CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN (1955)

As a gangland boss puts $20,000 into a safe in his office, a hulking bald zombie guy smashes in through a window and kills him. Thugs shoot at the zombie, but he is impervious to bullets. Two men are controlling him, speaking through him, and can see everything the zombie can see because of cameras implanted in his retinas. Mad doctor Steigg has created a small army of these creatures by charging recently dead bodies (which explains the recent rash of mysterious morgue thefts) with atomic rays so that Buchanan, a deported gangster, can get revenge against the people who sent him away. The cops don't know what they've got on their hands until Dr. Walker (Richard Denning) discovers that a blood sample from a zombie is an artificial chemical compound with no hemoglobin. More people are found dead, but when Harris, Walker's friendly cop partner, becomes a victim and is also turned into a zombie, it becomes personal.

This is Father Knows Best meets Night of the Living Dead. Denning has a wife and daughter, and we get long, tedious scenes of their banal interactions in their overlit TV sitcom house. The scene in which Harris (known to the little girl as Uncle Dave) enters the house in a zombie state, with raw stitches across his head, threatens to be, well, threatening, but it's not played particularly well and winds up petering out. This is almost too well-made; at times, it feels like Ed Wood or 40s serial moviemaking with a good-sized budget by competent but unimaginative craftsmen. There's an interesting subplot involving the zombies causing a city-wide panic by blowing stuff up and causing train wrecks, but it's dispensed with in a single quick montage scene. The climax of fisticuffs and explosions is fun. Denning is bland, though Michael Granger is effective as Buchanan. [TCM]

ATTACK OF THE PUPPET PEOPLE (1958)

Kindly but eccentric John Hoyt runs a business called Dolls, Inc., carrying a line of very life-like dolls. His secretary Janet yells at some Girl Scouts who get too close to some very special dolls in clear plastic cylinders. The next day, the secretary is gone and Hoyt hires June Kenney in her place—though we notice a new doll looking very much like Janet in one of the cylinders. June soon discovers that the local mailman, who was nearing retirement, has vanished, and she feels a creepy vibe from Hoyt. John Agar, a visiting salesman, hits it off with June and she rather impulsively decides to head back to St. Louis with him. He says he'll let Hoyt know that she's leaving, but the next morning, it's Agar who seems to have taken a powder. Oddly, there's a new doll on the "special" shelf that looks just like Agar. Soon, June finds out Hoyt's secret: he can, using high-pitched vibrations, shrink people, which is what he's done to Janet and the mailman and Agar and a couple others, and now June. His intentions are almost kindly: he wants to keep the people he likes near him, and he tells them that their new lives are idyllic—no taxes, no responsibilities, just hanging with each other and partying. But Agar plants the seeds of mutiny, and with the police nosing around because of all the missing people connected with him, Hoyt has a plan to throw a last party at a marionette theater, then kill them and himself. As many critics note, there is no "attack" as promised in the title, just some escape shenanigans inspired by THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN which came out the year before. Still, this unusual low-budget film is interesting partly for its lack of horror or villainy; though clearly Hoyt has gone off the deep end, he's not out to conquer the world, just his acquaintances. The effects are OK, and there is a fun reference to THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, a previous film from the same director, Bert I. Gordon. The best scene involves Hoyt making one of his puppet people sing a pop song called, "I'm a Living Doll." [DVD]

THE MAGNETIC MONSTER (1953)

Scientists at the OSI (Office of Scientific Investigation) are getting some strange readings indicating abnormally strong magnetic fields. At a nearby hardware store, all the clocks are wrong and a lawn mower starts running on its own. Investigators Richard Carlson and King Donovan talk to a cabbie whose taxi has become magnetized after a man with a suitcase was in the car. They track down the man, an older scientist (Leonard Mudie) who accidentally created a new radioactive element in his lab that keeps doubling in size and power, becoming the monster of the title. People near the lab start dying and soon they deduce that if the "monster" keeps growing, it may throw the earth's orbit out of whack. Working with a computer called MANIAC (wordplay on the real-life early computer ENIAC) and Canadian scientists, Carlson decides to try overfeeding the element to kill it. But then one of the scientists (Leo Britt) goes a little nuts and tries to sabotage the plan. This 75-minute movie is not exactly exciting, but if you expect a TV episode—and this does feel a lot like an Outer Limits show, except there is no real monster and the Outer Limits hook was that every episode had a monster—you may be satisfied. The acting isn't much to speak off, though Carlson is fine in the lead, and there's a blah subplot involving Carlson's pregnant wife (Jean Byron, who later played the mother of identical twins on The Patty Duke Show). The climax, which uses footage from an older German film, works well. [TCM]

