SOMEONE AT THE DOOR (1950)
Article 5324 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-18-2016
Directed by Francis Searle
Featuring Michael Medwin, Garry Marsh, Yvonne Owen
Country: UK
What it is: Comedy in the “old dark house” mode

A down-on-his luck journalist who lives with his sister in a supposedly haunted house hits upon a scheme to make it big; he plans to fake the murder of his sister and write about the experience. However, the scheme goes awry when a real body turns up…

This pre-horror Hammer comedy has a rating of 4.8 on IMDB, which means it doesn’t have much of a reputation. Well, truth be told, it isn’t much of a movie, but if you take it for what it is (a late-period old dark house variant based on a stage play), it has its uses. There are a few mildly amusing jokes and a couple of decent plot twists, which is more than some examples of this genre have. It also has some dead spots and annoying moments; the opening bit where the brother and sister look for the sources of the scary laughs in the haunted house is tired and obvious. To enjoy it, it helps if you like the “old dark house”‘ subgenre, keep your expectations in check, and ignore the fact that it’s from Hammer.

A SHORT HISTORY (1956)
aka Scura istorie
Article 5323 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-17-2016
Directed by Ion Popescu-Gopo
No cast
Country: Romania
What it is: Animated short

The history of the world is told in three minutes.

It begins with the big bang, or, in this case, the big sneeze. Then we deal with dinosaurs, evolution, and the rise of man. Then… it’s over. It’s tempting to praise the movie for its ambition, but it’s the wit that sells this one; after all, the real trick here is to find the time in this story for the humor. My favorite moment here is how man evolves; I won’t give it away except that it involves an earthquake caused by a dinosaur chasing a bug.

SERVANTS SUPERCEDED (1911)
Article 5322 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-15-2016
Directed by Percy Stow
Cast unknown
Country: UK
What it is: Trick short

When a manservant accidentally destroys a dinner, his master fires him and decides to replace him with two sleight-of-hand artists.

This short basically takes the trick short gimmicks of chairs moving of their own volition, etc. and gives it a slightly new approach; instead of the diner being victimized by willful furniture, here he is helped by magicians who use their mystical powers to control objects for his benefit. At heart, there really is no plot here; it’s just an illustration of the concept, and several of the magicians’ tricks do go into the realm of the fantastic. Dramatically, it’s a little disappointing; you keep waiting for something to go wrong and the tycoon to get his comeuppance, but such is not the case. At any rate, I can’t help but notice that the title is deceptive; if he has two magicians helping him out to replace one manservant, you can’t really say that the servants have been “superceded”; he still needs them, only now they do magic. There is a certain charm to this short.

SANT TUKARAM (1936)
Article 5321 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-12-2016
Directed by Vishnupant Govind Damle and Sheikh Fattelal
Featuring Vishnupant Pagnis, Gauri, B. Nandrekar
Country: India
What it is: Biography

This tells the story of the beloved poet saint Tukaram and the efforts of a corrupt Brahmin priest to discredit him.

Those who follow my “ones that got away” list are most likely aware how rare it is to have such an early film from India as my viewing choice for the day; the vast amount of early Indian cinema is lost, and I suspect the survival of this one is probably due to the fact that it received some international acclaim and attention in its day. Tukaram is a devotee of the god Pandurang, and those who are wondering about the fantastic content of a biography should be aware that this god appears as a character in the film and engages in some miracles during the proceedings. As always with Indian films, there’s plenty of music, and in this case, most of them are the devotional songs of Tukaram. The movie concentrates on his conflicts with the Brahmin Salomalo, a corrupt hypocrite who also engages in acts of plagiarism, but there’s a secondary conflict between Tukaram and his own wife, a woman who mostly puts faith in her own god as well as in her own earthly needs; this last conflict has a bittersweet ending. Vishnupant Pagnis plays Tukaram, and he does a wonderful job; when he is ordered to destroy the songs he has written by drowning them in the river, the scene is heartbreaking. I really liked this one, and I did find it quite interesting that the primary aspect of the spirituality here (that all is done in the name of the god in question) does bear some resemblance to certain aspects of the Christian faith as well.

