertaining science fiction gadgetry found in other serials. On the plus side, one of the advantages the later serials had was that the episodes were shorter, and that forced them to trim out unnecessary scenes; it doesn’t prevent them, however, from including episode ten, which is made up of recycled footage from the other episodes. The first few episodes take place in the snow-covered North, which does give it a unique setting, even if some of the scenes look like people standing in front of a painting full of snow, but once the action switches back to the woods, the serial becomes rather repetitive and snore-inducing. This one is not a high point in the history of serials.

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Escape in the Fog (1945)

ESCAPE IN THE FOG (1945)
Article #919 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-20-2003
Posting date: 2-17-2004
Directed by Budd Boetticher
Featuring Nina Foch, William Wright, Otto Kruger

A woman has a dream of a man being attacked on the Golden Gate bridge on a foggy night, and then meets the man who was in her dream when she awakes.

The fantastic element in the movie is that the dream comes true, and by saying that I don’t think I’m really giving too much away, as the dream comes true early enough in the proceedings that I don’t really feel I’m giving away the ending, and since the movie up to that point is clearly leading to the moment when the dream comes true, it doesn’t come as a surprise. Other than a possible minor science fiction element involving a recording mechanism hidden in a clock, that is the only fantastic element in this story, which is mainly a wartime espionage potboiler; in fact, the dream sequence seems more of a plot device to cause things to happen at a particular moment than anything else, and any themes of precognition in the movie are minor at best. The movie itself is sporadically entertaining, but not particularly memorable.

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The Chronicles of the Gray House (1925)

THE CHRONICLES OF THE GRAY HOUSE (1925)
(a.k.a. ZUR CHRONIK VON GRIESHUUS)
Article #918 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 9-19-2003
Posting date: 2-16-2004
Directed by Arthur von Gerlach
Featuring Gertrud Arnold, Lil Dagover, Rudolf Forster

Two brothers fight over possession of the estate of their deceased father.

The Gray House actually looks more like a castle than a house, but that’s a minor point. I actually have two copies of this one. The longer one is a little more than an hour and a half, has German title cards in one of those impenetrable German fonts, and has music (various edits of Beethoven’s fifth symphony). The shorter one has no music and runs less than half the length, but has English subtitles, which gave me a chance to figure out certain details of the plot that I might otherwise have missed in the longer version. You can see that the longer one goes into more detail about the relationship between the two brothers. There are also lots of scenes of documents being crumpled and ripped up in the longer version (it happens enough that I saw fit to mention it). It’s basically a somewhat operatic drama; the only fantastic content involves the appearance of a ghost at a crucial moment in the proceedings. If the whole movie feels a bit similar to a Fritz Lang film, this may be attributable to the fact that it was written by Thea von Harbou, who wrote the scripts for many of Lang’s early movies.

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La Jetee (1962)

LA JETEE (1962)
(a.k.a. THE JETTY/THE PIER)
Article #917 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-18-2003
Posting Date: 2-15-2004
Directed by Chris Marker
Featuring Jean Negroni, Helene Chatelain, Davos Hanich

In a post-apocalyptic world, scientists experiment with sending subjects through time in order to save the present.

I’ve always thought the trailers I’ve seen for the movies TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE and RAT PFINK AND BOO BOO were tacky, largely because they consisted in their entirety of stills; yet here I am watching a movie made entirely of stills (save for a few seconds of footage at one point) and I’m entranced. I’ve never seen Terry Gilliam’s TWELVE MONKEYS, which is a remake of this remarkable French short, but it’s easy to see why he was attracted to it in the first place; it’s a great story, haunting and memorable, but being a foreign short, it was also unlikely to have been seen by many people. The use of stills, narration and music to tell the story is pretty daring; it almost feels more like reading a story or a graphic novel rather than watching a film, but the impact of the story is not lessened in any way. This one is well worth hunting out for anyone interested in classic foreign science fiction.

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The Curious Female (1970)

THE CURIOUS FEMALE (1970)
Article #916 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-17-2003
Posting Date: 2-14-2004
Directed by Paul Rapp
Featuring Angelique Pettyjohn, Charlene Jones, Bunny Allister

In the future, a group of rebels fight against the dystopian regime of the master computer by watching dirty movies from 1969.

To get an accurate idea of what this movie is like, I’d suggest you ignore everything but the last four words of the above plot description; the science fiction aspects of this movie only exist to give the movie a chance to end on a lame joke. All we have here is your basic late-sixties softcore porn movie, and it’s of minimal interest to fans of fantastic cinema, unless you just absolutely have to see the movie because of Angelique Pettyjohn. At least ORGY OF THE DEAD is sporadically entertaining…

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The Cabinet of Caligari (1962)

THE CABINET OF CALIGARI (1962)
Article #915 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-16-2003
Posting Date: 2-13-2004
Directed by Roger Kay
Featuring Dan O’Herlihy, Glynis Johns, Constance Ford

When a woman’s car gets a flat tire, she goes to an isolated house to get help, and then finds herself trapped inside with a mysterious doctor.

I’ve heard conflicting reports as to whether this movie was a remake of the classic 1919 Robert Wiene version, and for the most part it is not. It does, however, borrow at least one crucial element from the original, and therein lies the problem. The element that is borrowed is a plot point which is only effective if it comes as a surprise at a crucial moment in the story; however, I figured out that this plot point was coming almost five minutes into the movie, because it seemed to me to be the only logical explanation for the events that were happening. Unfortunately, knowing this plot point ahead of time short-circuits the movie in terms of suspense and horror, and as a result, I found the movie deeply uninvolving, despite the existence of strong Freudian elements and some memorable visual moments. A further problem was the casting of Glynis Johns in the lead role; her voice and facial expresssions were singularly ineffectual in helping her bring this role to life. As a result, the whole movie feels like a game, and one that wasn’t much fun. It actually might have helped, though, if they had retitled the movie and renamed one of the characters so that any connection between this one and the Wiene movie would have vanished; as it is, this movie utterly fails to surprise, and I can only consider it a disappointment.

