VIY (1967)

In 19th-century Russia, a group of seminarians are released for what seems to be the equivalent of spring break. Though the rector tries to preach placid behavior, they are clearly full of piss and vinegar. As they travel that night through rural fields, three of them get lost. They come upon a farmhouse where a very old woman they refer to as Granny reluctantly lets them stay. Two of them sleep inside but one, the attractive but frat-boyish Khoma, has to sleep in the barn. In the night, Granny comes to Khoma and starts groping him, but when he resists, she jumps on his back, riding him like a horse until they levitate and start flying through the air. When they land, he pushes her to the ground and beats her violently, assuming she's a witch, and afterwards her unconscious body transforms into that of a voluptuous young woman. Khoma races back to the seminary where he is told the next day that he has been requested to conduct ritual prayers for the healing of a rich merchant's dying daughter. Sure enough, the young woman (referred to only as a "pannochka," or young unmarried woman) is the one Khoma has beaten, and she dies just before he arrives. The merchant asks him to stay and sit vigil alone for three nights of ritual prayers by her body in a barn-like chapel on the merchant's property. He tries to get out of the obligation but because the woman asked for him by name, the merchant insists. The first night, he stands nervously at a small pulpit and prays, getting more frantic when he sees a tear of blood on the corpse's cheek. Then the candles blow out and the witch rises out of her coffin. Khoma draws a holy chalk circle around him into which she cannot enter. The second night, the coffin itself flies up in the air and the witch curses Khoma by turning his hair white. The next morning, Khoma begs to be relieved of his job, but the merchant, now convinced by Khoma's stories that his daughter did indeed befriend Satan in her witchcraft ways, insists that Khoma stay for the third night so she might find redemption. But the third night winds up being the worst for Khoma as a parade of creatures and demons infests the chapel. Will he be able to hold to his sanity, or his life, to face another dawn?

This is a wild little gem, in Russian and only 75 minutes long. It doesn't look or feel like a movie from more than fifty years ago; indeed, except for the fact that the special effects are not CGI, it could pass for a fairly recent production. The colorful sets and effects are occasionally a bit artificial looking, but for me, that just added to the unique atmosphere of folk horror and fantasy. The Nikolai Gogol story this is based on was pawned off as folklore, but it appears to have been completely the work of Gogol's imagination. Still, it very much feels like an authentic folk story, though if there is a lesson or moral to the story, it's ambiguous at best (be nice to old ladies?). Though there are several actors and roles, this feels like a one-man show, carried very well by Leonid Kuravlyov as Khoma (pictured). If I'm not mistaken, he is in virtually every scene of the movie and his doofish befuddlement which turns to fear is conveyed well throughout. Near the end, he tries to escape the merchant's land but, as in The Blair Witch Project and episodes of The Prisoner, he winds up right back where he started from. It is said that the original story inspired Mario Bava's classic film BLACK SABBATH. The YouTube print is of the Blu-Ray restoration and it looks great. A little gem for Halloween night. [YouTube]

HAND OF DEATH (1962)

Mike the mailman is driving down a rural route and passes a small house with several dead sheep lying on the ground. He stops to investigate and as soon as he enters the yard, he falls to the ground. Two men in hazmat suits come out of the house and take the mailman in and resuscitate him. Scientist Alex (John Agar) and his grad student assistant Carlos tell Mike that they are conducting military experiments with a knockout gas made from cactus derivatives. When they walk Mike back outside, the sheep are up and alive. Later, Alex goes to visit his mentor Dr. Ramsey to tell him about his success. The nerve gas will paralyze its victims, then hypnotize them to follow commands. Alex thinks this is a humane way to reduce wars; Ramsey is less enthusiastic but urges him to keep working. Meanwhile, Alex's girlfriend Carol is also not happy about the gas, but especially not happy about the slow speed at which their relationship is developing. Back at the rural house, Carlos worries that Alex is moving too quickly, getting in over his head, and sure enough, when Alex knocks over a beaker filled with the gas in liquid form, he gets some on his hands. He has a seizure and passes out, as visions of beakers and mice race through his head (pictured at right). The next morning, his arms are covered with what look like dark burn marks, and when Carlos touches him, he collapses and dies. Soon Alex's entire body is encrusted with dark scabs (he looks exactly like the Thing from the Fantastic Four) and he discovers his touch remains deadly. Ramsey and his assistant Tom work on an antidote, but once you've tampered in God's domain, it's difficult to patch things up.

This one-hour B-film was once thought lost, and honestly it's no neglected masterpiece, but it has an outsized impact on some of us baby boomer monster movie fans because an image of the Thing-ish monster was published in some of the monster movie magazines, wearing a hat and trenchcoat, and I've always remembered that picture. John Agar is known for being a bit wooden in his roles, and because of that, we don't work up much empathy for his character (also because we don't know anything much about him or his relationship with Carol). But really, that's OK here, because it's the monster we're waiting for. The opening scene is fairly effective, though a bit too short to really set up the creepy mood it should. The guy who plays Carlos, John Alonzo, went on to become a respected cinematographer on movies like Chinatown and Scarface. Stephen Dunne (Tom, Ramsey's assistant who plays a part in the finale) looks and acts a bit like Gene Nelson (Will Parker in Oklahoma!). Paula Raymond suffices as Carol but her character feels inserted because they figured they needed a damsel in distress. Butch Patrick, who went on to play Eddie Munster on TV, has a short scene as a menaced boy on the beach. There's an OK score with some theremin music here and there. Because it's fairly slow paced and predictable, it's hard to recommend this except to fans of early 60s monster movies. [YouTube]

