Elephant Boy (1937)

ELEPHANT BOY (1937)
Article #901 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-2-2003
Posting Date: 1-30-2004
Directed by Zoltan Korda and Robert Flaherty
Featuring Sabu, W. E. Holloway, Walter Hudd

A boy from India has dreams of being a great hunter, and joins his father and his elephant on a safari.

This is the movie that introduced Sabu to the world, and though he has great screen presence and decent acting ability, he still hadn’t quite mastered the English language yet, and his accent was so thick that I had trouble understanding him at times. This made it a little difficult to follow the plot at first, but when you get down to it, the plot is pretty basic; it’s your boy-with-a-dream story crossed with a boy-and-his-dog story, except that in this case the dog is fifteen feet tall, has two great big white tusks and a trunk. The plot is also fairly slow in coming; the movie is nearly half over before things really start happening in this regard. On the other hand, the plot isn’t really important; the spectacle is what matters, and we get an abundance of great elephant footage, at least partially due to the participation of famed documentarian Robert Flaherty. The fantastic aspects of the movie are a little harder to pin down, but they seem to revolve around Sabu’s almost mystical rapport with the elephants. Certainly, a key sequence in the second half of the movie when a large herd of elephants congregates and engages in a dance moves the movie into fantastic territory, even if the possibility exists that the event is just a dream. Nonetheless, this sequence is the best part of the movie, and makes the somewhat slow beginning more palatable.

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Damn Yankees! (1958)

DAMN YANKEES! (1958)
Article #900 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-1-2003
Posting Date: 1-29-2004
Directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen
Featuring Tab Hunter, Ray Walston, Gwen Verdon

A fan of the Washington Senators sells his soul to the devil to become a star hitter for the team and win the pennant for them.

I’m not really keen on baseball, nor am I a particular fan of musicals, so I have to admit I didn’t really look forward to this one; certainly, the idea of selling my soul to the devil in order to make my favorite team win holds no resonance for me whatever. As a musical, it’s decent enough; the songs are good, and for the most part they actually do flesh out the narrative and the characters, and the primary exception is so well choreographed and performed that it works just as well. But the story ends up leaving me cold, and I think the reason for this is that Tab Hunter’s performance doesn’t make me really feel anything at all for his character. The other actors fare much better, particularly Verdon and Walston, though if the devil is this ineffectual our immortal souls are in no danger whatsoever. And the ending, where the story bends over backwards to give everyone but the devil a happy ending, feels rushed and is more than a little lame.

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Comin’ Round the Mountain (1951)

COMIN’ ROUND THE MOUNTAIN (1951)
Article #899 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-31-2003
Posting Date: 1-28-2004
Directed by Charles Lamont
Featuring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Dorothy Shay

An escape artist discovers he is the grandson of a hillbilly named Squeezebox McCoy, and may be the heir to a fortune.

There are a few laughs to be had in this Abbott and Costello outing, in particular during a discussion between Bud and Lou about a forty-year-old man in love with a ten-year-old girl. However, most of the movie is fairly lame hillbilly slapstick combined with Dorothy Shay’s novelty musical numbers. The part of the story that moves this one into the realms of the fantastic is when the boys encounter a witch (Margaret Hamilton—how’s that for typecasting?) to get a love potion; this is also one of the better scenes, as the witch makes a voodoo doll of Lou and Lou returns the favor. It’s also fun to see the boys team up with Glenn Strange again; here playing Devil Dan Winfield, who ends up drinking the potion at one point (and you don’t want to know with whom he falls in love). It’s not the boys’ best by a long shot, but it has its moments.

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A Christmas Carol (1938)

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938)
Article #898 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-30-2003
Posting Date: 1-27-2004
Directed by Edwin L. Marin
Featuring Reginald Owen, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart

Three things no one needs: 1) Last week’s TV schedule, 2) Paper toothpicks, and 3) One-sentence plot descriptions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

I don’t know how many versions of this Dickens Christmas perennial are out there, but I suspect that if I covered them all in a row, it might well take two to three weeks to finish them all. As far as the ones with which I’m familiar, this one isn’t quite up to the later Alastair Sims version, but is worlds better than the Seymour Hicks version from a few years earlier. The basic rules for pulling off a version of this story are simple; 1) get the spirit right, 2) know what the key scenes are in the story, and 3) have a decent Scrooge. This one does a solid job with the story, and as such is very effective. In some ways, it’s hard to go wrong with this story; the basic theme that choosing to engage in the joy of the Christmas season actively contributes to the joy of oneself and others is very resonant, and there is always something healing about watching a good version of the story. This version is certainly no exception.