BLOODY PIT OF HORROR (1965)

After an on-screen note that this film is based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade (it's not), we see a masked figure called the Crimson Executioner being executed for heresy and sadistic crimes, stuck into an iron maiden as blood drips out of the bottom. The dead body is sealed in the device and kept in the dungeon of the Executioner's castle, so as never to be disturbed. Next we're in the present day as a publisher, some male photographers and some voluptuous female models are scouting locations where they can conduct photo shoots for some horror book covers. They come upon the castle where, at first, they get a frosty reception from the owner, an actor named Travis (Mickey Hargitay), but when it turns out that one of the women, Edith, is a former girlfriend, he relents and allows them to stay overnight. After the women get decked out in their sexy, skimpy attire for the photo shoots, people start dying. Travis is actually a nut-job who thinks that he’s been possessed by the Crimson Executioner and has been tasked with keeping his perfect body pure; women just corrupt the flesh and so must be done away with, preferably after some torture (whips, racks, etc.). For good measure, he tortures and kills the men as well.

Much has been written about this film as a graphic psychosexual exercise in sadism, with homoeroticism as the whipping boy (sorry, pun intended); the half-naked muscled torso of Hargitay, a former Mr. Universe, is on display throughout, mostly clad in just a mask and revealing red tights. The character rants about the purity of his body—reminding me of a hotter version of Sterling Hayden's General Ripper in DR. STRANGELOVE—and lovingly applies oil to his chest a couple of times. But since this is a shoddily-made exploitation movie, it does nothing with the interesting subtext. The torture and the almost undraped women (no full nudity) may have seemed graphic in 1965, but today the movie probably would only be rated PG-13, and the gore effects are weak and unconvincing—the blood left on a bared cleavage after a whipping looks like a smear of watered-down ketchup. Nevertheless, Hargitay acts his heart out, making me wish the rest of the movie was better so his character would seem more truly dangerous. [DVD]

MOST DANGEROUS MAN ALIVE (1961)

B-movie mix of atomic-bomb, God's-domain sci-fi with gangster melodrama. Eddie (Ron Randell, pictured) is getting a little too much publicity and making things hot for his fellow gangsters, so, led by chief thug Andy Damon (Anthony Caruso), they vote to oust him by framing him for murder. However, on his way to prison, he escapes in the middle of the desert, winding up at ground zero for a nuclear test of Cobalt X. Caught outside of the observation post during the blast, he's battered and bruised but survives and heads back to get revenge against Damon. When Dr. Meeker realizes Eddie has survived, he tells the authorities they need to find him because the radiation will cause his body to mutate. Sure enough, his flesh slowly turns to steel, making him indestructible. His mind begins to go as well, and soon he's getting his revenge even as his mind and body are deteriorating. The cops are desperate to find him, worried that his body is radiating cobalt, putting all around him in danger. There are seeds of good things here that never blossom. Randell is initially very good as Eddie, a sympathetic bad guy, but eventually, he's stuck just acting physically agonized and mentally confused. There are two leading ladies that I occasionally had a hard time telling apart: Debra Paget is Linda, the "bad" bad girl, who used to sleep with Eddie but is now sleeping with Damon; Elaine Stewart is Carla, the "good" bad girl who helps Eddie survive. The steel-mutating plot point is interesting, but due to the low budget, there are no special effects or make-up, just dirt and bullet holes on Randell's torso. The climax involves flamethrowers. [TCM]

THE SNOW CREATURE (1954)

A botanist (Paul Langton) is up in the Himalayas on an expedition with his photographer buddy (Leslie Denison), looking for some exotic plants. One day, the lead Sherpa (Teru Shimada) tells Langton that another Sherpa's wife was kidnapped in the night by a mythical monster, the Yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman. He wants Langton to halt his trek to help look for it, but he refuses, so Shimada and his men mutiny. Soon, they find and capture the monster and cart it back to the States for research purposes. In Los Angeles, customs stops them while they try to figure out how to categorize the beast as animal or human, and it escapes, shambling about the city, causing havoc. This is almost certainly the first Yeti movie, but any potential for interest or originality is lost due to: 1) an unsympathetic jackass—the botanist—as hero, and 2) a budget so low that the monster looks like a tall, thin dancer wrapped in carpet wearing an fur ear-flap hat, with the same shot of him coming out of darkness and going back again re-used several times in the film. Maybe they only had the poor schmoe playing the monster for a day or two of filming. There is also lots of tedious narration, especially in the first ten minutes, and repeated footage of people climbing through the snow to help pad this out to 70 minutes. The character of the Sherpa is moderately interesting for the gumption he displays in standing up to Langton. The most bizarre aspect of the film: it was directed by W. Lee Wilder, brother of Hollywood legend Billy Wilder (SOME LIKE IT HOT, SUNSET BLVD). Quotable quote, as the authorities warn the populace about the beast: "Tell everybody to stay off the streets and remain calm—that goes for everyone!" [Netflix]

THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS (1976)

Stefano is brought to a small Italian village to restore a crumbling church painting of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, performed not with arrows piercing his body as is the norm but by two creepy figures who have stabbed the saint with large knives. The artist, Legnani, who was idolized by his two sisters, was obsessed with trying to capture the actual moment of death in art; forty years ago, he set himself on fire and disappeared into the woods, never to be seen again. Very soon, strange things begin happening: a friend of Stefano's is killed, a whore he takes up with (who is also a schoolteacher) vanishes, and his driver rants about a strange house with laughing windows (large pop-art smiles are painted on the shutters) where he claims many bodies are buried. As Stefano begins an affair with the replacement teacher, he also tries to piece everything together, soon realizing that Legnani painted his grotesque paintings from life, with his sisters procuring young men to serve as models. As the body count grows, it seems as if Legnani may still be alive and back in business. 

As an example of the giallo genre—Italian films which mix mystery, sex, gore, and intimations (at least) of the supernatural—this film pretty much has it all. It has been panned by hardcore giallo fans for not having enough sex or gore (though like many gialli, the plot sometimes borders on incoherence). The opening three minutes, which involve a bloody half-naked man strung up and being stabbed to death, are truly disturbing, though sadly the film never comes through on the promise of that beginning. The sex is very mild—in fact, in one scene, Stefano and the whore get in bed together fully clothed, and when we fade back in on them later, they’re still clothed and cuddling as though they never went any farther. PSYCHO and PEEPING TOM seem to have influenced the director, Pupi Avati, and though there is little graphic gore, there is a feel of decadence and decay throughout. Lino Cappolicchio (at left) is fine as the innocent Stefano who starts out as an outsider and becomes increasingly isolated.  Once you get past the very creepy opening, this basically becomes a psychological mystery with some characters and plotlines that go nowhere—the final reveal is particularly silly—but with a relatively satisfying if predictable ending. Overall, the idea behind the narrative is more interesting than the execution. [DVD]

THE FLESH EATERS (1964)

Freddie and Ann are cavorting on a boat near a small island. He jumps in the water but doesn't come out; instead, the water fills with blood. Ann screams and winds up engulfed by bloody bubbles.  Meanwhile, an alcoholic actress (Rita Morley) and her younger secretary (Barbara Wilkin) hire a pilot (Byron Sanders) to fly them to Providence ahead of a storm. When the engine fails, they land on the same small island where Freddie and Ann met their fates, populated only by the rather intense Prof. Bartell (Martin Kosleck), who despite a forced smile, has a touch of the Nazi about him. Bartell offers them shelter, but the problem winds up being not the storm but the fish and human skeletons that wash up on shore. Soon they all find themselves trapped on the island when the water fills up with glowing blob creatures that feed on flesh. Turns out Bartell created these things based on Nazi experiments he witnessed. After a beatnik on a raft has his stomach eaten away, Bartell tries to destroy them by electrocution, but that just makes them all merge together into one huge monster. Will the drunk, the cute girl and the studly guy manage to escape unscathed?

For a low-budget drive-in B-movie, this isn't bad, and as usual, seeing it in widescreen helped. Kosleck, one of Hollywood's go-to actors for Nazis in the 40s and 50s—he played Goebbels at least three times, including opposite Richard Basehart's HITLER—carries the movie, though honestly, I could have used a little more scenery-chewing than he does here. Sanders is stoic but not much more; Wilkin is unmemorable; Morley does a nice job fleshing out the role of the on-the-skids actress, and she's really the only character I cared about. The effects are done on the cheap but are OK, and the giant monster near the end is quite effective. Shots of blood and the glowing creatures are a bit amateurish, but the scene of the guy with his stomach gone (pictured) is a shocker—held a bit too long but still nasty for its day. It keeps a tense atmosphere going pretty well, and the black and white camerawork is a notch above average for the genre. [DVD]

THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN (1956)

In a small Mexican village, Jimmy, an American cowboy, is co-owner of a cattle ranch with native Felipe. This doesn't sit well with Enrique who is upset that Jimmy and Felipe are undercutting his cattle prices. Hollow Mountain, at the base of which sits Jimmy and Felipe's property, is surrounded by a dangerous quicksand swamp, has never been explored, and is supposedly home to a prehistoric creature. Enrique plays on the fears of the local workers by spreading more stories about the monster after strange animal tracks are seen and odd growling noises are heard. When the workers all leave, Jimmy and Felipe hire an old drunkard, Pancho, to tend the farm; he brings with him his young son Panchito. Soon after, Enrique’s fiancée Sarita, concerned about the two, arrives to keep an eye on them, and soon after that, she and Jimmy are in one of those relationships in which they fall in love even as they bug each other. Between flirtations and arguments, and threats from Enrique, Pancho comes upon a gigantic creature in the swamp—we only see its shadow—and is never seen again. Jimmy decides it's best for all if he leaves and gives the ranch to Felipe, but Sarita's obvious feelings for Jimmy bother Enrique. Finally, an hour into this 80-minute movie, the title beast appears, a huge stop-motion dinosaur that eats a cow, then wrecks havoc in the village, leaving Jimmy to use his cowboy skills to try and vanquish the monster.

In its widescreen format, this movie looks fine—the Mexican landscape is shown to good advantage, and a scene of Jimmy and Sarita meeting in a remarkably colorful graveyard is memorable.  But if you're watching this as a monster movie, you have a lot of bland Western melodrama to sit through first. The beast is fairly effective as stop-motion monsters go, but the tedious clichéd Western-style clash between cowboy and good-for-nothing is disappointing, as is the high-pitched whining of Panchito. Guy Madison looks the part as the cowboy, though Patricia Medina is a zero as Sarita. This was based on an idea by Willis O’Brien, who worked on the original KING KONG, and the same material was re-worked a few years later (with the participation of Ray Harryhausen) in THE VALLEY OF GWANGI. [TCM]

CHAMBER OF HORRORS (1966)

It's October so it's time for a month of horror/sci-fi movies, and I've got a good one to start with. Set in 19th century Baltimore, this shocker has an effectively creepy opening scene in which Jason Cravette (Patrick O'Neal) forces a minister at gunpoint to conduct a marriage between him and a dead woman. It turns out that Cravette is the Baltimore Strangler, and not only are the police on his trail, but so are two amateur criminologists, Draco and Blount, who also run a "chamber of horrors" wax museum where they build an exhibit of the Strangler. Eventually Jason is tracked down to a brothel where he's been indulging in fantasies involving whores dressed in wedding gowns. He's tried and found guilty, but while being transported to prison on a train, he escapes by hacking off a handcuff, hand and all. After he gets a hook to replace the hand, he sets out to get revenge on everyone responsible for sending him away. A new bloody swath of death is loosed by "The Butcher of Baltimore" who, substituting a cleaver for his hook, cuts his victims up good. Can our cops and criminologists catch Cravette a second time?

This movie is known for its gimmicks, the Fear Flasher (bright lights) and Horror Horn (blaring horn) which appear just before particularly horrific scenes. They're fun, but even if you don't like such campy accoutrements, this is a must-see for fans of classic horror. It's colorful with good period sets and costumes and a fine cast. O'Neal (pictured above with his cleaver hand) had a lengthy career, mostly as a guest star on TV dramas, but this is probably his meatiest role ever. A young and handsome Wayne Rogers (later Trapper John on M*A*S*H) is a policeman, and there are nice turns by Suzy Parker, Jeanette Nolan and Marie Windsor. Cesare Danova (as Draco) and Wilfrid Hyde-White (as Blount) are not especially memorable as the wax museum guys, but they're adequate—the film was originally shot as a pilot for a TV show that would follow the adventures of these two (and their dwarf assistant Tun Tun), and at heart, this is, rather than pure horror, a detective story, albeit a bit grislier than most of the era. It's not graphic by today's standards, but a few scenes still shock, not so much by what you see but what is suggested—the dreamy but grotesque opening, the hacking off of Cravette's hand, the scene of Cravette carving up a judge with his cleaver hand. Given its origins as a TV show, the direction by Hy Averback is quite stylish. Weirdest of all is a cameo by Tony Curtis, who has one line, stares right at the camera, and is never seen again. Recommended. [DVD]

DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE (1965)

A woman named Diane goes strolling through San Francisco, oblivious to her surroundings. When she's caught in crossfire from bank robbers, she proves indestructible. At a diner, she flirts with handsome Craig Gamble, an agent for Secret Intelligence Command (SIC). But Diane, wearing only a gold bikini under her trench coat, is really a robot, built and controlled by the evil Dr. Goldfoot, who uses a small army of these sexy robots (or as Austin Powers would say decades later, "fembots") to seduce rich men and get them to sign over money, property, and power of attorney to Goldfoot. But it turns out Diane has made a mistake and she was really supposed to go after eligible bachelor Todd Armstrong. The rest of the movie has Gamble (a bumbler who's known as 00½) and Armstrong tracking down Goldfoot and his sidekick Igor—technically a zombie since he was brought back from the dead. This starts out as a James Bond parody, but it becomes a rather lazy mix of jokey references to spy, action, horror, and sci-fi movies. There's a PIT AND THE PENDULUM scene in which Vincent Price (as Goldfoot) dresses as he did in the original film, and a car chase through the hilly roads of San Francisco. Frankie Avalon is Gamble and Dwayne Hickman is Armstrong—both are nice-looking and charming but are a little lacking in the zest needed for a parody. Jack Mullaney (as Igor) and Fred Clark (as the head of SIC and Avalon's uncle) don't quite catch the proper vibe, either. Only Price, having fun as Goldfoot, gives the movie much life. The opening credits, in Claymation, were done by Art Clokey of Gumby fame, and the title song is by The Supremes—and it's rather catchy. Annette Funicello has a cameo (she's pictured in between Hickman at left and Avalon at right) [TCM]

THE COMMON LAW (1931)

In Paris, kept woman Constance Bennett leaves her older lover (Lew Cody) and sets out to make her own way in the world. Meanwhile, struggling artist Joel McCrea, though set up in a rather nice studio apartment, is being pressured by his rich family through his sister (Hedda Hopper) to give up his pipe dreams and come back to America. Bennett comes to McCrea for a job as a model and he hires her; she's a bit skittish at first when she realizes she's expected to pose in the nude, but her inhibitions quickly drop away with her clothes. When another artist (Paul Ellis) gets interested in Bennett and accuses McCrea of "keeping" her, McCrea gets furious and a fistfight is narrowly avoided. That night, McCrea and Bennett become lovers and all seems well for a time, but when he asks her to marry him and then finds out he is not her first lover, he gets furious again. They soon agree to just live together (hence, the "common law" of the title) but when Cody re-enters her life, tensions flare yet again, aided by Hopper, who thinks she can pry McCrea away from Paris. Can only marriage truly keep them together?

Well, yes, that seems to be the message here, but even though that's a very moral message, this pre-Code film could not have been released under the Production Code because even though marriage is in the offing at the end, no one is punished for their fast and loose ways. Plus, there's a bit of nudity—when Bennett poses, she is seen from afar with a sheet still covering some of her, but later at an Artists Ball, there is brief full nudity in a tableaux performance. While McCrea (pictured) and Bennett do wind up conforming by getting married, the choice not to marry is not presented as an evil or decadent one, just one that society wasn't quite ready to accept. McCrea is quite natural, but Bennett and Hopper are rather artificial and stagy—though both got better later in their careers. The supporting cast is not especially notable, although I liked Robert Williams as Sam, an drunkard friend of McCrea's. [TCM]

DEATH ON THE DIAMOND (1934)

I'm not a baseball fan, but I do like B-mysteries, and this is a good one. The St. Louis Cardinals badly need a winning season or else the manager (David Landau), deep in debt, may lose the franchise. The club is pinning its hopes for the pennant on new hotshot pitcher Robert Young. The team is slow to take to the cocky new guy (who flirts with Landau's daughter (Madge Evans), also the team's secretary), but when bribe money is found in his room—gamblers want him to throw a game—he steps up, tells the press, and proceeds to win the next game in style. Unfortunately, someone won't give up, and soon players are in danger: one is shot to death on the field, one keels over from poisoned mustard on a hot dog, and Young is shot at in his car and can't play for two weeks. Who is out the get the team? The man to whom Landau owes money? The gambler (C. Henry Gordon) who has bet against the Cardinals? The two former players hanging around the clubhouse who were fired last season for gambling? The reporter (Paul Kelly) who seems to be everywhere?