THE SPACE CHILDREN (1958)

The government has set up a mobile home park on the California coast to house the families of workers who are engaged in a top secret mission: to build a new missile called the Thunderer that can send an atomic payload into space. Dave Brewster's kids, Bud and Ken, see a streak of light in the sky and later, while playing on the beach with some other kids, see a ray of light shoot down from the sky to a small cave where it seems to deposit something before it vanishes. The kids find a brain-like blob which glows and pulsates and communicates telepathically with Bud. The creature becomes something of a protector to the children. When Dave thinks Bud is lying about the blob and aggressively grabs his son's arm, Dave's arm goes numb. Tim, another kid, is attacked by his abusive drunken stepfather, who winds up dead in his trailer. It soon becomes clear that the alien wants to stop the Thunderer launch and is using the children (and, perhaps, Dave, the only adult who figures out what's going on) to achieve its goal. The film's director, Jack Arnold, made a number of classic 50s sci-fi films (TARANTULA, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE). This doesn't quite have the impact of his other films, partly because of what must have been a very low budget—mostly filmed on a beach and in trailers, and skimpy on special effects. Still, its unusual focus makes it interesting: children are the main characters but it's not a children's movie—Village of the Damned would expand on this idea two years later. Individually, only Michel Ray (as Bud) and Johnny Washbrook (as Tim) get any real characterization, and adults get most of the lines, but it's the actions and fate of the group of children that interest us most. Among the adults, Adam Williams (as Dave) comes off fairly realistically as a distracted dad—he's also one of the least movie-star-looking actors to get a lead role in a 50s movie. Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester on The Addams Family) plays another dad, and Russell Johnson (the Professor on Gilligan's Island) is the drunken stepdad. Also recognizable are Raymond Bailey (Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) and Ty Hardin (hunky TV Western star of Bronco). I'm glad I don't give star ratings with my reviews because I wouldn't know what to give this one. It's short (a bit over an hour) with fairly threadbare production values, but on its own terms, it works well enough. [Amazon Prime]

THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRE (1967)

We first see Nelson Orion (Martin Landau), architect and amateur investigator of paranormal activities, wandering moodily at twilight down the beach below his very modern house up on a cliff. Meanwhile, in another house somewhere nearby, Henry Mandor, rich but blind, stands by a window waiting for his wife Vivia who is returning from a weeks-long business trip. When she returns, she finds Henry nervous and fearful. His late mother is buried in the family vault with a phone near the coffin, a private line attached to the Mandor mansion, which she had put in because of a morbid fear of premature burial. Since Vivia left, Henry has been plagued by calls on that phone in the middle of the night from a crying woman. The servants abandoned him and the house is run by Paulina (Judith Anderson, at right), a new and somewhat menacing-looking housekeeper (picture an older Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca). Nelson is called to get to the bottom of the apparent haunting. The narrative points in a couple of different directions. We strongly suspect Paulina is behind this because we see her lurking in the family crypt. But at one point, Vivia sees what seems like an actual ghost, blood-spattered and moaning (effectively creepy, pictured below). There is also some momentarily confusing backstory about a ghostly occurrence in Mexico (featuring the title ghost) involving a poisoning death that Nelson investigated some time ago and that may not have been wrapped up satisfactorily. More backstory: Henry's father went mad on the night of his birth and Henry fears the same fate. I kept yelling at the screen, "For God’s sake, just unplug the phone!" But that would have made for an awfully short movie. In fact, we discover by the halfway point that Paulina has a branch-off phone line from the crypt in her room, but there is more than that to the ultimate solution of this haunting. It turns out there actually is a ghost, but Nelson must discover who it is and who it is haunting. The ending is satisfying even if I'm not sure I could explain it in detail to anyone.

The internet has a fair amount of information (and misinformation) about this movie: it was originally shot as an hour-long pilot for a CBS show focusing on the Nelson Orion character, but it was not picked up for a series. There are newspaper accounts from 1965 that indicate it was seen as a possible mid-season replacement, but despite some rumors, the pilot doesn’t seem to have been broadcast nationally. A couple of years later, it was padded out with twenty more minutes of footage that had been trimmed from the pilot. But though IMDb says it was released in Japan, there's no information about an American release. It was thought lost for some time, but now we have it on DVD along with its TV version, titled The Haunted. It plays out like a TV movie but it's beautifully shot in eerie black & white by Conrad Hall who later won Oscars for shooting Butch Cassidy and American Beauty. Landau is nicely low-key, coming off like a modest playboy-wannabe beachcomber type, balancing out the slight over-the-topness of Diane Baker as Vivia and Judith Anderson as Paulina—much as I respect Anderson, she's a bit much here, mostly due to some unfortunately overdone makeup. Tom Simcox is believable as the beleaguered Henry, and Nellie Burt, as Nelson's housekeeper, has a couple of nice bantering scenes with Landau. There is one very odd scene in which Landau chats with a sexy young woman on the beach and asks her to meet up with him later, but we never see her again. Maybe that was pilot footage that was setting her up as a recurring character, but it's weird. Directed and written by Joseph Stefano of Outer Limits fame. The TV version is shorter and has a very different, less downbeat ending. No masterpiece perhaps, but interesting and atmospheric. [The audio commentaries on both versions start out well but, as with most Kino Lorber commentaries, become repetitive, off-topic, and tedious.] [DVD]