SANDY CLAWS (1954)
Article 5320 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-11-2016
Directed by Friz Freleng
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet
Country: USA
What it is: Tweety cartoon

Tweety gets stranded on a rock outcropping on the beach when the tide comes in. Sylvester pretends to be a life guard to cover up his real reason for trying to save the bird.

As far as fantastic content goes, we have the anthropomorphic animals on display, but nothing beyond that. That being said, this is a pretty standard Tweety cartoon that benefits from a cute gimmick; having Sylvester mistaken for a hero rather than a predator adds a little bit more novelty to the plot line. The best gags take place in the fishing scene near the beginning and at a point where Granny tries to bring Sylvester out of a faint by throwing a bucket of water on him; the punch line on the latter is probably the most memorable thing about the short. This one was nominated for an Oscar, though I’d hardly call it one of Warner’s best efforts.

STARBIRDS (1982)
Article 5319 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-10-2016
Directed by Michael Part
Voice cast unknown
Country: Japan / USA
What it is: Japanese TV anime series converted into feature

Winged aliens known as Valerians invade the Earth in order that their own population can move there. Can the earthlings use the super-robot Dynamo to defeat them?

This feature was edited from the anime TV series “Tosho Daimos”; it looks like roughly four episodes were plundered for it. IMDB lists the running time as eighty minutes. The copy I found on YouTube runs only 55 minutes. Usually, I would interpret this as meaning that a good 25 minutes were missing from the print I saw; however, other than a bit from the beginning and a bit from the end, I think I saw the whole thing. How is that possible? Well, to me it appears that YouTube video made a mess of its source, and it appears that the footage is being shown at an heightened pace; for those who remember vinyl, it’s like playing a 33 1/3 record at 45. Furthermore, it looks like the visual presentation is not only slightly cropped at the top and bottom, but it appears to be showing a movie at 4:3 ratio in Cinerama format. The end result? It sounds like it was dubbed by the Chipmunks and everyone is short and extra-wide. However, you can’t say the pace is slow.

No, this is far from the best way to experience a movie, but this one is rare enough that I made the best of it I could. It’s a bit confusing, but given what it is, it could have been far worse. However, the story never really impresses me; it seems like typical anime space opera, and I’m not really a huge fan of that sort of thing unless it finds something really interesting to do with the form. A better presentation might give it more visual appeal, but c’est la vie. However, I did discover one thing – annoying comic-relief robots just get worse when you speed them up. Fortunately, the one here is used sparingly.

SHINEL (1926)
aka The Overcoat
Article 5317 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-7-2016
Directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg
Featuring Antonina Eremeeva, Emil Gal, Sergey Gerasimov
Country: Soviet Union
What it is: Stylized drama

Two stories are told. In one, a clerk becomes obsessed with a woman only to discover she’s a prostitute. In the second, another clerk (or possibly the same one) dreams of getting a fine overcoat, and his wish comes true… but for how long?

I found a copy of this one on YouTube, and even though it did not feature English subtitles, it’s based on a couple of stories by Nikolai Gogol, and I was able to read summaries of the stories to help me in negotiating the movie. I don’t know if the movie I saw is complete; IMDB lists a running time of 84 minutes, but mine only ran 63 minutes. The copy I found also features a bizarre modern soundtrack that is in some ways rather appropriate for a movie this stylized, but I didn’t find it well-incorporated with the action.

The highly stylized acting is the primary attraction here; at times it reminded me of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, though it doesn’t get quite that bizarre. For those familiar with the stories from which this was adapted (“Nevsky Prospekt” and “The Overcoat”), the latter in its original story form is the one with the fantastic content; a ghost plays into the story near the end. Alas, this adaptation ends at a point before the ghost appears, but there are a couple of dream/fantasy sequences (including a stop-motion overcoat moving of its own volition) that make up for it a bit. It’s an interesting movie, though I don’t think it’s quite as effective as it could have been. Still, there are memorable moments; in particular, I like the way the movie transitions between the two stories, which raises the question as to whether the events happen to two different clerks or to the same one at different times in his life.