This mystery has a lot going for it. The background is a bit unusual, the team is real, the pace is fast, and the plotting is easy to follow. Young is very good in the lead and the supporting cast is a joy. Paul Kelly (pictured at left) is at his best as the brash reporter, but also fun are Ted Healy as the umpire and Nat Pendleton as the player with whom he is constantly clashing—they're at each others throats but there is affection between them, expressed in a sad scene late in the film. Other familiar faces include Joe Sawyer, Edward Brophy, and in bit parts, Ward Bond, Walter Brennan, and Mickey Rooney. The movie doesn't totally play fair as far as the solution to the mystery; the revelation of the culprit comes more or less out of nowhere (and the circumstances of his capture are a bit far-fetched). But I'm glad I ran across this little-known movie. [TCM]

TELL ME IN THE SUNLIGHT (1967)

Steve Cochran is the captain of a banana boat that frequently docks in Nassau. As he strolls through town, he stops a dirty old man from pestering a sweet young thing sitting on a park bench. He finds out she's pregnant and talks her out of a suicide attempt. That night, despite entreaties from his buddies, he goes back out alone. He sees a native boy hit by a car and helps lovely Shary Marshall (pictured below with Cochran) tend to him. Cochran walks her to her place of employment, a strip club. Later, he winds up at her apartment and they spend a chaste night—she in bed, he on the couch. It turns out she has an older admirer (Harry Franklin) who may be "keeping" her—it remains unclear exactly what their relationship is. One night while Cochran and Marshall are making out, he tells her he loves her, and she says, "Wait and tell me in the sunlight" (hence the title of the movie). When he leaves for three weeks, she comes down to see him off but Franklin is with her, leading Cochran to brood the entire time. Upon his return, Marshall plans a private celebration with a Welcome Home cake, but he never shows. When he does stop by (drunk), he throws money at her and forces himself on her. The next morning, things get sorted out between them—she's dumped Franklin and because he quit coming around to the club, she was fired—and at last he tells her he loves her…in the sunlight.

Steve Cochran not only starred in this low-budget film but directed it as well. It's difficult to say how his directing career might have turned out as he died before it was ready for release, just months after the film was shot on location in 1965; I don't know who was in charge of the final cut, but word is that Cochran's version was over two hours and the released film is under 90 minutes. Frankly, the movie has the look and feel of a soft-porn film even though it's not—there is one brief nude shot of Marshall and a couple of tame love-making scenes. The tone actually gives the movie a certain scrappy appeal. Cochran was in his late 40s and looking a little seedy, but still, he manages to come across as world-weary sexy on occasion. The rest of the cast is unexceptional, and the screenplay, co-written by Cochran, needs some help—none of the characters is especially likable or even interesting, and the conclusion is a bit anti-climactic. But the night scenes, actually shot in the streets of Nassau at night, look good in a film noir way, and Cochran occasionally goes for some artsy moments, with mixed results. There was some promise here that sadly went unrealized. As long as you're not expecting more than a rough-around-the-edges B-movie, you might enjoy this. [DVD]

CARNIVAL OF SINNERS (1943)

An avalanche strands a group of travelers in the mountains at a hotel built on the ruins of an old abbey. As they begin to exchange spooky stories to pass the time, they hear gunshots outside and a nervous one-handed man named Roland arrives, clutching a package and seeking a room. At dinner, the lights go out and mysterious prankish things happen—doors open and close, a man's nose is tweaked, a woman's ass is pinched. After realizing his package is missing, Roland tells the guests his story. Years ago, he was an aspiring artist with great ideas but little talent. A successful chef offers to sell him a talisman—a human left hand—that will give him success. Roland buys it and the chef's left hand suddenly vanishes; it turns out that the talisman is of Satanic origin, and if the owner of the hand can't sell it before he dies, he loses his soul—if he sells it, he just loses his hand. Roland has artistic success, but is followed around constantly by a strange little man who warns him that now, like the chef, he must sell the hand. Eventually, Roland believes he has found a way out of the bargain, but he must find the body of the monk who began the passing of the talisman, and he thinks it's buried beneath the hotel. And he must reunite the hand with the body—but the hand, which is in the package, is now missing.