THE POSSESSED (1977)

Father Kevin (James Farentino, at right) is an alcoholic priest who is beginning to show signs of his struggles even when holding mass. While impaired, he crashes his car and dies, but is brought back to life by a supernatural force that tells him he can redeem himself by seeking out and fighting evil. Meanwhile, at the Helen Page School for Girls in Salem, Oregon, strange incidents of what seem to be spontaneous combustion are occurring regularly: a dorm room is burnt up, a piece of paper in a typewriter catches on fire. The headmistress Louise (Joan Hackett) is dealing with stress from financial problems. Her stepsister Ellen (Claudette Nevins) is a teacher whose daughter Weezie is enrolled at the school and is often on the brink of getting into trouble, even having a secret fling with Paul, an instructor (Harrison Ford), who also flirts with Louise. When one student's legs are burnt badly while she's giving a speech, the cops get involved as does Father Kevin—it's never explained whether he's flesh and blood, or a supernatural being, or even what he does for a living anymore, though he suspects that a possession is happening and an exorcism may be in order. 

This was made a few years after The Exorcist when possession movies were the rage, but it was made for television so the gore and horror had to be toned down. The various occurrences of fire are mostly as explicit as things get, but the fire effects are well done, especially one near the end involving a swimming pool in flames. Though the ending leaves things with the priest's character vague—he basically just vanishes—this has the feel of a TV pilot in which Father Kevin would have solved a possession case each week. Farentino, darkly but quirkily handsome, underplays his role (some call him wooden, but I prefer taciturn) and still manages to seem fairly charismatic. Hackett and Nevins look enough alike that I was getting them mixed up for the first half-hour of the movie. It’s fun to see Harrison Ford, weeks before the release of Star Wars would change his life, playing a role not dissimilar from Indiana Jones. I suspect his character is supposed to be a bit slimy and unsympathetic, but his youthful charm comes through to add a bit of complexity to the part. Diana Scarwid (the older Christina in Mommie Dearest) and Ann Dusenberry are quite good as two of the students. Eugene Roche is the cop. Not necessarily one to hunt down but a solid example of the 70s made-for-TV horror film. [YouTube]

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967)

In London, a subway redevelopment project runs into a snag: the discovery of a five million year old skull of what the newspapers call an underground ape man. Dr. Roney (James Donald), a paleontologist, is called in to investigate. Soon they find a large metallic object which they fear could be an unexploded German bomb from the Blitz so the military is called in. Prof. Quatermass (Andrew Keir), who works on a national missile planning committee, goes to the site with his assistant Barbara Judd (Barbara Shelley) and immediately stirs up friction with Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) from the Army, who is trying to muscle his way into Quatermass' missile work. The metallic object, with a surface harder than diamond, turns out to be a hollow cylinder and another skull is found in it. Could this be an ancient spacecraft which once held living beings? Quatermass and Judd hear that an abandoned house across the street from the subway station is haunted, and they discover that, over the years, whenever the ground in the area has been disturbed, strange sightings occur. Soon, workers are having similar sightings of creepy life forms darting about. While a workman tries unsuccessfully to drill through the metal, a "freak vibration" is set off causing all in the area to have mini-seizures. Next, they find dead bodies of insectoid creatures, like giant locusts. Quatermass and Roney theorize that these are Martians who (if I've got this right) were trying to colonize the Earth in the altered form of an ape-like creature who eventually evolved into man. The locusts, who have horns, may be in our "race memory," having become the image of what we call the devil. Breen thinks the whole thing is some kind of weird Nazi propaganda and the government opens the excavation to the public. This is about where the plot went a bit wonky for me. Through some electronic device, race memory visions of the Martians can be viewed on a video monitor. Some people become possessed by the alien forces which seem to be emanating from the spaceship and they start behaving threateningly toward others who are not possessed and are therefore "different." Then a huge demonic vision of a locust Martian towers over London, leaving Quatermass, Judd and Roney to try and fight the madness.

This is an unusual movie, a mix of sci-fi, horror, mythology and maybe mysticism. There's a lot of backstory you can read on the Internet about the Quatermass series, three films which were adapted from three BBC TV serials. Suffice it to say that Prof. Quatermass is a somewhat gruff scientist involved in a British space program and each film was about some kind of contact with extraterrestrial life. This is often considered the best of the batch: it's the only one in color, it seems to have had a pretty decent budget, and Andrew Keir is usually judged to be a better Quatermass than American actor Brian Donlevy who played him in the first two—Keir certainly gives the character more dimension than Donlevy. Though I don't think anyone would call this a character-driven drama, the four main actors do very nice jobs giving their characters some roundness and fleshing out their relationships with each other. If there is a bad guy figure, it's Breen, standing in for the government, but as embodied by Julian Glover, even he doesn't come off as exactly villainous. Roney is a bit stiff and formal, but that’s how he should be and James Donald makes him likable enough. Barbara Shelley makes Judd compelling and full-blooded without going into caricature, and Keir seems perfect as the in-control but very human Quatermass. 

