THE TALL TARGET (1951)

With no theme music, the credits roll over a film noir-type shot of a darkened train station in New York in 1861, before the outbreak of the Civil War. We learn the trains are running slow due to unrest over the upcoming inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. Police detective John Kennedy (Dick Powell) has discovered a plot, planned by a secret society, to assassinate Lincoln in Baltimore (in Maryland, a slave state) on his way to Washington, but his bosses don't believe him, so he resigns from the force and takes it upon himself to protect Lincoln. Kennedy is supposed to get a ticket on Lincoln's train from an Inspector Riley, but he runs across Riley's dead body on the train, and a person claiming to be Kennedy has Kennedy's ticket and seat. After a bit of a ruckus, Army Colonel Jeffers (Adolphe Menjou) vouches for Kennedy. As the train chugs through the night, Kennedy has run-ins with a number of people, any of whom might be involved in the planned assassination: a brother and sister with Confederate sympathies, their Black maid, an abolitionist writer, and a mysterious woman who will be meeting her husband at a later stop. Even Jeffers, Kennedy's protector, may not be who he seems to be. As I have a soft spot for movies set on trains, I enjoyed this film which is set entirely on a train or in train stations. Though many critics call this film noir, it strikes me as just a historical crime drama, albeit set at night with a strong atmosphere (sometimes claustrophobic) of tension, even though we know that the assassination plot won't succeed. Powell is OK, though he and Menjou (who plays a character who may have a hidden agenda) have some nice scenes together. Standouts in the cast include Marshall Thompson as the slave owner, Ruby Dee as the slave, and Will Geer as the train conductor. A climactic fight scene between Powell and a bad guy is memorable. Jeff Richards, a favorite 50s hunk of mine (ISLAND OF LOST WOMEN) has a small role as a police officer. Pictured are Powell and Thompson. [TCM]

THE DYBBUK (1937)

In a Polish shtetl, old friends Sender and Nisn realize that they only see each other during the holy days when they gather with others for prayers at Rebbe Ezeriel's. So with both their wives pregnant, they make a vow that, if they have a boy and a girl between them, they will make sure the children marry when they come of age. A mysterious bearded figure known just as the Messenger, who has a habit of appearing out of nowhere and then vanishing, tells them it's a bad idea to make such a vow with the unborn, but they ignore him. Misfortune hits both families: Sander's wife delivers Leah, a healthy girl, but dies in the process; Nisn perishes in a river during a storm as he tries to make his way home for the birth of his son Khanan. Years later, Sander has forgotten the vow and is in the process of looking for a suitable husband for Leah when, by chance, Khanan shows up in town, an itinerant yeshiva scholar who has decided to focus on the mysticism of Kabbalah. Sander takes Khanan in, not knowing he is Nisn's son. The boy falls in love with Leah, and she with him, but Sander wants a man with more stable means and arranges for his daughter to marry someone else. In frustration, Khanan turns to Satanic rituals for help; they appear to delay the marriage, but eventually, Sander and the groom's family come to terms, and Khanan takes one last stab at conjuring Satan, this time in the synagogue, but his magic backfires and Khanan is struck dead. Leah engages in a ritual to invite her mother's spirit to come to her wedding; while doing so, she also invites the spirit of Kahnan who does, in fact, return as a dybbuk, a spirit of the dead which possesses living people. At her wedding, Khanan enters Leah's body. Sender appeals to Rebbe Ezeriel to exorcise the dybbuk, but the old man is uncertain if he has the energy to triumph against a Satanic force.

This Yiddish film, based on a play which was itself based on Jewish folklore, is not so much a horror movie as a tale of fantasy and the supernatural, especially as the first half of the film is more a thwarted romance melodrama. But the second half, when the occult themes take over, has a number of scenes that would not be out of place in the classic Universal horror movies of the 1930s: the Satanic ritual in the synagogue outdoes the scene of Satan worship in the classic THE BLACK CAT; at the (aborted) wedding, a quote is read out saying that "man's life is like a dance of death," followed by a ritual in which a skull-faced figure dances with Leah (pictured above); there is a gloomy "holy grave" in the middle of the street with the bodies of a martyred bride and groom, on which Leah throws herself just before the dybbuk takes possession of her. The exorcism and excommunication ritual at the end goes on a bit too long; actually, at two hours, the whole movie could use some trimming—the Blu-ray I watched includes a 100-minute version which was released in some countries which I may watch someday. The film is a relatively low-budget affair, but it looks good with sparse, almost expressionistic sets giving an eerie atmosphere to many scenes. The downbeat ending gives the story a Romeo & Juliet feel. Some of the performances feel stagy and overblown (Avrom Morewski as the rabbi), some feel a little underdeveloped (Lili Liliana as Leah), some are just right (Leon Liebgold as Khanan). The print on the Blu-Ray disc, part of a set of 10 Yiddish films primarily from the late 30s called The Jewish Soul, is generally very nicely restored. An enjoyable find, and quite appropriate for late October viewing. [Blu-ray]

THE RAVEN (1935)

Jean, the daughter of Judge Thatcher, sustains serious injuries in a car accident and her fiancé, Dr. Jerry Halden, says that only famed surgeon Richard Vollin (Bela Lugosi) can save her. They contact him, but he is retired and in the middle of negotiating the sale of a large set of Poe paraphernalia. We discover that Vollin also owns replicas of many torture devices out of Poe's stories, including a full-sized "Pit and the Pendulum" device. But a personal visit from the judge changes his mind—partly because the judge plays to Vollin's own belief in his god-like abilities. The operation is a success and soon after, Jean and Vollin are quite buddy-buddy, despite their difference in age and the presence of her fiancé, who is now Vollin's personal assistant. Jean, a noted dancer, gives a performance which is capped by her own interpretation of Poe's "The Raven,' and Vollin is ecstatic. It does seem as if Jean is on the verge of infatuation with Vollin. The judge talks to Vollin to dissuade him from egging her on, but Vollin rebuffs him. That night, escaped killer Edmond Bateman (Boris Kartloff) arrives at Vollin's house and asks him to use his surgical powers to give him a new face, both because he thinks he is ugly and to be able to escape the police. Vollin agrees to do it, not by plastic surgery but by severing certain facial nerves that will alter his looks. Vollin performs the procedure but deliberately disfigures half of his face (scaly skin and a bulging frozen eye), telling Bateman that he will reverse the operation only when Bateman helps him get revenge against those who have wronged him. When Vollin invites the judge, Jean and Jerry to a house party, he sets in motion a plan to torture and kill them using the pendulum on the judge and a room whose walls will slowly crush Jean and Jerry. 

This film, the second of eight movies that co-starred Lugosi and Karloff, was the one that brought an end to the first flow of Hollywood horror films—a few snuck out in 1936, most notably Dracula's Daughter and The Devil Doll, then only Poverty Row efforts until 1939. Though it was cleared by the Production Code, several state censor boards demanded cuts, and the British censors banned horror films altogether for a time. Seen now, it seems almost quaint, especially compared to the AIP Poe movies of the 60s, and no one actually dies from any of the tortures. It's practically an axiom now that Bela Lugosi is good in everything he does, from classy big-studio movies to the cheapie B-films that became his bread and butter, but I was still surprised how good he is here. Despite Karloff's star billing and grotesque make-up (a good job that deserves the occasional close-up it gets), it's Lugosi's film all the way, both in terms of screen time and impact. I think it's more due to Lugosi's full-blooded enthusiasm for torture than for anything we see enacted on screen that the movie ran into censor troubles. The supporting cast is particularly bland. Irene Ware (Jean) made almost 30 movies in the 1930s before retiring and if she's remembered for anything, it's for this. Her uninspired performance is not helped by the silly interpretive dance she gives. Lester Matthews virtually vanishes into the scenery as the ineffectual Jerry. Samuel S. Hinds is serviceable as the judge, and Inez Courtney and Ian Wolfe give the film a little juice now and then as Mary and Pinky, high-society friends of the Thatchers. Karloff does what he can with a fairly one-dimensional role. Oddly, as the pre-op Bateman, he doesn't really look ugly at all, but almost scruffily handsome, certainly more so than in most of his movies. The scene in which Karloff sees the results of the operation in a roomful of mirrors is a high point. Poe has never really been given his due in movies, considering how many films have been based on (more like, somewhat inspired by) his stories, and this is no exception, but as part of Universal's classic horror film cycle, it's worth seeing. [DVD]