I had never heard of this French film before TCM ran it in their Imports slot one Sunday night. It's a unique little gem, with a tone that feels like a cross between a fairy tale and the British supernatural classic DEAD OF NIGHT—a little whimsical, a little dark, and a little "shaggy dog" story. The director, Maurice Tourneur, was the father of Jacques Tourneur, who directed some of the Val Lewton classic horror films of the 40s (I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE) and the 50s classic NIGHT OF THE DEMON, and father and son share a similar style, with nice use of shadows and sets. This film, though shot during the German Occupation and probably on a low budget, looks great with atmosphere to burn. The French title, LA MAIN DU DIABLE (The Devil's Hand) is a better title, but the "Carnival" sequence near the end is reason enough to watch the whole movie: Roland (Pierre Fresnay) meets up with the spirits of all the previous owners of the hand and, in a series of expressionist tableaux-like scenes, he sees what happened to each of them. If this pops up again on TCM, catch it. [TCM]

HIGHLY DANGEROUS (1950)

Entomologist Margaret Lockwood is sent by British Intelligence to a Communist country to indentify the kinds of insects they are using in what are assumed to be experiments on germ warfare. As she prepares for her trip, she hears a secret agent show on the radio which she relates to her nephew as she puts him to bed, and, as she's doing spy work of a sort, the story sticks in her head. What seems a lark becomes, well, highly dangerous when her contact is murdered and his body left in her hotel room. The chief of police (Marius Goring), who has previously pegged her as a spy, arrests her and injects her with a truth serum, after which she begins relating the plot of the radio show as though she was the fictitious ace agent. Told she will be escorted out of the country in 24 hours, she enlists the aid of an American press agent (Dane Clark) in carrying out an outlandish plan that just might work. Some critics dismiss this British-made film as too unbelievable to be an effective spy story, but noted spy novelist Eric Ambler obviously wrote the screenplay as a near-parody of the thriller genre, and it works nicely as such, largely due to the charm and talent of Lockwood and Clark (both pictured at right). There is good support from Naunton Wayne, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and Michael Hordern. [Netflix streaming]

ELEPHANT BOY (1937)

If this film is still remembered today, it's because it is the film that introduced Sabu, the shirtless charming boy from India who became, for a time in the 1940s, a star in British movies playing, well, shirtless charming Indian boys. Here, at the age of 13, he plays a boy named Toomai who takes loving care of Kala Nag, his father's elephant. Supposedly, the wild elephants have headed north for a legendary 100-year herding and British official Petersen (Walter Hudd) puts out a call for elephants to be used in an attempt to find them. Kala Nag is chosen, and Petersen is so charmed by Toomai's antics that he lets him come along. The older men tell Toomai he'll never really be a hunter until he sees elephants dancing, an old wives' tale that no one believes except Toomai. Along the way, a marauding tiger kills Toomai's father, and the man who gets Kala Nag abuses the elephant, which leads Kala Nag to turn violent. The men decide the elephant should be put to death, so Toomai runs away with Kala Nag, finds the wild elephants, and even sees them "dance." Petesen commutes the elephant's death sentence and Toomai is hailed as Toomai of the Elephants. Sabu does come off as a natural actor and is pretty much the only reason to watch this slow-paced movie. The very first scene is Sabu delivering a lengthy monologue to the camera and he is very difficult to understand; luckily, once the action starts, he gets better. Sadly, there isn't very much action; the elephant shenanigans are fun to watch, but too much of the movie consists of long draggy dialogue scenes. The politics of the story, with the British as the worthy masters and the natives as unruly children, is a bit much to take these days. It's fun to see a young Wilfrid Hyde-White as the commissioner. [DVD]

NIGHT AFTER NIGHT (1932)

George Raft buys an old house on Park Avenue and turns it into a speakeasy. It becomes so successful, other shady characters try to pressure him into giving it up.  In the meantime, Raft is taking lessons in how to be a gentleman from older schoolteacher Alison Skipworth, partly to deal with his clientele, and partly to impress one specific woman, a socialite (Constance Cummings), who comes to the speakeasy alone every night. When he finally gets up the nerve to talk to her, he finds out that she grew up in that house before her family lost their money. She is currently being kept by the rich Louis Calhern, whom she intends to marry. Also on the scene:  Raft's current mistress (Wynne Gibson) and his former mistress (Mae West), who happens to return to the speakeasy the same night that Raft has arranged to have dinner with Cummings (with Skipworth along as a sort of chaperone). Despite some mixed signals, Cummings eventually falls for Raft, and he ends up getting the girl in a climax that involves other bootleggers shooting up the house in an attempt to get Raft to give up his property.