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Carefree (1938)

CAREFREE (1938)
Article #897 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-29-2003
Posting Date: 1-26-2004
Directed by Mark Sandrich
Featuring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ralph Bellamy

A psychiatrist agrees to analyze his friend’s girlfriend, and ends up falling in love with her.

This is one of the pleasant surprises about taking a fairly wide view in this survey of fantastic cinema; I really didn’t expect to be covering any other Fred Astaire movies than ON THE BEACH or GHOST STORY. But here I am, touching upon one of those wonderful RKO musicals he made with Ginger Rogers during the thirties, and it gets in the gate by featuring a certain amount of hypnotism, a scene that takes place in a dream, and a sequence where Fred Astaire’s mirror reflection talks back to him. The plot is pretty nonsensical, but that’s not why you watch a movie like this; you watch it to see Fred Astaire dance, with or without Ginger Rogers, and this is an experience I find heavenly. In fact, if this movie is a disappointment at all, it’s because there’s not enough dancing and a little too much comedy, though in all honesty the comedy is pretty good. Ralph Bellamy once again finds himself in the role of a boyfriend whose girl is destined to fall in love with the leading man, as he was in HIS GIRL FRIDAY.

Quite frankly, the magic of watching Fred Astaire dance makes me want to take up the art itself. For that matter, I’d take up golf if I could play it while dancing like Fred Astaire (as he does here).

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The Brass Bottle (1964)

THE BRASS BOTTLE (1964)
Article #896 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-28-2003
Posting Date: 1-25-2004
Directed by Harry Keller
Featuring Tony Randall, Burl Ives, Barbara Eden

An architect discovers a genie in a brass bottle, who then proceeds to turn his life upside down.

My perception of Burl Ives as a performer over the years has been one of pleasant family-friendly blandness, and my most striking memories of his work bear out this perception (the snowman’s voice in the TV special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” where his presence added a proper touch to the proceedings, and as the lovable grandfather in the godawful science fiction opus of 1981 EARTHBOUND, which embodies all too well the nightmarish depths that pleasant family-friendly blandness can lead to). I was very startled to learn that one of his most famous roles was playing Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, a role that is the very antithesis of pleasant family-friendly blandness, so I must come to the conclusion that his later persona was one of choice rather than one of being incapable of anything else.

Now, pleasant family-friendly blandness has its uses, but some movies need a little more than that, and this is one of them. I am a little in awe of how inoffensive this movie seems, considering the plot touches upon such subjects as women’s underwear, belly-dancing, and the consumption of sheeps’ eyeballs. At any rate, my copy of the movie opened with the trailer for the film, and the trailer pretty much told me everything I needed to know about it. The only thing that keeps this from being a true shopping-cart movie is the absence of the Disney name or any of the regular Disney performers (Fred MacMurray, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Joe Flynn, etc). The most interesting aspect about it is a piece of trivia; Barbara Eden would go on to fame playing a genie herself in “I Dream of Jeannie.”

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The Big Noise (1944)

THE BIG NOISE (1944)
Article #895 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-27-2003
Posting Date: 1-24-2004
Directed by Mal St. Clair
Featuring Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Doris Merrick

The boys are hired by an inventor to protect a new bomb.

Even at their worst, Laurel and Hardy were such natural comedians and such likeable characters that they still manage to raise a smile or two, which is more than some comedians do at their best. It’s a good thing, too; this movie may be the weakest thing they’ve ever done. The boys look tired this time out, and some of the gags are forced and obvious (there is a segment involving the boys undressing in a bed aboard a railroad car that goes on forever), and there are occasional stretches where they vanish from the story altogether. Nonetheless, there is still the occasional bright gag that works, the odd comic line that gets a laugh, and the simple joy of watching these two characters. The best gag involves some super earplugs that cut off all sound. The science fiction elements include the bomb itself, as well as several rather eccentric inventions and a remote-control plane. This is certainly not the best place to start with Laurel and Hardy, but it isn’t a total waste of time, either.