OUANGA (1936)

Adam, an American businessman who owns a sugar plantation in Haiti, is returning there from New York City via ocean liner with his fiancée Eve. One night on deck, they are confronted by Clelie, owner of a neighboring plantation on the island, who followed Adam to New York and back. The problems are twofold. First, Clelie was apparently a casual lover of Adam's and is upset to be thrown over for Eve. Second, Adam is white and Clelie is of mixed race. Clelie tries to bribe Eve's Black maid to help her sneak a voodoo-cursed charm (ouanga) onto Eve's person; she offers the maid a love ouanga to make Adam's Black valet fall in love with her, but the valet claims he has "no truck with women." Back in Haiti, tensions increase as Adam's Black overseer LeStrange tries to stake a claim on Clelie, kissing her and telling her to forget Adam, but she calls him "Black scum" and tries to deny the Black half of her heritage. When the ouanga falls out of Eve's purse and she is told what it is, she faints. Soon, a new plotline develops as we discover that Clelie is a voodoo priestess, and presides over rituals in which recently dead people have their clothes taken away, and then are reanimated to become zombie slaves of whoever has the clothes. Clelie now plans to raise two zombies to snatch Eve away from safety to become the sacrifice in a voodoo ritual. Adam may not be able to thwart Clelie, but the jealous LeStrange has his own plans.

To get the movie's alternate title, THE LOVE WANGA, out of the way, "wanga" is a variant spelling of "ouanga" (the voodoo charm). The Love Wanga was a reissue title, and the title given to the DVD release of this movie, but it seems to invite chuckles and this is not a comedy so I prefer to use the original title. This is a low-budget indie production with all the hallmarks of a Poverty Row movie: weak acting, weak screenplay with plot holes, too many cases of "one take and done." The background music is especially distracting, often being far too jaunty for the proceedings, particularly in a scene where LeStrange threatens to kill Clelie. Nevertheless, there are things here to recommend an October viewing for classic movie fans. It was shot on location in Jamaica (after Haiti proved unfriendly), though honestly, it could have been shot in southern California for all it matters to the look of the film. The scenes of voodoo ritual and the very brief shot of the two zombies rising from the grave are effective. Light-skinned Fredi Washington, the white-passing daughter of Louise Beavers in the original Imitation of Life, is fine as Clelie, even if the racial politics of the movie are a little bizarre. LeStrange, the overseer, is played by the white actor Sheldon Leonard (pictured above), and though he doesn't wear blackface, he also doesn't look the part (his only makeup seems to be dark circles around his eyes), especially weird for a character who insults Clelie for not accepting her racial background. Philip Brandon (Adam) and Marie Paxton (Eve) are adequate; Brandon went on to a career as an assistant director. The valet and the maid are around mostly for comic relief, mainly for a scene in which they think they've tackled a zombie. Rough around the edges, for sure, but interesting for fans of the genre and era, or for those interested in the racial politics of the age. [DVD]

PHANTOM OF THE MONASTERY (1934)

Eduardo, his wife Cristina, and their friend Alfonso are hiking through some woods when Eduardo takes a wrong turn and almost falls into a ravine. Alfonso saves him, though we eventually learn that Cristina and Alfonso are having an affair and she almost wishes Eduardo hadn't been saved. But now night is falling and the three are lost until a mysterious robed figure appears, walking with a dog named Shadow, and leads them to what looks like an abandoned monastery, though it's actually still inhabited by brothers of the Order of Silence. The Prior, somewhat reluctantly, takes them in, allows them to partake of the monks' sparse meal, and gives them each their own cell for the night. Through the night, many odd things happen: they see the shadow of a monk flagellating himself, the shadow of a bat on a wall but no actual bat, and a basement full of empty, standing coffins. They see the dog Shadow again, though the prior insists that the dog has never set foot (or paw) outside the building. There is also a decrepit cell, its door blocked by a giant wooden crucifix, with a Bible quote above it: "Cursed be he who turns to the flesh and forgets God."  The trio eventually hears the story of Rodrigo, the monk who used to occupy that cell. He entered into a pact with Satan in order to engage in an affair with his best friend's wife, then became a monk to redeem himself—but he was soon found dead in his cell, with the strangulation mark of Satan's hand on his neck. The monks buried him, but periodically his rotting corpse reappears in that cell accompanied by terrible moaning. Alfonso starts to feel guilty, though Cristina mocks him, carving the word "coward" in the wooden dining table. But during the night, an odd moaning starts coming from the blocked-off cell….

This little-known horror film from director Fernando de Fuentes, who became a well known figure in Mexican cinema, was a nifty discovery for me. It was recently restored (beautifully) by the Film Foundation with newly translated subtitles. For the most part, this supernatural morality tale works best as an exercise in mood, reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode. Some real nighttime exterior shooting (as opposed to traditional day-for-night shooting) helps build the creepy mood. The decaying monastery and the cadaverous, mostly bearded and silent monks are nice touches. As the monks serve dinner beneath a reproduction of The Last Supper, they intone the phrase, "Bread of pain, water of anguish." The spooky visual style is nicely sustained, though there is some wobbly camerawork and lighting. In many ways, the look and feel of the movie put me in mind of the American B-classic WHITE ZOMBIE. The musical score is sparse and, at least once, inappropriately jaunty music breaks the mood of a scene. In the end, it feels like an ancient folktale, which it might well be, told to teach our adulterers a lesson; whether that lesson takes is a point left up in the air. Enrique del Campo (Alfonso) and Marta Roel (Cristina) are quite good, with Carlos Villatoro (Eduardo) a little less effective, perhaps because his character is less defined. I saw this on the Criterion Channel, though I assume with a Flicker Alley logo at the beginning that it will be available on DVD eventually. A nice find, recommended for fans of classic-era horror. [Criterion Channel]

THE BRIDE AND THE BEAST (1958)

Big game hunter Dan (Lance Fuller) brings his new bride Laura (Charlotte Austin) to his mansion before they head off to a honeymoon safari in Africa. He keeps a gorilla named Spanky in the basement that he is planning to donate to a zoo, but Spanky and Laura seem oddly attracted to each other—Spanky touches Laura through the cage bars and she doesn't pull away—and that night (presumably after Dan and Laura have taken care of their conjugal duties and gone to sleep in separate beds), Spanky breaks into their bedroom and fondles Laura, eventually ripping off her Angora fur negligee. Laura puts up little resistance, but Dan shoots the gorilla dead. Laura says she felt as if somehow, she knew Spanky, and when a psychiatrist puts her in a trance, she has visions of a past life as an African gorilla. Oddly, no one seems perturbed by this news, and Dan and Laura head off to Africa, where the movie goes in a whole new Tarzan-ish direction, as Dan and his faithful assistant Taro start bagging animals to export to zoos, and are eventually called on to go after two Indian tigers who have escaped from a cargo ship. Meanwhile, with gorillas all around, Laura starts to feel the pull of her former life and becomes the willing captive of a couple of gorillas. Dan tries to free her, but ultimately she chooses to stay in the gorilla cave while he heads back to civilization.

The fairly cheap sets and use of stock footage obscure to some degree just how kinky this story (written by known Angora fetishist Ed Wood) is. After all, bestiality is at its core: when Spanky escapes his cage, he's clearly horny for Laura, and as for her, one gets the feeling that Laura might not have stopped Spanky if Dan hadn't woken up. The "happy" ending implies that she will be a sex slave to the gorillas; she has reverted to her gorilla state psychologically but physically she's still a human woman. The narrative is a bit of a mess. Just as the regression plot is getting interesting, the film shifts from supernatural fantasy to jungle adventure so the filmmakers can stuff a lot of stock footage in (mostly from an obscure 1940s Sabu film) that has nothing to do with gorillas. Lance Fuller is a little more handsome and polished than the typical 50's B-sci-fi and horror star; Charlotte Austin spends most of the important scenes in a daze, maybe because the director didn’t know what he wanted out of her character. If she looked too scared, we might not buy the regression plotline; if she looked too turned on, the kink element might have shot up a few notches (and that might not have been a bad thing, but it would have been a whole different movie). So she settles for drab acquiescence. Occasionally interesting if never compelling. [Streaming]

THE SHIP OF MONSTERS (1960)

At the top of my handwritten notes taken while watching this movie is, in big letters, "Crazy-Assed!" This Mexican-made science-fiction-western-musical begins by telling us that man has long dreamed of exploring space, sending our seed (as it were) elsewhere to start afresh. But on Venus, an atomic scourge has killed off all the men, leaving the females to find some seed elsewhere. How about planet Earth? Indeed, a ship with Gamma and Beta, two Venusian women in highly abbreviated costumes (they wouldn't be out of place in CAT WOMEN ON THE MOON) with a clunky robot and some male monster prisoners from other planets, makes an emergency landing in a Mexican desert. The women run into a singing, prancing, tall-tale-telling cowboy named Lauriano who is interested in the two women and they in him. The other male specimens are stashed away frozen in a cave for the duration (complaining ineffectually that they should be let go because they are "free men of the galaxy") while Gamma and Beta try to repair the ship and vie for the cowboy's attentions. Lauriano falls for Gamma, and Beta reveals that she is really a vampire and intends to enslave all humankind. When he hears this, one of the monsters says, "I like you more and more!" Lauriano sings lots of songs, one of the monsters eats a cow but leaves its intact skeleton behind, and a robot flirts with a jukebox.