Other actors who have their moments include Duncan Lamont as a workman who is the first one affected by the Martian vibrations, Maurice Good as a military man, and Robert Morris as an assistant scientist ("cute guy with glasses" is how I described him in my notes; pictured at right). The plot details are quite fuzzy; even on a second viewing, I wasn't always sure what was happening in terms of machines and thought waves and race memory and telekinesis. But the idea that life on earth might have been seeded by aliens is interesting, and was echoed the next year in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a bit talky but the last twenty minutes or so are full of action. The Blu-ray print is clear and gorgeous, and there is a very good audio commentary by film historian Bruce G. Hallenbeck. Another commentary by Constantine Nasr and film historian Steve Haberman is OK but gets repetitious and focuses a bit too much on comparing this film to the original TV serial. Recommended. Original American title: Five Million Years to Earth. Pictured at top are Keir and Glover. [Blu-ray]

FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967)

The time: the 1800s. The place: rural England. A boy named Hans witnesses the execution by guillotine of his father for murder. Some twenty years later, Hans is a young man working with Baron Frankenstein and the disgraced alcoholic Dr. Hertz on experiments to revive the dead. We see Hans and Hertz pulling Frankenstein out of a freezing cold trunk where his dead body had been for an hour. Frankenstein returns to life none the worse for the wear. He is most excited by what this says about metaphysical death and the persistence of the soul, and wants to carry out more experiments. Now (hang on) he wants to perfect his invention that can create an impenetrable force field so he can capture the soul of a recently dead person and transfer it into another body, and that person's soul would remain alive in that body. Got it? Meanwhile, at a local inn, Hans has a thing for Christina, the disfigured and crippled daughter of Kleve, the innkeeper. One night, a trio of obnoxious dandies come to the inn for drinks and spend their time insulting Christina. Hans, upset that Kleve doesn't do more to get rid of them, fights them for Christina's honor, leaving one, Johann, with a knife wound across his head. That night, while Hans and Christina sleep together, the three dandies return to the inn to vandalize the place. Kleve catches them and they end up killing him. The next day, the police, knowing that Hans was upset with Kleve, arrest him for murder, saying, "Like father, like son." He won't disgrace Christina by using her as his alibi so, in short order, he is guillotined, she kills herself, and both bodies wind up at the Frankenstein place. His soul is captured, her body is brought back to life, and after extensive surgery to make her look beautiful, Hans's soul is put in Christina's body. Since she has Hans' memories, she soon goes on a rampage to kill the dandy hooligans who started all this trouble.

As Hammer horror films of the era go, this one is maybe a notch above average, mostly due to the weird body/soul storyline. For most of the movie, Peter Cushing plays the baron as more metaphysically curious than deranged, though how the capture and transfer of souls is accomplished is left unclear. He's not so much evil as an egotistical ass. There is no staggering monster, but a young and voluptuous woman who is the creation (I guess) of Frankenstein. The title would seem to promise a Bride of Frankenstein plotline, but the resurrected Christina is not stitched together from parts, but one whole body. It should be called Frankenstein Resurrected Woman, I suppose. Maybe because Cushing doesn't get to go into blood and thunder mode until the end, he seems a little restrained. Better are Robert Morris as Hans, Susan Denberg as Christina, who does a nice job of switching personalities from mousy to sexy after she is "created," and Thorley Walters as Hertz. Derek Fowlds is successful at making Johann, the main dandy, thoroughly hateful. I found this more interesting than truly compelling, but worth watching for Hammer fans. Pictured are Denberg and Morris. [Blu-ray]

THE SHADOW OF THE CAT (1961)

Ella Venable is sitting alone at night in a room in her mansion, reciting "The Raven" to her beloved cat Tabitha. The old rich woman is set upon by her brother Walter, her butler Andrew, and her maid Clara. They kill her and bury her body in a swampy woods near her estate. Walter, also old and infirm, eventually calls the police to report that Ella is missing; the plan is that, when Ella is declared dead, the three killers will present a counterfeit will that leaves her estate to them instead of to her niece Beth. But we see that the cat witnesses the murder (shots from the cat's point of view are distorted and stretched) and begins slipping in and out of view of the killers, as though taunting them. Their varied attempts to get rid of or kill the cat all end in failure. Meanwhile, a police inspector arrives with his friend, reporter Michael Latimer. They are on the premises looking for Ella, but when Beth, the niece, arrives, Michael becomes very protective of her (yes, they soon fall in love). Walter, trapped in a cellar with the cat seemingly stalking him, has a heart attack and is laid up in bed, so he calls on his brother Edgar, Edgar's son Jacob, and his wife Louise to come help look for the genuine will so it can be destroyed, and also to get rid of the cat. From here, the film takes a predictable turn as attempts to kill the cat tend to go astray and result in the death of the would-be cat killer. But what about that pesky will?