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Stairway to Heaven (1946)

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (1946)
(a.k.a. A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH)
Article #894 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-26-2003
Posting Date: 1-23-2004
Directed by Michael Powell
Featuring David Niven, Kim Hunter, Roger Livesey

When an RAF pilot bails out of his airplane without a parachute, the angel assigned to deliver his soul to heaven misses him in the fog, and he survives the fall to live another twenty hours. In that time, he falls in love, and when the angel comes to claim him, he demands a hearing of his case.

I’m not really keen on movies about angels; nor am I particularly fond of love stories. However, I am a fan of inspired and brilliant film-making, because a visionary director can do wonders with any subject he chooses. Michael Powell was visionary when he took on the subject of homicidal psychosis in PEEPING TOM; here he is simply breathtaking. Half the movie is in black and white, and the other half of the movie is in color, and it’s startling to see one bleed into the other as it does in several scenes here. Some of the sequences are as surreal as anything from Bunuel, and the movie seems to span decades of movie making; though it was made in 1946, it sometimes feels like an art film from the sixties or the seventies, and at other times it almost feels like a silent movie from the twenties. It’s a masterpiece, and that is a word I use sparingly; in fact, I find it almost impossible to talk about this one without falling over the endless stream of superlatives that would come out of my mouth. I suspect that it will be a long, long time before I see anything that impresses me as much as this one did.

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Sea Raiders (1941)

SEA RAIDERS (1941)
(Serial)
Article #893 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-25-2003
Posting Date: 1-22-2004
Directed by Ford Beebe, John Rawlins
Featuring Billy Halop, Huntz Hall, Bernard Punsley

A gang of wharf rats find themselves wanted by the police and chased by a gang of saboteurs known as the Sea Raiders.

The tape package says they’re the East Side Kids; the credits in the serial call them the “Dead End” Kids and the Little Tough Guys. I get around this confusing dilemma by thinking of them in all their various combinations as the Bowery Boys. Whichever name is the correct one, what it comes down to is that though it features Billy Halop and Huntz Hall, there is no Leo Gorcey (for some reason, he didn’t appear in any of the serials). This was before the group settled into comedy, so the boys play it more or less straight. Actually, having them star in a serial wasn’t a bad idea as far as I’m concerned; they were somewhat more interesting than the usual bland hero that serves as the focus for most serials. Otherwise, it’s business as usual, with one really good and unusual cliffhanger involving whaling, a smidgen of science fiction involving a torpedo boat and new types of torpedos, and lots of stock music. As for the latter, I wish they hadn’t chosen a piece as familiar as ‘The Barber of Seville’ for the soundtrack; I can’t hear it without thinking of Bugs Bunny giving Elmer Fudd a haircut. Otherwise, a standard selection of serial thrills.

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Daughter of the Dragon (1931)

DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON (1931)
Article #892 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-24-2003
Posting Date: 1-21-2004
Directed by Lloyd Corrigan
Featuring Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Sessue Hayakawa

An exotic dancer discovers she is the daughter of Fu Manchu, and swears to carry on the family vendetta.

A quick perusal of the title may well lead you to suspect that this will be a yellow peril story, but I was a little surprised that it turned out to be a Fu Manchu movie. It was based on a Sax Rohmer story called “Daughter of Fu Manchu”, and I thought it odd that they would change the title to remove the Fu Manchu name from it. However, there may be reasons for this; there is no Nayland Smith in the story, and most of the detective work is done by an Oriental detective named Ah Kee (Sessue Hayakawa). Also, there isn’t really a whole lot of Fu Manchu (played by Warner Oland), who vanishes from the story at the half-way point. Maybe it was felt that keeping the name Fu Manchu in the title would have left some people feeling cheated. It’s a fairly entertaining movie in its way, though it isn’t anywhere near as memorable as THE MASK OF FU MANCHU with Karloff, but there are some exciting sequences in this one, and some very striking visual moments. My main wish is that my copy of the movie was in better shape.

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