Yes, this is crazy-assed and it's also a lot of fun. I don't know how I had never heard of this, but it does seem to have an old-fashioned underground cult following. Comedian and singer Eulalio González (aka Lalo Gonzalez Piporro) who plays Lauriano starred in dozens of films in the 50s and 60s but never broke through in the States, perhaps because few of his movies were ever released here. Given the laid-back feeling of the entire enterprise—you can tell no one is taking things very seriously—he makes an appealing lead. Lorena Velázquez (Beta), Miss Mexico of 1960, and Ana Bertha Lepe (Gamma) both had long careers in Mexican sci-fi films. But this kind of movie is acting-proof; we don’t watch for inspired acting, we watch for the monsters, the cheap sets and costumes, and occasionally outrageous situations, and we get all those here. One of the monsters threateningly boasts, "I will devour your entrails by the light of Utare and its seven moons!" One of the cowboy's songs says love is always best between two because with more, it's a fling--and love with three, why that's French! He uses another love song, "You, I, The Moon, The Sun," to seduce and disarm Beta. The Venusian women use an iPad-type device to control the robot. The climax is a good old-fashioned outdoor fist fight with the monsters. A decent print is available on YouTube. C'mon, you know you want to see it! [YouTube]

HORROR ISLAND (1941)

A mysterious caped figure is skulking along the waterfront one night; at the same time, a one-legged seaman named Tobias is walking the same ground looking for Bill Martin, a Princeton grad who is down on his luck after failing in business. Bill's only asset now is Morgan's Island, a former pirate hideout he owns. Tobias has an old map showing where treasure is hidden on the island, but before he finds Bill, he is attacked by the caped stranger (who winds up being called the Phantom) who yanks off Tobias's wooden leg and steals the map out of it. Bill and his faithful sidekick Stuff rescue Tobias who tells his story to Bill and reveals that the Phantom only got away with half of the map--Tobias still has the other half. Next, Bill's wealthy cousin George shows up wanting to buy the island. When Bill escapes someone he assumes is a bill collector, he gets the bright idea of turning the island and its small castle into a tourist attraction and sell day-long "treasure trips." Along with Bill, Tobias, Stuff and George on the maiden voyage: Jasper, a map expert who thinks the map is a forgery; McGoon, a representative from a businessman's association worried that Bill's business is a scam; a young socialite named Wendy who accepts the trip as payment for what Bill owes her for a fender bender and her friend Thurman Coldwater, not quite a boyfriend and not quite a chauffeur and who has so little energy that he can barely sustain a conversation without falling asleep; Rod and Arleen, a vaguely mysterious couple. As the group leaves, a package arrives for Bill; it gets accidentally tossed in the water and explodes, leaving Bill and Stuff worried that someone is out to stop their trip. On the island, Stuff has already set up some fake spooky events, but we see that the Phantom is hiding in the castle. Strange things happen: an arrow which almost hits Tobias is fired by an empty suit of armor; a voice rings through the castle warning the guests to leave; Jasper sleepwalks; and eventually, Rod is killed when he tries to leave the island alone, and it's revealed that he was actually gangster Killer Grady. The stage is set for a long scary night for our characters.

Despite its title, this is not really a horror movie—it's a very traditional "old dark house" thriller with shadows, grasping hands, secret passages, people who are not what they seem, and some comic relief. Actually, the tone of the movie throughout is light, and that's what bothered me about it when I first saw it years ago. This time around, I enjoyed it more, though I still resent the title. An online critic noted that this is really three kinds of movie in one: it begins as if it will be an adventure movie (the search for treasure), becomes a mystery (who is the Phantom?), and strays into a horror mood in the last 10 minutes (out of a very fast-paced 60 minutes). It's a B-movie which played as a second feature to Lon Chaney Jr's MAN MADE MONSTER (also an hour long B-picture but Chaney's film always got top billing). The cast is fine, but missing are any of the Universal stalwarts (Chaney, Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, etc.). Dick Foran, better known as a singing cowboy, is nicely relaxed as the confident hero Bill; Peggy Moran is his equal as Wendy. I'm not always a fan of comic relief characters, but I quite liked Fuzzy Knight as Stuff; he stutters on occasion, but he's not portrayed as dumb. Also fine are Leo Carrillo as Tobias and Walter Catlett as the sometimes bumbling McGoon. The character of Thurman Coldwater (Lewis Thomas) is quite strange: though we get evidence that he is a golddigger, he seems to be completely uninterested in his target, Wendy, and his lack of romance and his passivity made me read him as gay (a 40's version of a sissy, though he's not exactly effeminate). Decent B-movie viewing for a spooky October evening.

A note on the Blu-Ray: I watched this as part of a Universal/Shout Factory boxed set and the print was in great shape. However, the commentary was terrible. Usually, I like commentaries on older movies since they are typically done by critics or historians who do their research and plan out their comments very well. But Ted Newsom delivers one of the worst commentaries I've sat through. Besides having a personal interest in the movie, he only seems to know as much about Horror Island as anyone with 10 minutes of access to the internet. He frequently gets bogged down in information not related at all to the movie. For example, instead of telling us much about Fuzzy Knight, he spends way too much time on a dumb story about Fuzzy Knight getting mixed up with an actor named Fuzzy St. John. He loses his way, forgetting what he was talking about. He spends a couple minutes pointing out a goof (the visibility of a crew member) that ends up not showing up on screen--the shot was zoomed in on this print to remove the crew member. My advice is, even if you're the kind who loves commentaries, skip this one. Pictured from left: Knight, Carrillo, Moran and Foran. [Blu-ray]

LAND OF THE MINOTAUR (1976)

In a small Greek village, an attractive trio of young people (handsome Ian, blond Beth and hunky bearded Tom) arrive to study some ruins of an ancient temple located on the property of Baron Corofax (Peter Cushing, pictured), the local bigwig who can be both welcoming and stand-offish. The three spend the night with Father Roche (Donald Pleasance, with an on-again, off-again Irish accent) who knows Ian and Beth, and he warns them that other people who have come to study the ruins have vanished. Unconcerned, the three sneak off in the middle of the night to stay by the site. Early the next morning, Ian and Tom find a secret entrance to an elaborate cave which looks to have been the center of ritualistic activity. They are greeted by a giant stone statue of the Minotaur (a half-man, half-bull monster from Greek mythology) which spits flame and makes pronouncements, and are held by hooded figures to be used as sacrifices to the Minotaur. When Beth goes looking for them later, the same thing happens to her. A concerned Father Roche tries to get the local police involved but the chief doesn't care, even when Tom's girlfriend Laurie shows up worried about him, so Roche calls in a New York City detective of his acquaintance to investigate. As we already know from the film's opening scene, the Baron is the head of a satanic cult which worships the Minotaur—the statue is apparently possessed by a demon—and the entire village is in on it. What chance do a priest, a cop, and a young woman have fighting such evil?