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Bat Woman (1968)

BAT WOMAN (1968)
(a.k.a. LA MUJER MURCIELAGO)
Article #914 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-15-2003
Posting Date: 2-12-2004
Directed by Rene Cardona
Featuring Maura Monti, Roberto Conedo, Hoctor Godoy

An evil scientist intent on creating a sea monster gets some resistance from a masked hero.

This movie features The Miserable Dr. Eric Williams (reminiscent of THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF, THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK and THE DIABOLICAL DR. Z) who lives on the ship called REPTILICUS (doesn’t that remind you of a weedy Danish monster?) intent on creating a gill man (isn’t that what they called THE CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON?) which he refers to at one point as The Amphibian Man (wasn’t that a Russian science fiction movie?), but whom he renames Pisces. The monster ends up looking like a cross between the marine creatures in WAR-GODS OF THE DEEP and the ones in HORROR OF PARTY BEACH (without the hot dogs) with multifaceted eyes like THE FLY. He’s created the monster by using the pituitary glands of wrestlers (just so you know that the movie is from Mexico). He’s decided he needs to create a mate for his monster (shades of BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN), and he sets his eyes on Bat Woman (think of Batman in a bikini after a sex change), who has an assistant named Mario (who doesn’t pick a single mushroom throughout the movie, so I won’t make a Nintendo joke). It’s all pretty awful, but when you consider the extensive underwater photography, you have to admit that this is pretty ambitious for what is in essence a Mexican wrestling film. You know you have a faded print when you see a credit for Eastmancolor and realize for the first time you’re watching a color movie. It’s even subtitled rather than dubbed, but I’m afraid it really doesn’t add to the dignity of the proceedings when they repeatedly spell yacht Y-A-T-C-H and you get to read such priceless lines as ‘You killed them, you bastard fish!’ Still, this is a good movie for putting on when you want to see how many other movies it can remind you of.

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The Green Pastures (1936)

THE GREEN PASTURES (1936)
Article #913 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-14-2003
Posting Date: 2-11-2004
Directed by William Keighley and Marc Connelly
Featuring Rex Ingram, Oscar Polk, Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson

Stories from the Bible are played out as envisioned in the imaginations of young black children in Sunday school.

This movie has an all-black cast, and unsurprisingly it occasionally relies on cliches and black stereotypes of the time it was made, so it will no doubt seem offensive to many. However, its virtues are quite strong indeed; for one thing, the gospel music is pretty great. For another thing, it’s one of the few biblical epics out there that doesn’t sink under the weight of it’s own pompous self-importance; the presentation is somewhat mannered, but it not only allows itself to relax on occasion, it also isn’t afraid of using humor when the opportunity arises. It also does something quite daring in allowing the character of ‘De Lawd’ (wonderfully played by Rex Ingram, who also plays other parts throughout) to grow and somewhat develop as a character throughout the proceedings; this gives the movie a compelling story arc rather than letting it feel like just a series of different stories. All in all, I have to admit that I was more entertained and moved by this one than I was by any of the other biblical epics I’ve seen. The movie also benefits from fine special effects, and the fun of seeing Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson as Noah.

One potentially sensitive issue here is whether stories based on the Bible belong in the realm of fantastic cinema; certainly, devout Christians would argue that the events portrayed are true, and such a movie should be considered historical rather than fantastic. For my part, I will simply say that any story in which miracles occur are worthy of being considered in a survey of the fantastic, so I’m including it here.

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That’s the Spirit (1945)

THAT’S THE SPIRIT (1945)
Article #912 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-13-2003
Posting Date: 2-10-2004
Directed by Charles Lamont
Featuring Jack Oakie, Peggy Ryan, June Vincent

The daughter of a stodgy banker marries an entertainer who dies on the day of the birth of their child. The entertainer returns to earth as a spirit twenty years later to save the child from the unhappiness of being dominated by her grandfather.

This is a pretty standard example of the typical Hollywood forces-of-happiness (represented here by spontaneity, dancing, jazz, romance and theatrical musical revues) vs. the forces-of-unhappiness (represented here by inflexible conservative stodginess, repression, depressing renditions of ‘Evening Star’ and withering butlers played by Arthur Treacher) with a wandering spirit as one of the plot contrivances. There are a few good funny lines here and there, some fine special effects (particularly a moment where Oakie as the spirit stands in the middle of the street while cars run through him), one great sequence in which the performance of the aforementioned musical piece is turned into a real party via the use of a magic flute played by Oakie (watching wealthy old dowagers and Arthur Treacher grooving to the music is fairly entertaining), and the movie has some entertaining performances. It’s always fun to see Andy Devine, and the movie also includes a relatively youngish Irene Ryan as the maid dominated by Treacher (though it did make me long for a moment when the maid would chase him out of the house with a shotgun), but Buster Keaton is wasted in a role that isn’t near as funny as it’s supposed to be, and the movie suffers somewhat from a lackluster stodginess of its own. Some of the musical numbers are entertaining but overlong, and despite the good elements, ultimately the movie seems a bit mannered and joyless.

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