This Hammer horror film is less well known than most of their 1960s output because for some reason, it was officially released by a one-shot company, BHP, and issued in the U.S. by Universal. Nevertheless, it has most of the Hammer hallmarks—an imposing mansion, gloomy rooms, a string of deaths (not graphic), and several people known for their Hammer work, such as Andre Morell (top billed as Walter), Barbara Shelley (Beth), Freda Jackson (Clara), and director John Gilling. I watched this because the Criterion Channel aired it as part of a Cat Film collection, and in that context, this is decent viewing, although the use of the cat leaves something to be desired. Bunkie, the real name of the cat who plays Tabitha, is cute but almost too cute to seem really menacing. In shots of her watching and stalking the villains, she looks like she's placidly waiting for someone to pet her. Occasionally you see her being chased, but she never really looks vengeful, or even irritated. The actors are all pretty much low-energy B-level performers, except for the old pro Barbara Shelley who works up some chemistry with Conrad Phillips (the reporter) and Alan Wheatley who is low-key but effective as the inspector. The gloomy gothic black & white cinematography is also a plus. A big minus is the absolutely awful discordant score by Mikis Theodorakis (Zorba the Greek, Z). The opening 10 minutes or so are made very irritating by the noisy and shrill background music, though it gets more tolerable as it goes on. [Criterion Channel]

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957)

In a prison cell, Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is awaiting execution for murder and we see his story in flashback as he relates it to a priest. After the death of his father, young Victor inherits a fortune (as well as an expectation that he will eventually marry his cousin Elizabeth) and hires Paul Krempe as a tutor. Over the years, Paul becomes a scientific mentor to Victor, and aids him in his attempts to revive life in dead animals, eventually bringing a dead puppy back to life. But when Victor decides he wants to create life from scratch, Paul begins distancing himself from Victor's work. The middle part of the story will be familiar to horror fans: Victor robs graves, pieces together a being (Christopher Lee), kills a scientific genius and steals his brain, damages the brain, and finally animates his monster during an electrical storm. In the midst of all this, Elizabeth returns after years away, expecting to marry Victor, though for his part, Victor is not only fully consumed with his work, but also enjoying a fling on the side with his buxom maid Justine. Soon he loses control of the monster and Paul kills it, but Victor resurrects it and when Justine reports she is pregnant, threatening his plan to marry Elizabeth, he has the monster kill her. Things go downhill quickly.

Though not Hammer Studio's first foray into horror, the genre that would make the studio famous, this film is known for other firsts: the first reboot of the Universal horror films of the classic era; the first star teaming of Hammer stalwarts Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing; the first horror film directed by Terence Fisher who would go on to helm over a dozen other horror films, mostly for Hammer. It was also a hit that kickstarted both the reboots of Dracula, mummies and werewolves and the future direction of the studio. The future template for Hammer films is present: settings in villages of the past, gloomy houses, sexy strumpets, and some blood and gore, not nearly as much as would eventually become the norm in the 1970s, but much more than is found in the classic era films. Lee as the monster is more brutish and faster moving than Karloff was in the 1930s, and in order to avoid any legal problems with Universal, Hammer made the make-up very different, and it's quite effective (pictured at left). Cushing as Frankenstein is not sympathetic or even particularly interesting. Honestly, for as good as those two eventually got, there isn't much sign here that they would become horror superstars. Hazel Court as Elizabeth is fine, though her character is a bit of a cold fish. Paul Urquhart (Paul Krempe) is the only truly sympathetic character. I've always found it interesting that in the realm of pop culture, it's the Universal movies that have become the ur-texts for horror movies rather than the original works by Shelley (Frankenstein) and Stoker (Dracula). This movie follows the 1931 film rather than the novel. And it's this movie that provides the inspiration for the visuals of the scene of creation in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Certainly still watchable. [DVD]

NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT (1967)

In England it's wintertime, but offshore on the island of Fara, the villagers are struggling with a record heat wave that doesn't even cool off at night. Cars are overheating and telephone lines are filled with static. At an inn called the Swan, a gruff and secretive man named Hanson (Christopher Lee) goes out in the woods and sets up cameras that will snap pictures when triggered. The owners of the inn are author Jeff Callum and his wife Frankie. Jeff is struggling to come up with another bestseller and has hired a secretary. When she arrives from the mainland, she turns out to be Angela, a former mistress of Jeff's. Things went badly between them, but she's determined to reignite their affair. Jeff feels the pull but resists until Angela threatens to tell Frankie about their past (though Frankie already has her suspicions). Angela's arrival during this heat wave piques the lustful drives of young bar regular Tinker. The local doctor (Peter Cushing) is at as much of a loss as anyone else to explain the heat. Then people start hearing a high-pitched whining noise, often preceding phone blackouts or exploding televisions. A tramp, poking around one of Hanson's cameras, hears the whine and is burned to death in the woods. Sheep start dying, also from burns. One man burns to death while driving at night. Eventually, the enigmatic Hanson shares his theory: aliens looking for a new planet to colonize have traveled here in the form of radio waves, then take on substance as they try to heat up the atmosphere to a temperature of their liking. They are attracted to light and they drain energy sources, but Hanson, Callum, and the doctor are determined to find an alien weakness and drive off the invasion.