As a relic of the 70s craze for demon movies, this is par for the course for a European B-film. Both Pleasance and Cushing seem a little low-key—one online reviewer wonders if they just signed on to get a Greek holiday-—but they suffice. Costas Skouras is similarly average as the cop. The best you can say for the young people is that they're attractive, especially Nikos Verlekis as Tom. (In what is a first in my experience, the movie's credit roll, and therefore IMDb's credits as well, misidentifies two actors, claiming that Verlekis is Ian and that Bob Behling is Tom, when a check of actor credits and Google images shows clearly that dark, Grecian Verlekis is Tom and blondish American Behling is Ian). Scarier than the stone Minotaur is the young girl with the empty stare (early teens, I'd say) who serves as the executioner at the rituals. The Greek setting is nice and the final battle with Pleasance's crucifix versus Cushing's red robe is pulled off well. Little known but not bad. It includes a so-so electronic score by Brian Eno (!). This is a PG-rated cut of the movie known in Europe as THE DEVIL'S MEN; it's said to be missing about ten minutes of gore and sex and exposition. [DVD]

MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL (1957)

Brady (Jim Davis) and Morgan (Robert Griffin) are in charge of shooting test animals up into space to see how they react to cosmic rays in anticipation of manned space travel. The flights are only supposed to last for a few minutes, but one rocket which contained a wasp goes off course and off radar, eventually landing somewhere in the wilds of Africa, in an area the natives call Green Hell because it's home to an active volcano. Brady and Morgan head off to Africa on a recovery mission, but in the meantime, some odd things are going on near Green Hell. Dr. Lorentz and his daughter Lorna, who tend to the natives, hear reports of a strange giant creature, and in fact we see what is apparently a giant mutated wasp (which really looks nothing like a wasp—more on that later) attack and kill a native with a massive amount of venom. After a long, long trek, Brady and Morgan arrive at Lorentz's village by which time the doctor has been killed and a giant insect stinger removed from his body. Now there are several of these wasp monsters killing humans and causing animal stampedes. Brady, Morgan, Lorna and a handful of faithful natives approach the volcano where the wasps made their home and try to exterminate them with explosives, but it ultimately takes Mother Nature to wipe them out.

This cheaply made B-movie has a bad reputation, and indeed at 70 minutes, it feels much longer than that. Lots of critics blame the effects, mostly consisting of huge mock-up monsters and some stop-motion animation, but frankly I liked the effects. The creatures don't resemble wasps, but still, they look quite menacing. The real problem is the amount of padding with stock footage from older movies. The trek of Brady and Morgan into Africa takes a tediously long time, and there is more ineffective padding with scenes of a hostile tribe attacking our heroes. The footage itself, from the big budget 1939 Stanley and Livingstone film, is well-done but does nothing for the narrative except get the movie to hit the 70-minute mark. Jim Davis (Jock Ewing on the original Dallas) looks heroic but he acts in a very casual fashion like he's playing a lounge lizard, as if he's Dean Martin off chasing monsters; I found him more amusing than heroic. The only other actor to make a strong impression is Joel Fluellen as Arobi, the 'fully civilized' native assistant. There is a bit of comic relief with a monkey that is mercifully brief. A cheap novelty for Chiller Theater fans. [YouTube]

ATRAGON (1963)

During a nighttime photo shoot on a beach involving a woman in a bikini, a figure in what looks like a scaly diving suit emerges from the water, spooking the model. The thing backs off after which a car goes careening off a dock into the water. Next morning, the car is recovered but with no bodies. It turns out that the car was involved in a string of kidnappings of engineers and geology experts. Next, Makoto, daughter of a Japanese Navy captain who went missing after the war, and her mentor, a shipping magnate named Kosumi, are kidnapped by a man claiming to be Agent 23 of the Mu Empire, a mythic sunken continent, sort of the Pacific Ocean version of Atlantis. They get away but eventually are sent a reel of film explaining that the Muans are planning on attacking Japan and other surface countries with technology they developed thanks to a lost Japanese submarine which was built by Makoto's father, Jinguji. Though assumed dead, we find out that Jinguji has actually been hiding out in a secret location working on a super-submarine (which can fly) called Atragon that he delusionally believes will help Japan's navy regain its lost glory. Jungui is reluctant to help, but when Mu begins its attacks and Makoto threatens to cut all ties with him, he rethinks his position.

From the title, I had assumed that Atragon was another Toho monster like Godzilla or Mothra, so the fact that it was a submarine was a pleasant surprise. There is a monster, sort of, in the form of a sea dragon that the Mu people worship, but it's a very disappointing marionette thing so don't watch for any real J-monster thrills. The narrative beats are similar to those of average Toho sci-fi film of the era, but what I liked best about it are the sets, at two ends of the budget continuum. The cheap miniatures are no better than the juvenile sets of the 1960s Thunderbirds series and movies, but I've always found those sets charming—as a kid, I imagined that I could build sets just as good in my basement with Legos. The Mu sets, on the other hand, look quite elaborate, like something out of a well-budgeted lost kingdom movie like SHE. Unfortunately, not much happens on these sets. Mu has an old evil priest dude and a young orange-haired empress (see above) who ultimately don't have much to do. The acting is also on a par with other Toho films, ranging from adequate (Jun Tazaki as Jinguji, Yoko Fujiyama as the daughter) to bizarre (Kenji Sahara as a reporter with an Amish beard who turns out, to one's surprise, to be another Mu agent). Generally enjoyable for a sci-fi Chiller Theater night. [Amazon Prime]

PHANTOM FROM SPACE (1953)

Radar tracks a UFO from Alaska to where it lands or crashes near Santa Monica, California. It leaves the radar screen but causes major radio and television interference in the area. A woman, her husband and a family friend are attacked on a beach by a figure wearing some kind of helmet, though no face is visible inside. The husband is killed, and at first the police suspect that wife and the friend have plotted together to kill him, but another such attack is soon reported. Soon, some cops working with agents of the "Communications Commission" link sightings of this helmeted phantom, whom they call the X-Man, with the UFO and the interference problem. Tracking him by the radioactive trail he leaves, they see him near Griffith Observatory. He takes off his suit and, sure enough, he is invisible without it. They take his suit and soon find out that the creature cannot breathe for long without his helmet. In an office in the observatory, the X-Man tries tapping out a message with a pair of scissors to Barbara Randall, an assistant to one of the scientists, and she discovers that his naked form can be seen in ultraviolet light. Ultimately, it seems that the phantom is just an alien who wound up here by accident and poses no threat to our planet, but still our poisonous air gets to him; he falls from up on the giant telescope, dies, and evaporates.

This B-film is part of the early wave of UFO/alien movies, and a relatively rare one in that the alien, despite killing a handful of folks, is not intentionally a threat to earthlings. When we finally see him fully naked in ultraviolet light at the climax, he resembles James Arness in 1951's The Thing from Another World but with smooth skin (and no genitals). At only 72 minutes, it still feels a bit long. The invisibility effects are fairly primitive, and though we feel some sympathy for the phantom by the end, we know nothing about him, not even how he ended up on Earth. There are a few too many actors running around accomplishing very little. The main characters are a cop named Bowers (Harry Landers), Barbara (Noreen Nash), her Germanic boss (Rudolph Anders), a military man at the observatory (James Seay), a pesky reporter (just like in The Thing) and a communications expert who spends the movie driving around in a car. I couldn't tell you if he is present at the climax because all those white men in uniforms and jackets—who all smoke a lot and chew quite a bit of gum—looked alike to me. The one who stood out is Barbara's husband (Steve Clark) because he looks like Clark Kent. One sequence near the end stands out stylistically and two groups of people holding a conversation in a room are photographed from below, for no apparent reason except maybe the cameraman got bored. [YouTube]

THE NIGHT WALKER (1964)

Irene Trent (Barbara Stanwyck) is in a troubled marriage, to say the least. Middle-aged but still attractive and vivacious, she's stuck with a rich, older, blind husband Howard (Hayden Rorke) who seems to resent her health and freedom, and accuses her of having a lover because of some mutterings of hers while dreaming. Howard thinks her lover is Barry (Robert Taylor), the family lawyer, the only person who ever comes to their home. While Irene might be interested, we know that her only lover is, in fact, a figment of her dreams. After a violent argument in which she says that her dream lover is more of a man that her husband will ever be, Irene leaves to spend the night in a hotel. Howard smells smoke and enters his laboratory; there’s a huge explosion and a fire, and the room is destroyed, with Howard's body seemingly consumed in the flames as the police find no trace of him the next morning. The next night, Irene has a nightmare in which the dead Howard is still alive. When Barry tells her she can't sell the house until it is considered safe, she decides to move into a small apartment behind a beauty salon she owns. But her dreams continue to the point where she can’t tell the difference between dreams and reality—even her dream lover (Lloyd Bochner) seems to come alive; handsome but a bit sinister looking, he swoops her off one night for a surreal marriage ceremony in an empty chapel with just a handful of wax figures as witnesses. Is this a story of supernatural haunting? Or is it a well-planned gaslighting? And if so, who is behind it and why?