This movie's reputation is based on the fact that it’s Mae West's first film, though she's strictly in a supporting role. West (pictured with Raft) is quite amusing, giving the movie a needed jolt of energy about halfway through—when she enters the club, the coat check girl says, "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!" and West delivers her famous line, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie!" In most of her later roles, West is languorous, almost lethargic, as though she's acting in slow motion, but here she's brisk and lively, and it's great fun to see her that way. But the film is worth watching even when West isn't on screen. Raft, who is not one of my favorite actors, does a fine job here, much more likeable than usual. Skipworth is great fun, especially in a scene in which West tells her she should become a member of her profession—Skipworth assumes she's a prostitute, but she really operates a beauty salon. Cummings is OK early on, but not terribly believable when her character acquires more depth, though she's good in a scene in which she smashes up Raft's room in a fit of rage. [DVD]

THE THIEF (1952)

An apartment in the middle of the night. A phone rings… and rings and rings. Ray Milland wakes up but does not answer it. Instead he gets up and heads out into the streets where he makes contact with Martin Gabel. Gabel drops a package and continues walking while Milland picks it up. It turns out that Milland, a nuclear scientist, is a spy who has been ordered to take microfilm photos of top-secret documents and pass them along though a network of spies. He continues letting his phone ring and making covert contact with the other spies, but eventually, he winds up on an FBI watch list and gets into some big trouble on top of the Empire State Building.

The gimmick of this noir-looking thriller (lots of shadowy city streets well photographed by Sam Leavitt) is that it is a modern-era silent movie; that is, though it has a musical score and various sounds, there is no dialogue, not even title cards, as no one speaks. It's interesting but it gets old fast, and there seems to be no thematic reason for the silence; just, as I noted, a gimmick. Some stretches are compelling (a scene in a library, for example, and most of the nighttime street scenes), some are tedious (the repetitive scenes of the phone ringing). Milland does a nice job, and as a What's My Line fan, I enjoyed seeing Martin Gabel (married to Arlene Francis) in a substantive role. Rita Gam has a brief appearance as a potential femme fatale, but she's really just a tease. There is some interesting camerawork and nice visual compositions within shots, but overall it was a slog to get through. 90 minutes is way too long—at an hour, it might have worked better. The picture is from a dream sequence, featuring Gable at the bottom, superimposed over Milland's face. [DVD]

WOMAN TIMES SEVEN (1967)

1967 was right smack in the middle of a boom time for two movie genres: the anthology movie featuring several related but separate stories in one film (BLACK SABBATH, BOCCACCIO ’70, THE DECAMERON) and the sex farce (KISS ME STUPID, GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN, BOB AND CAROL AND TED AND ALICE). This movie, set in and filmed on location in Paris, combines both, with the added gimmick of having one woman, Shirley MacLaine, appear as the sexy star in all seven of the stories. As with most anthology films, this is a mixed bag. The first story plays like a Laugh-In skit as a man (Peter Sellers) flirts with a widow during her husband's funeral.  Next, as "Teresa," MacLaine finds her husband in bed with another woman and gets advice that night from a group of hookers. In the final story, MacLaine is "Jeanne," a married woman flattered to be followed through the streets all day by a handsome young man (Michael Caine) who, we discover, has a different motive for his actions than she thinks.

Most of the individual stories run about 15 minutes, and some feel padded even at that length. One story, "Eve," about female jealousy over clothes, is silly and irritating. As "Edith," MacLaine, whose husband (Lex Barker, above right with MacLaine) is a novelist, becomes jealous of his latest female creation and goes a bit nutty trying to get his attention focused back on her. MacLaine is fun is this bit, but it does go on too long. Even the most interesting (and sexy) story, in which MacLaine plays "Linda," feels too long: Linda is a translator at a scientific conference; though she seems a little stodgy, she attracts the attention of two men, a young Scotsman (Clinton Greyn) and a slightly older Italian (Vittorio Gassman), both of whom she invites back to her apartment that night for drinks and readings from T.S. Eliot—she has a thing about the mind/body split and implies that her current boyfriend, who is out of town, isn't completely satisfactory to her. I assumed this bit would be one long tease to a cop-out ending, but actually, the story ends with her deciding to try a ménage à trois with the men. Greyn and Gassman (pictured with MacLaine) do well with underwritten characters, as does Alan Arkin in a story about a suicide pact gone awry. Other stars include Anita Ekberg, Rosanno Brazzi, and Robert Morley, but aside from MacLaine, no one else gets much of a chance to shine. Still, MacLaine is good and, even though the sex farce aspects date the movie a bit, it's not difficult to sit through. [DVD]