This was originally released in the United States under the much more interesting title ISLAND OF THE BURNING DAMNED. Unfortunately, that title conjures up expectations that this film is not equipped to meet. Despite some potential in the story, budget limitations severely hurt this film. It’s a very talky movie which spends too much time on the soap-opera melodramatics of the love triangle, though all three actors (Patrick Allen as the author, Sarah Lawson as his wife, and Jane Merrow as his mistress) are fine. Kenneth Cope brings some life to the character of Tinker who, maddened by the heat, assaults Angela and is eventually offed by the aliens. William Lucas and Thomas Heathcote are good as secondary characters. But the two biggest names in the cast, Lee and Cushing, are rather bland, and are actually supporting characters in terms of plot (especially Cushing who only gets a handful of scenes before joining much of the rest of the cast as a victim of the aliens). For most of the film, we don't see the aliens, just the whining noise, a really bright light, and the victims clutching their faces and screaming as they die. When the aliens are revealed, they are huge disappointments. Hollywood B-sci-fi movies of the 60s had better aliens than these, glowing blobs that just lie on the floor and pulse. Despite attempts to make the heated atmosphere feel real (it was filmed in the winter), it never really does. Characters are given huge sweat stains on their clothes, but they look like huge stains of glycerin and, except when being attacked by the aliens, no cast member ever really looks uncomfortably warm, let alone hot. The first time I watched this, I kept napping on and off the whole time, so I rewatched it a week later, and only fell into a nap once. If you decide to watch this one, have plenty of black coffee or Coca-Cola on hand. Pictured are Patrick Allen and Christopher Lee. [YouTube]

EEGAH (1962)

As the credits roll, we hear beatnik jazz music as the camera pans past several mummified bodies in a cave. Cut to nighttime in what looks to be a California suburb on the edge of a desert. Roxy (Marilyn Manning) leaves a dress shop and stops at a gas station where her boyfriend Tom (Arch Hall Jr.) works. They make plans to meet at a country club party and she heads off for the club. On a desert road, Roxy suddenly sees a giant bearded man dressed in a caveman outfit (Richard Kiel), standing in the middle of the road holding a dead deer. He tries to beat her with the deer carcass but when Tom comes pulling up behind her, the giant is scared away. At the party, people don't believe her story but the next day, she and Tom and her father Robert (William Watters) head out to the desert and find huge human footprints. Robert hires a helicopter to take him up to Shadow Mountain to investigate. There he comes face to face with the giant, who drags him back to his cave (the one from the credits with the mummies). The next day, Tom and Roxy take a dune buggy out to the desert to look for Robert who doesn't show up at his appointed meeting place. The two spend the night in the desert and the next morning, the giant (who winds up being called Eegah for the guttural common utterance he frequently makes) spirits Roxy off to his cave. Eegah doesn't seem to be dangerous, and he frequently talks to the mummies, who Robert figures out are his long-dead family. Eegah seems to be the last surviving caveman. He feeds his new friends, lets Roxy shave him, and brings her flowers, but eventually Tom finds and frees them. Using a cloth with Roxy's scent on it, Eegah follows the three back to town where he eventually disrupts a country club pool party. Roxy is sympathetic to the caveman, but the climax is a variation on the King Kong ending in which "beauty killed the beast."

This drive-in B-film has a reputation as one of the worst movies of all time, but I have a fondness for it based on my history with it. It came out when I was 6 or 7 when I was just getting interested in monster movies and I loved the scary ads that ran on TV for it with a voice intoning "Eegah!" One night when I had drifted off to sleep on the couch, my mom woke me by whispering "Eegah" in my face. I woke up screaming. My poor mom didn't think I would be affected like that, but it's a memory that is vivid to this day, some sixty years later. I didn't get to see the movie until my college days, and by that time I was more interested in the male lead, Arch Hall Jr., who I thought was a cute blond surfer-type. Nowadays, I tend to agree with the online reviewer who says Hall looks like "Michael J. Pollard hit by a shovel," but he still has his cute moments, and though his acting would never win any awards, he fits the teeny-bopper B-lead role just right. Hall apparently had ambitions to be a pop singer so he sings some songs here, not terribly well, but really no worse than the average non-celeb singing you would hear in a 60s beach movie. Oddly, though he sings them to Roxy, one song is called "Vickie" and one is called "Valerie." Go figure. Manning (pictured at right with Hall) is a serviceable damsel in distress; she's not exactly good but not the worst I've seen. (I'm doing lots of damning with faint praise.) Watters, who plays her father, is actually Arch Hall Sr., who also produced, wrote and directed under a pseudonym. Like his son, he hits his marks and says his lines with varying degrees of conviction, and we'll say no more. Eegah himself, 7 foot tall Richard Kiel (pictured at top), went on to pop culture fame as the villain Jaws in a couple of James Bond movies. His only dialogue consists of saying "eegah" and other grunted nonsense syllables, but he does look menacing enough most of the time to be believable as a scary caveman. (More faint praise.) This is not a very good movie, and it deserves the MST3K treatment it got, but there are certainly worse ones out there, and bad movie fans will like it. I might even try to dig up a couple of other Arch Hall Jr. movies. [YouTube]

DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965)