Marketed as a horror movie (with a truly effective poster of an eyeball in a person's fist and a dream demon attacking a scantily clad woman), this came at the end of a number of successful horror films and thrillers from director William Castle. It was not a hit, partly because those poster art images (which are not in the film) sold it as something it wasn't--it's a psychological thriller. Of course, many great horror films are in fact psychological thrillers (PSYCHO, DIABOLIQUE, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, Castle's own HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, all movies which this one tips its hat to) but the promise of sex and gore in the ads (which included the words "Lust" and "Secret Desires" in big letters) was not fulfilled. Also, the lure of Stanwyck and Taylor, classic-era stars who had been married in the past, wouldn't have necessarily appealed to the young viewers who made other Castle films hits. Still, on its own terms as a mystery thriller, it works pretty well for much of its running time. Rorke's old-age blind man makeup is truly creepy, as is his burned face for the later dream (or are they?) sequences, as pictured above. Bochner is perfectly cast as the good-looking but oddly cold dream lover. The nightmarish wedding scene is wild, and we are kept guessing for a while as to what's really going on. But from the get-go, there are plot problems galore: the lab comes out of nowhere, not seen before the explosion, and the fact that the Trent mansion doesn't have a phone is unbelievable. As things get explained, things also get more complicated; this was written by Robert Bloch but it's not as tightly constructed as we might expect from the man who wrote the novel that PSYCHO was based on. Still, judged against other 60s movies to which this should be more fairly compared (TWO ON A GUILLOTINE, MY BLOOD RUNS COLD, MIRAGE), this is enjoyable enough. [Blu-Ray]

FIRST MAN INTO SPACE (1959)

Test pilot Dan Prescott (Bill Edwards) has taken off on an experimental flight in the small rocket Y-12 to see how man will fare as he heads for outer space. He hits the ionosphere and is told by the mission director, his older brother Chuck (Marshall Thompson), to return to earth, but Dan is a bit giddy at his accomplishment and continues further to where he can see the stars. On his way down, his plane destabilizes and he has to be talked through the emergency by Chuck. Once on the ground, instead of being debriefed at the base, Dan trots off to make out with his girlfriend Tia (Marla Landi), which further angers his brother, even though he finds out later that Tia is actually a very competent assistant to senior researcher Dr. von Essen. Despite Chuck's reservations, Dan is assigned to the next flight, Y-13, and again, Dan disobeys orders to return to earth, excited to be the first man into space at 250 miles high. This time, his disorientation is more pronounced and he loses control as a cloud of cosmic dust envelopes his craft. The rocket comes crashing to earth, but Dan is not found and so is assumed to be dead. But actually, he has been turned into a blood-seeking monster, coated in a strange glittery protective glaze from the cosmic dust. Soon, when cattle are found dead and unexplained murders with blood-drained bodies begin piling up, Chuck figures out what's happened and, with help from Tia and Dr. von Essen, lays out a plan to trap Dan and try to help him. 

By the late 1950s, it became clear that eventually man would go into space. It didn't actually happen until Yuri Gagarin did it in 1961, but that didn’t stop Hollywood, mostly B-movie producers, from producing sci-fi films about the topic. Some were hopeful, but many were not. This one is not, turning from speculative sci-fi to old-fashioned horror, of the "monster on the loose" variety. The most interesting thing about it is that the monster does in fact retain some part of his humanity and memories, though [Spoiler!] that does not save him in the end. The story takes a turn toward the “tampering in God’s domain” trope and Dan dies seeming to regret his pride at needing to be the first man into space—though his real problem is not so much that he was first, but that he was cocky and reckless. Edwards is a bit colorless in the title role, though Marshall Thompson (as his brother) is the real lead, and he gets his dead brother's girlfriend in the end. Some sources say that stock footage of one of Chuck Yeager's test flights is used early on. The effects are not great, though the cosmic dust scene works well. The monster is basically a man in a baggy space suit covered with glittery gunk and doesn't seem as scary as it should be. Chiller Theater fun, though I'm not sure how this wound up getting a video release from the Criterion Collection. Pictured are Landi and Thompson. [DVD]

LOS TALLOS AMARGOS (1956)

Gaspar is a frustrated journalist; he is in debt, is regularly reprimanded for his sloppy work habits, and doesn't get the adventurous assignments he wants. A friend tells him his problem is that he has a blind will for submission, always seeking to be on a mission for someone. We also learn, by his reaction while watching a war movie, that he has some kind of war-related trauma, exacerbated by his relationship with his stern, hawkish father. One night, after what seems to be unfulfilling sex with his girlfriend, he winds up at a bar chatting with a fellow reporter, and gets what looks like a come-hither cruising look from the bartender, Liudas. But what Liudas recognizes in Gaspar is a need for a better life. Liudas, a former editor (and smuggler), gets Gaspar to lend his expertise to a get-rich scheme involving the setting up of a correspondence journalism school; they'll mass-produce articles to sell to poor suckers who think they'll really get a usable education. When Liudas mentions that he is trying to raise money to bring his oldest son over from war-ravaged Europe, Gaspar, recalling his friend's words, decides that his mission should be to help the son, so he offers Liudas three-fourths of the firm's money until the son is brought over. Liudas is grateful, but one night, Gaspar overhears Liudas imply to a woman that there is no son, that he is bilking Gaspar. Acting on impulse, Gaspar plots to take Liudas on an overnight visit to Gaspar's mother’s home in the country and kill him. Complications ensue.

This long-lost Argentinian film noir, directed by Fernando Ayala and also known as BITTER STEMS, was brought back into circulation thanks to the efforts of Eddie Muller of Turner Classic Movies. It's a goodie, and it could serve as a dictionary definition of noir: moral ambiguity, a conflicted antihero, lots of shadowy nighttime scenes, some striking stylistic touches, and, of course, a murder that doesn't quite go as planned. Carlos Cores (pictured) is note-perfect as Gaspar; the character is a bit like Fred McMurray's character in Double Indemnity—he's attractive in a rumpled kind of way and, on the surface, likable (he's good to his mother and sister), but also weak and makes bad decisions. It's not a femme fatale that leads him to crime, but his own inner demons. (There are women in the movie, but they are strictly in support of the two leading men.) Vassili Lambrinos is just as good as Liudas; he does a nice job of keeping us a little off balance as far as his motivations--in real life, Lambrinos was a dancer and choreographer, though he had a featured role as a prince in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Aida Luz and Pablo Moret are standouts in relatively small but important roles. There is a surreal dream sequence right out of Hitchcock's Spellbound and spectacularly discordant jazz music is an effective background for a disturbing nightclub scene. The noir atmosphere is beautifully conjured visually by cinematographer Ricardo Younis. Still difficult to see, I've heard that it's due for a Blu-Ray release soon. Catch it if you can, especially if you're a fan of genuine noir. [TCM]

HER MAN (1930)

Annie, a frowsy middle-aged woman of ill repute, has tried to leave Havana but has been sent back by the authorities. She goes back to the Thalia, a combination saloon and dancehall and whorehouse, where she is protected from the laughing scorn of other shady dames by young Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees), who works for the Thalia's owner Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez) as a "B-girl," someone who gloms onto visiting tourists or sailors, gets them to buy drinks, and sometimes steals their wallets. Annie feels similarly protective of Frankie, but when a drunk patron named Red catches Frankie trying to steal his money and makes a ruckus, it's Johnnie who takes care of things by staging a barfight as a distraction, then throwing a knife into the poor schlub's back when no one is paying attention. Frankie seems to want to leave her current life, but tells one man, "How far would I get? I ain't no man!" (though it turns out that this line is just part of the spiel she gives unsuspecting men before she picks their pockets). She sets her sights on a handsome young sailor named Dan (Phillips Holmes) as her next target, but softens and the two slowly develop a relationship which does not please Johnnie. Will Dan take Frankie with him when he leaves town, or will Johnnie’s plot to get rid of Dan pay off?

Director Tay Garnett makes this early talkie visually compelling all the way through with lots of panning or moving shots; especially notable is the scene in which Johnnie throws a knife clear across the bar to kill Red. The storyline, loosely based on the old ballad of Frankie and Johnny, is predictable—coming from the pre-Code era allows some sins to be forgiven in the end. The acting is all over the place. Helen Twelvetrees has the right look and attitude for a world-weary woman of loose morals, but too often she's either pouting or glowering. The reliable Ricardo Cortez is fine as the villainous Johnnie. Phillips Holmes, of lithe build and curly blond hair, has the right mixture of innocence and worldliness as Dan. One of my favorite character actors, James Gleason, is present, but he and Harry Sweet are around only for comic relief, and while their drunken antics with a slot machine and men's hats are funny the first couple of times, they're repeated way too often to remain effective. Marjorie Rambeau is fine but underused as wise old Annie. Franklin Pangborn, who usually plays effeminate parts, is amusing as part of the drunken comic bits. The recently restored print shown on TCM is stunning looking, though the clarity and freshness of the image bring an unfortunate focus to the occasional melodramatic overacting now and again. Still, recommended. Pictured are Holmes and Twelvetrees. [TCM]

APRIL IN PARIS (1952)

State Department bureaucrat Sam Putnam (Ray Bolger) sends an invitation to Ethel Barrymore to a prestigious arts festival in Paris, but the invitation winds up sent to chorus girl Ethel Jackson (Doris Day), stage name 'Dynamite.' Sam is mortified and tries to fix the situation but his boss (whose daughter Sam is engaged to) decides it's a good idea. On the ship to Paris, Ethel clashes with many of the stuffy men on board but delights Philippe (Claude Dauphin), an entertainer who is broke due to owing taxes in America and is working as a waiter on the ship. Philippe, realizing that Sam has rather improbably fallen for Ethel, hopes to egg him on at a big drunken party the night before landing. He succeeds too well—Sam and Ethel decide to get the ship's captain to marry them that night. The marriage occurs, but Philippe learns that the man they thought was the captain was actually a cabin boy, so he spends the night trying to stop them from enjoying conjugal bliss. The next day, in Paris, things get more complicated when Sam's boss arrives with his daughter in tow. But, of course, in Hollywood (or Hollywood's idea of Paris) love conquers all. This musical farce starts out well but wears out its welcome before the end. The biggest problem is the odd mismatch between Bolger and Day. I could buy them as best buddies, maybe, but not as a true love match. I kept expecting them to realize that it would never work out, but the plot doesn't go that way. The music is not terribly memorable, though "I’m Gonna Ring the Bell Tonight" is a very cute Day/Bolger dance number. Dauphin is charming as Philippe, and the rest of the cast is serviceable. This won’t make you a Doris Day fan, but it's a pleasant time-passer. [TCM]

CLAUDELLE INGLISH (1961)

Claudelle is the teenage daughter of tenant farmer Clyde and his wife Jessie who work for property owner S.T. Crawford. Crawford, a widower, leers nastily at Claudelle and hints to her parents that he would take good care of her if she would be his wife, but Claudelle isn't interested in a man thirty years older than her. Clyde refuses to consider Crawford's wishes, but Jessie, a sexually frustrated woman worn beyond her years and tired of Clyde's promises of better times, is ready to pimp her daughter out to a rich man, and if Claudelle isn't interested, Jessie might like a little Crawford on the side. Meanwhile, Claudelle falls hard for high school senior Linn Varner who heads off to the Army but tells Claudelle he wants to marry her when his stint is over. To clinch the deal, they have sex under the night sky and the rustling tree branches. But months later, Linn writes with the news that he's getting married to someone else. This leads Claudelle to tramp herself up and sleep with a string of men. Dennis, the grocer's son, is first; young Charles, an assistant at the grocery store, is next, with studly, slightly older Rip not far behind. Even Dennis’ dad wants his turn. Jessie eventually leaves her husband to stay with Crawford, and melodrama turns to tragedy when two of the studs fight, leaving one dead. Claudelle and her dad decide to try and pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, but fate may have other plans.

In its day, I imagine this was seen as racy and serious, but now it's easier to appreciate either as a period piece or high camp. Romantic teen melodramas were all the rage in the late 50s and early 60s, from the cheap B-films of American International to the high gloss productions of Warner Bros., which is what this film is. Diane McBain had a supporting role in an earlier Warners melodrama, PARRISH and was given the lead here. She's actually pretty good, giving some weight to her character who becomes promiscuous because of her rejection by Linn (a very young and handsome Chad Everett). Her bevy of studs were pulled from the ranks of the young Warner Bros. contract players, most of whom would become better known on TV: Will Hutchins (from the western series Sugarfoot) as Dennis, Robert Logan (briefly Edd Byrne's replacement on 77 Sunset Strip) as Charles, and Robert Colbert (The Time Tunnel). All of them are attractive and convey various tones of rural boy horniness with conviction. Arthur Kennedy brings some gravitas to the role of the beleaguered father, but Constance Ford is awfully one-note as the mother. Claude Akins is Crawford. To reinforce the glossy teen romance connection, the main theme of the movie recalls the famous hit theme to A SUMMER PLACE from a couple of years earlier—Kennedy and Ford were also in that movie. Approached on a camp level, and with appreciation for male eye candy, this was quite watchable. Pictured are McBain and Hutchins. [TCM]

LOVERS COURAGEOUS (1932)

As a boy, Willie Smith is always in trouble with his parents and his teachers, and as he grows up, he continues to chafe against society, wanting to be someone different or special. He holds a string of jobs, winding up in a tobacco shop in South Africa where he meets Mary Blayne, a British admiral's daughter who is set to marry an older, rather stuffy nobleman named Jimmy. Willie has become an aspiring playwright and soon Mary is reading a draft of his play as the two begin spending intimate time together. A friend of her family, an officer named Jeffrey, intuits what's going on and warns Mary's parents. Their solution is to have her mother spirit her away to England on the pretext of visiting a sick relative, where she will, they hope, be happy to settle down with Jimmy. Jeffrey, despite being responsible for their parting, soon feels sorry for Mary and even goes so far to suggest that, after a couple years of marriage, she could pursue an extramarital affair. But before the wedding can happen, Willie moves to London, living a pauper's existence as he works on his play. Soon, Mary finds him and, despite Mary being cut off from any money by her father, they marry. The "courageous" part of the title, I guess, comes as they try to make it together in the cold hard world of London.

This is a fairly average romantic melodrama, perhaps pulled off with a lighter touch than most, but it's also very predictable, especially in its last third as she pawns her belongings and he steals food to stay alive. Eventually, Willie goes to the Admiral and asks him to take her back, by herself; Mary lies in bed and begins to waste away until, voila, Willie's play is accepted for production and a happy ending is finally in store. I run hot and cold on Robert Montgomery (Willie), but I do tend to like his earlier movies, and he's in pretty charming form here. Madge Evans (pictured with Montgomery), star of the 30s who married a playwright and left the business, is fine as Mary. Roland Young is excellent in one of his typical sympathetic uncle roles (the epitome of which is Uncle Willie in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY) and Reginald Owen is Jimmy, who is a little likable even though we're not supposed to like him-—the character is drab, not evil. At times, especially when the two lovers say farewell before Mary leaves for England, the dialogue sounds quite stagy, perhaps because the screenplay is by playwright Frederick Lonsdale. [TCM]

MANHUNT OF MYSTERY ISLAND (1945 serial)

Prof. Forrest is working on a device that, when finished, will be able to generate power on land that can be transferred to planes in the air and ships at sea to use in addition to traditional fuel. While scouting off the coast of California for a new element needed for the invention, Forrest and his assistant have disappeared. His daughter Claire and famed criminologist Lance Reardon go searching for him and wind up tracing him to Mystery Island, a small private island co-owned by four businessmen. (What they do on the island is never made clear-—I assumed it was a private resort but we never see anyone else there except servants.) We soon discover that a villain named Captain Mephisto, supposedly the ghost or descendant of a pirate who used the island for his piratical ways, is holding Forrest and demanding that he finish his device so Mephisto can use it in some world domination scheme. Lance and Claire obtain the help of the island owners in looking for Forrest, but it soon becomes clear that Mephisto is a flesh-and-blood being, most likely one of four owners. To become the spitting image of the historical pirate, the man sits down in a transformation machine which changes "the molecular arrangement of blood corpuscles" to make him look exactly like the pirate. Over 15 chapters, Lance and Claire survive fistfights, gunfights, floods, the collapse of a rope bridge, and an exploding speedboat to eventually find her father and figure out who Captain Mephisto really is.