In England, five men in business suits board a train compartment and get settled in for their trip to the town of Bradley. At the last minute, a sixth traveler joins them, Dr. Schreck, a little disheveled, with bushy eyebrows and wearing a long black coat. As the trip begins, the men converse and discover that Schreck (whose name, it is noted, means fear or terror) has a tarot deck which he says can predict the future. He then proceeds to do a reading for each man as five vignettes play out. In the first, an architect named Dawson (Neil McCallum) is asked by a rich woman to plan out some structural changes in an old house he formerly owned. Breaking down a wall, he discovers the coffin of Cosmo Valdemar, a previous owner who claimed that the Dawsons stole the house from him and said he would return from the dead to reclaim the house. Dawson is not a believer, until a servant girl is killed, perhaps by a wolf, and the blood trail leads to the coffin. Soon enough, Dawson will believe. In the second reading, Bill (Alan Freeman) and his family are cleaning up their vacation home when they come across a large vine that resists being cut; it actually seems to propel the shears out of Bill's hands when he tries to cut it. An expert is called in, the family dog is strangled by the vine, and ultimately, the vine tries to encircle the house to trap the family inside. The third reading features trumpet player Biff Bailey (Roy Castle) who gets a booking with a jazz band in the West Indies and, against advice, sneaks out to witness an authentic voodoo ritual. He likes the melody of the voodoo chant and copies it down, and, despite being warned not to by a voodoo priest, plays a jazzy arrangement of the chant at a nightclub in London. He will soon regret this.

The fourth man, art critic Franklyn Marsh (Christopher Lee), is a bit aloof and disdainful of the tarot process, but Schreck goes ahead and tells him that his destiny is wrapped up with an artist named Landor (Michael Gough) whose work Marsh mocks. Landor exposes Marsh to public ridicule, so one night, Marsh hits Landor with his car, resulting in the severing of the artist's hand so he can no longer paint. Soon, Marsh finds himself stalked by a disembodied hand and suffers an ironic fate brought on by the hand. The last tale features Bob Carroll (Donald Sutherland), who is soon to be a newlywed. The reading reveals that his bride is a vampire, which of course leads to nothing good for Carroll. All five of the readings end with the Death card revealed. The men are all a bit rattled by Schreck's fortunes, and when they disembark at Bradley, they have one more surprise in store.  

This is the first (and one of the best) in a series of horror anthology films from the British studio Amicus, with short horror vignettes presented in a narrative frame, like the classic 1945 film DEAD OF NIGHT. Each story is relatively short, getting wrapped up before it wears out its welcome. They are tonally quite similar, spooky and set at night, except for "Creeping Vine" which feels like a version of Hitchcock's The Birds. They're all consistently good, with "Creeping Vine" being the least, "Voodoo" being the best and most atmospheric, and "Vampire" having the best twist. Despite what you might think, the disembodied hand is a pretty good effect. Lee and Cushing, though OK, seem to be working at half-power here. The best performances are from Alan Freeman (better known in England as a DJ) as the man dealing with the vine, and Roy Castle as the jazz musician. In that sequence, which has more light moments than the others, there is a fun inside joke as Castle goes on the run in nighttime streets and sees a poster for a movie called Dr. Terror's House of Horrors with the five lead character names listed as actors. (Pictured at right; it's a quick moment so keep an eagle eye out.) The music in that segment, played by the Tubby Hayes Combo, is quite good. Even if the ends of the stories (and the movie itself) are fairly predictable, this is worth watching. Pictured at top are Cushing, Freeman and McCallum. [DVD]

KINDAR THE INVULNERABLE (1965)

The walled city of Utor in the middle of the Egyptian desert is ruled by a king who is constantly on guard against invasion from a band of nomads anxious to get access to a natural spring in the city that gives abundant water, something that is hard to come by in the desert. During a storm, the queen goes into painful labor and just as she gives birth, a lightning bolt strikes her through the window, killing her but leaving her infant son not only alive but, as foretold by legend, invulnerable to any injury except from the "Red Flower," a term that none of the seers understands. The king hopes he will grow up to be Utor's invincible protector, but just after his birth, he is kidnapped by a treacherous handmaiden and taken to Seymuth, leader of the nomads, who raises him over the years as his son and names him Kindar. Twenty years later, Seymuth decides the time is right for an invasion of Utor, led by the grown Kindar, who is revealed to be invulnerable when Seymuth has a squad of men shoot arrows at him which bounce off his muscular chest. During their first attack, they manage to capture Nefer, lover of the king's other son, Ciro. When Ciro comes to rescue her, the nomads force him into a duel to the death with Kindar. It's a pretty good battle, with whips and rocks, and when Kindar prevails, he spares Ciro's life and allows her to take Nefer with him back to Utor. Eventually, Kindar discovers the secret behind his parentage, learning that he is Ciro's brother. The king of Utor tests him by putting him in a device called The Bride of Horus, basically an iron maiden torture device, and when he emerges unscathed, he joins up with Ciro and the king to battle the nomads. Seymouth decides that the "red flower" of myth is fire, and in the final battle, he plans to use fire to fight Kindar.