There are some things I like quite a bit about this serial. For the most part, the action is confined to one setting, the island, big enough for some variety—the main house, various cliffs and fields—while avoiding the sometimes numbing repetition of industries around a city being targeted by the bad guys. The fistfights, averaging 2 per chapter, are excellent, full of stuntmen leaping across the room at each other, smashing lots of furniture and throwing breakable items of all kinds. The idea, planted in the beginning, that the villain might be supernatural in origin, is fun, and there is a great weapon, a "radium vapor" ray, though it's only used once. Much of the rest, however, I’m not so crazy about. The transformation device is cool at the beginning as we watch a man strap himself into a chair and throw a switch that causes much electrification behind him and results in him becoming Captain Mephisto. But we see this same footage repeated in almost every chapter (except for one 'clip show' episode, Chapter 10, which is used as a catch-up summary) and it becomes tedious. I couldn't bring myself to care about the central mystery (who is Captain Mephisto?) because the suspects are not well differentiated; the owners are just four well-dressed middle-aged men who are basically interchangeable. The acting all around is bland. Richard Bailey, as Lance, has no charisma, bland looks, and just isn’t hero material. Linda Stirling (Claire) is slightly better, and even manages to pop into a couple of the room-wrecking frays. Roy Barcroft as Mephisto, is disappointing as he often seems tired and cranky rather than evil. Kenne Duncan is more effective as Mephisto's chief henchman. The serial lasts for fifteen chapters, which is about three too many, but despite all its faults, it remained watchable, mostly for those great fisticuff scenes. Pictured are Bailey and Barcroft. [DVD]

DIARY OF A HIGH SCHOOL BRIDE (1959)

On a desert road on the way to Los Angeles, a young couple is stopped for speeding. Steve, a law student, is calm and collected but Judy, clutching a teddy bear, is almost hysterical. It turns out that they are returning home after having a Las Vegas wedding, and, as she's 17 and still in high school, she's nervous about how her parents will take the news. The cop lets them go with a warning, but at home, her mother insists that they get an annulment. Her father wants to let her juggle school and married life, and maybe learn firsthand what she's gotten into. Steve can't wait to hit the sack with his new wife, but as Judy is a nervous virgin, Steve first takes her to the beatnik coffeehouse where he tries to calm her down, but while there she runs into her ex-boyfriend Chuck, son of a studio boss, who, even though he seems to have another girlfriend, is unreasonably jealous. Back at Steve's apartment, the first conjugal experience goes well enough, but soon Judy realizes, like her father hoped, how hard it is to balance school and marriage, especially when Steve doesn't seem inclined to help out in shopping, cooking or cleaning at all. The two travel a rocky road, not helped by her parents, until Chuck starts making trouble, at school and at Judy's home. One night, Chuck lures Judy to an empty soundstage at his dad's studio with the promise of a reconciliation, but instead he tries to assault her. Will Steve be her white knight, arriving in time to stop the attack?

Like HIGH SCHOOL HELLCATS, this is another American International teen appeal movie. It more or less masquerades as a social problem film—teen marriage, pro or con?—but with an ending very similar to that of HELLCATS, it becomes a thriller, in this case with a potential rapist character taking center stage. Up to that point, it's a rather boring melodrama filled with lackluster characters and actors. Anita Sands (Judy) never made another movie, though she did go on to appear in TV shows of the early 1960s. Ron Foster (Steve) had a much longer career, but neither one looks their character's age--Foster was almost 30 and Sands looks more like a college student than a high school student. Neither one is particularly appealing in looks or character, which leaves Chris Robinson (Chuck, pictured) as the standout, and he is very good as the creepy ex, and even looks roughly age-appropriate (he was 20 when he shot the film). It's fun to see one minor character, a friend of Chuck's, always plugged into his transistor radio in anticipation of today's earbud mania. OK as a novelty movie, but never as fun or titillating as its title promises. [TCM]

LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE (1958)

Rich boy Thad Walker keeps getting in trouble through his reckless ways, and when his car hits a child on a bike, his father has had enough. Dad slaps him around and Thad takes off for Europe. He and some buddies wind up in the Lafayette Escadrille, a brigade of American fliers fighting for France in the early days of World War I before the U.S. was officially involved. On his last night in Paris before taking off for flight training, Thad meets a fairly wholesome prostitute named Renée and falls head over heels for her, promising to come back for her when he can. During training, the hot-headed Thad punches a drill sergeant in the face and is thrown in the brig. With a penalty of several years in jail hanging over him, Thad's friends start a brawl that draws attention away from the brig, helping Thad to escape. On his way to Paris, he gets in a fight with a soldier and winds up with a big, vivid scar across one eye. However, Renee still loves him and they have a symbolic marriage ceremony in her room. Though she has given up her previous profession, she gets him work for a pimp as a shill, bringing soldiers in for the whores. By this time, the U.S. has entered the war, and when Thad takes an American officer to the brothel, he tells his sad story so well that the general agrees to let him fly with the Americans. In a rushed ending, we are told (not shown) that Thad wins his wings, has a great career as a pilot, and eventually invites his old buddies to Paris to witness his church wedding to Renée.

Director William Wellman based this movie on his WWI experiences; his son William Wellman Jr. plays him in the movie (though the reference to his name is a 'blink and you’ll miss it' moment). Apparently, this was not a pleasant experience for Wellman, and ultimately, the studio took the movie away from him and did some re-cutting and re-shoots; in the original version, Thad dies in battle and Renée kills herself, but the released version has a much happier ending. Tab Hunter acquits himself nicely as Thad, and his band of buddies (Wellman Jr., Clint Eastwood, David Janssen, Will Hutchins and Jody McCrea—son of Joel McCrea) are all fine. I was a little surprised that, despite some ominous narration at the beginning about how many members of the Escadrille died in action, most of the main characters here make it to the end. The focus overall is more on character and romance rather than war, with only one battle sequence included near the end, so war film buffs may not find this to their liking. Marcel Dalio plays the drill sergeant in scenes of weak and fairly excruciating comedy, as Dalio only speaks French and the boys only speak English. I found all of these scenes unbearable. Otherwise, passable melodrama with some good-looking young actors. Pictured from left are McCrea, Janssen, Wellman and Hunter. [TCM]

THE MIRACLE KID (1941)

Madame Gloria runs the Academy of Mental Science which is in competition with J. Hamilton Gibbs (her ex-husband) and his branded business of selling healthy living through vegetables, fruits and nuts (the movie gets some comic mileage out of emphasizing the word "nuts," and also out of the fact that Gibbs himself doesn’t follow his own diet suggestions). Unknown to them, PR man Al Bolger is working for both of them, and his current job is doing a photo shoot for Gibbs' Physical Culture Girl of the Year contest at a gym where boxer Jimmy Conley works as an instructor. Jimmy is dating Pat, Madame Gloria's assistant, and he talks Pat into entering the contest which she wins, to the joy of Gibbs who sees this as a way to needle his ex-wife. Pat owns some land which, after they marry, she and Jimmy plan to turn into a health camp for boys. Jimmy takes part in one last boxing match, and he unexpectedly knocks out Tiger O'Brien; Tiger claims that Jimmy put a hex on him, but actually Tiger had been flirting with a beautiful blonde in the audience and not paying attention. Even though Jimmy has told Pat that he'll quit, Bolger decides to push Jimmy as the "miracle kid," and works to break up Jimmy and Pat's relationship. Pat leaves, Jimmy goes back to the ring, and his manager arranges in secret for Jimmy's opponents to lose. Meanwhile, Pat goes on a national tour as the Physical Culture Girl, and through various machinations on the parts of various people, Jimmy and Pat reconcile, and Bolger is exposed as pitting Gloria against her ex.

Cute B-romantic comedy with a sports backdrop, though there are only two boxing scenes in the movie, filmed mostly in little detail from several rows back in the auditorium. Tom Neal (pictured), who plays Jimmy, had been a boxer in college but he doesn't really get a chance to show off his moves—still, he's handsome and charming in a B-movie way, as he usually is, and he's the main reason I stuck with this. As is the case in many classic-era B-movies, the plot, especially in the last half-hour, gets a little too muddled for its own good. It's never really confusing, but it would be a breezier film if it lost one of its plotlines. Carol Hughes, busy B-actress of the 40s (she played Dale Arden in a 1940 Flash Gordon serial) is fine as Pat. I wasn't familiar with most of the other supporting players, including Betty Blythe as Gloria and Ben Taggert as Gibbs, but they're all mostly OK. B-comedy fluff for those inclined. [YouTube]

AND GOD CREATED WOMAN (1956)

In St. Tropez, beautiful young Juliete (Brigitte Bardot) is an 18-year-old orphan who works lackadaisically at a bookstore but would rather flirt and sunbathe in the nude (she is described by one person as "shameless, impolite and lazy"); her frustrated adoptive mother is ready to send her back to the orphanage. Older businessman Eric Carradine, who ogles her but seems to realize that a romance would be out of the question, is trying to buy up land to build a casino, but is being blocked by the refusal of the Tardieu family to sell their shipyard. Antoine, the oldest son, returns to town to engage in discussions with Carradine but is against selling. Carrdine keeps upping his offer, and also suggests that Antoine marry Juliete to keep her in town. Though there are sparks between the two, Antoine suspects she would "put horns" on him fairly quickly. His brother Michel has been harboring a crush on Juliete for some time, and later, when the father dies, the sons agree to sell to Carradine in exchange for a stake in another shipyard, and Michel marries Juliete. They are happy for a short time until Antoine returns to St. Tropez to work at the shipyard. When Michel leaves for a day on business, Antoine and Juliete have sex on the beach. Both feel guilty, and when Michel returns, his mother (of all people!) tells him what happened. Juliete goes out to a bar and loses herself in orgiastic dancing; Michel follows with a gun. Against all odds, there is a happy ending.

This French film is known for being Bardot's big breakthrough in the United States—though she was 22 when she made this film for her husband, director Roger Vadim, she had already made some fifteen films. It is often derided as a bad movie, best appreciated as a mild piece of titillation which shows off the charms of both Bardot and St. Tropez, but actually as a sex melodrama, it's not that much different from such Hollywood films of the 40s and 50s, and seen now, many years after the initial brouhaha, it's still entertaining. Bardot is sexy and earthy and pouty, the very definition of a sex kitten. Her big nude scene, at the very beginning, will disappoint today's viewers; she is lying down on a towel, and when she rises, she is hidden behind a sheet on a laundry line. But she acts well, creating a character we are alternately drawn to and repelled by. Overlooked by most straight male critics is the fact that the movie also has some nice male eye candy. The comely full-lipped Jean-Louis Trintignant (Michel, pictured with Bardot) who gets a shirtless scene, and the slightly older, sleekly handsome Christian Marquand (Antoine) who gets a wet tank top scene, are both quite sexy and give solid performances. All three are basically playing stereotypes but they make the characters rounded and easy to identify with. Curt Jurgens (Carradine), whom I associate with sinister roles (sometimes Nazis), is less dangerous here; we may not like his character, but he's not a villain. There really aren't any villains except maybe the adoptive mother, and the social worker who wants Juliete examined by a doctor for a "virginity certificate" (Juliete's reply: "Don’t worry, you’ve had your vaccine"). 16-year-old Georges Poujouly plays the youngest Tardieu brother, the one misstep in the movie; Poujouly is fine, but nothing is done with the character. Best line, spoken about Bardot: "Her ass is a song!" [TCM]

TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON (1970)

Three people who think of themselves as misfits have shared a hospital recovery ward and are about to be released. Junie Moon (Liza Minnelli) is a chipper young woman who had battery acid thrown at her by a psycho date and is now heavily scarred on half of her face; Warren (Robert Moore) is a gay man who was shot at by a guy he was flirting with and is now confined to a wheelchair; Arthur (Ken Howard), a epileptic loner who spent most of his life being made fun of in a orphanage, is recovering from a serious seizure. Their prospects in the outside world seem dicey, so the three decide to move in together. They rent a small house from Mrs. Gregory, an eccentric rich lady, and they all experience ups and downs as they acclimate to their conditions. Arthur gets a job at a nearby fish market run by Mario (James Coco), though he loses it after a jealous next-door neighbor tells Mario that Arthur is a "sodomite"; later, Mario, who has an unrequited crush on Junie, sends the three off on a beach resort vacation. Warren has an interlude with a hunky Black social director who carries him around from place to place on his shoulder; Junie and Arthur take tentative stabs at becoming a couple. By the end, there has been comedy, melodrama, romance, redemption and tragedy.

In her third movie, just after her breakout role in THE STERILE CUCKOO, Liza Minnelli continues to build the perky, flighty persona she would polish to an Oscar-winning sheen in CABARET two years later, and she is the reason to watch this movie. As a narrative, it's kind of a mess. Junie's background is given in a reasonably straightforward, if relentlessly creepy, flashback; we get Arthur's story through a series of dreamlike fragments in which the adult Arthur appears surrounded by the children that mocked him; Warren relates his background involving a gay father figure (with a brief appearance by Leonard Frey) but dismisses his fateful shooting in just a sentence or two. For all the flashbacks, the central three are not terribly well fleshed out—their "misfit" problems pretty much stand in for their characters. It's also a little odd that Warren's "happy ending" consists of him having sex on a beach, all night long, with a woman! Emily Yancy makes that character, Solana, quite appealing, but still I'm sorry that Beach Boy (the possibly bisexual social director, well played against type by Fred Williamson, later a star of Blaxploitation action movies) isn't the one whom Warren spends the night with. Robert Moore (who later directed the classic mystery spoof MURDER BY DEATH) and a young Ken Howard are quite believable in their roles, thin as the writing is. Kay Thompson, author of the classic Eloise books, and Minnelli's godmother, does well in the small role of the strange Mrs. Gregory who starts out as rude, then becomes interesting, and ends as somewhat cruel. Not a film for all tastes, as it's definitely a quirky period piece, but a must for Liza fans. Pictured, from left: Moore, Howard, Minnelli. [TCM]

LAST WOMAN ON EARTH (1960)

Harold Gern is a rich guy who is on the run from a major indictment. He and his wife Evelyn are in Puerto Rico with their lawyer Martin, trying to ride out the scandal, though Martin keeps trying to get Harold to take the situation seriously. They attend a cockfight which sickens Evelyn, and back at the hotel, Evelyn vents to Martin about her frustrations with Harold, then comes on to him, moves which he rejects, though clearly he’s interested. The next day, the three take a boat out for a diving trip. When Martin is stung by a ray, they come back to the surface but none of them can breathe. Leaving their air tanks on, they find the boat captain dead and no one answering on the radio. Soon, they realize that there has been some kind of incident and all the oxygen was sucked out of the atmosphere, though by the time they reach land, the oxygen has returned. Dead bodies and crashed cars are all they find in town, and Martin notes that they may be the last three people alive on the planet. Thus ends any real plot that a sci-fi movie fan might enjoy, and any real excitement that a B-movie fan might enjoy. From here, it basically turns into a stagy melodrama about the squabbling and posturing between three members of a love triangle. Earlier movies in this mold like FIVE or THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED also focused on romantic tensions but didn’t neglect the sci-fi apocalypse elements of the plot. 

Like those other films, the action here moves to an abandoned, isolated house. Harold and Evelyn head to the empty vacation home of a friend of theirs and Harold rather grudgingly allows Martin to tag along. Tensions rise among the three, with Evelyn shifting her desires back and forth between the men. There’s a fight that begins as the men slap each other with fish. The bland dialogue sometimes tries to pass as philosophical; when Evelyn tells Martin she wants to have a child with him, he replies, “All that’s left is fear for us to live with our pain” (whatever that means). Of course, having them decide to live as a threesome would have been too subversive for the time, so [Spoiler!] in the end, a blinded Martin dies in a church in Evelyn’s arms declaring there is no god, and Evelyn and Harold walk off together into an uncertain future. Given the title and the situation, this had promise, but it’s one of Roger Corman’s quickies, shot in about a week at the tail-end of another Puerto Rican production, CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA. The script was unfinished so the writer, Robert Towne (who later wrote CHINATOWN) kept writing even as he was acting—he plays Martin, rather ineffectively. The other two actors, Betsy Jones-Morland and Anthony Carbone, aren’t that much better; they seem like understudies waiting for the real stars who never showed up. As rough as I’ve been on this film, it’s not unwatchable, since the apocalyptic aspect does manage to hold some interest throughout—the brief scenes of them walking through the deserted town are effective. Pictured are Carbone, Jones-Morland and Towne. [DVD]