This is an engaging sword-and-sandal flick, and a bit of an outlier in that, though made by an Italian company with mostly Italian actors, it is set and partly shot in Egypt. There is no wicked queen with designs on our hero, no volcanos, and no gods (we discover that these people worship Horus though we don't get a backstory for the legends surrounding Kindar). There are, however, shirtless muscled men, bosomy women, a big city, and a shift in who we see as good and bad. Italian-American Mark Forest, star of several peplum films, is a solid handsome hero, though he is supposed to be 20 but looks much closer to his actual age of 30—and on a gay note, we see some of his assets delightfully displayed in his tight red leggings. After this film, he retired from movies and became an opera singer. Howard Ross (pictured, credited as Red Ross) as Ciro is also decked out nicely. Mimmo Palmara (Seymuth) is almost as hunky as the hero. Rosalba Neri (Kira) and Dea Flowers (Nefer) look their parts even if they have little to do except get in trouble or get others out of trouble. The suspense element of the Red Flower is not handled well—basically, Kindar just darts in and out of the flames in the final battle. But overall, a solid entry in the peplum genre. It's lovely to see a handful of shots with a real pyramid in the background, though the bulk of the movie was shot in Spain. [YouTube]

SEVEN SEAS TO CALAIS (1963)

Plymouth, England, 1577. A man is attempting to smuggle a map of New World port cities where the Spanish have hidden gold reserves. He is killed in the streets but manages to give the map to passerby Malcolm Marsh (Keith Michell) and tells him with his dying breath to get the map to notorious explorer and privateer Francis Drake (Rod Taylor, pictured)—privateer here seems to mean a pirate who mostly attacks ships from the enemy of his country. Marsh manages to get to Drake who decides to take his men and sail around South America to grab the gold. Marsh becomes his chief assistant and falls in love with Arabella, a member of the Queen's court. Queen Elizabeth (Irene Worth) tells the Spanish ambassador that she opposes any of Drake's activities, but in secret is bankrolling his trip in exchange for some of the booty. While becalmed near the tip of South America, there are stirrings of a mutiny which Drake and Marsh put down. Eventually, they get hold of some gold and fraternize with the Incas while back in England, pining Arabella gets mixed up with Babington (Terence Hill, billed early in his career by his birth name, Mario Girotti) who is plotting with King Philip of Spain to assassinate the Queen and replace her with her imprisoned rival Mary of Scotland. When Drake returns, he tries to foil Babington's plot and is then tasked with fighting off the Spanish Armada—and as anyone who knows the phrase "Spanish Armada" will realize, the British are victorious.

This is probably total historical hogwash, but as an under-budgeted costume adventure film, sort of on a par with the Italian sword-and-sandal films of the era, it's satisfying enough. Rod Taylor carries the whole thing on his capable shoulders, making Drake a cocky, fun, and laid-back sort of fellow, with a goatee that makes him look quite saucy, in the tradition of swashbuckler actors like Errol Flynn; he would appear the same year in Hitchcock's The Birds. Keith Michell is similarly personable, and quite handsome, as his young buddy. Irene Worth plays the Queen like a slyboots character who wouldn't be out of place at Downton Abbey. Edy Vessel as Arabella and Terence Hill as Babington are fine. The sword fights are quite well done, feeling more real and less staged than similar scenes in older movies. The passage of time is not dealt with clearly, partly due to some oddly abrupt scene transitions. The first time this happened, early on, I attributed it to a choppy print, but it happened a few more times so I think it must have been deliberate. The director, Rudolph Maté (When Worlds Collide) was at the end of his career, and though his best work was as a cinematographer (Stella Dallas, Foreign Correspondent, Gilda), this does not display much visual flair. Some viewers dock this movie points for its obvious use of miniatures, but for me, that's part of the suspension of disbelief that we always engage in. No classic, but it sure is Saturday matinee fun. [TCM]

L'ECLISSE (1962)

I've recently been revisiting the Michelangelo Antonioni alienation films of the 60s and 70s. I saw them many years ago but realized I had not reviewed most of them for this blog, only LA NOTTE. As Susan Doll notes on the Turner Classic Movies website, the director "abandoned the clarity, logic, and directness of classical modes of filmmaking, preferring intentionally vague characters in tenuous narratives that remain open-ended and disorienting." The films can be a bit of a slog, but I don’t mind rewatching them for their stark settings and interesting visual style, and for the pretty people who act in them. This one wins in terms of smokin' hot leads: Monica Vitti (who was in many of his movies) and Alain Delon, but it is probably the slackest of the bunch in terms of narrative drive. We begin at dawn by watching the end of a long relationship between Vitti and a slightly older writer (Francisco Rabal) for whom she does translation work. They have spent all night in his apartment hashing out their problems—he looks all in, but as Viiti tends to do, she looks ravishing. She finally leaves and, though he follows her through an urban desert setting (the movie is set in a corner of Rome in which urban buildings and streets end next to stark empty plains), he leaves when she arrives at her apartment. Later in the day, Vitti visits her mother at the stock exchange where she is an active dabbler, and Vitti meets her mother's stockbroker, the young and handsome Alain Delon, who is quite the stock market hustler. That night, Vitti meets up with some friends who debate the issue of colonialism in Africa while Vitti puts on blackface and dances, making the others uncomfortable even though one of the women refers to African natives as "monkeys." The next day, Vitti and Delon meet, and as they get further involved, he takes her to his wealthy parents' house where she tells him, "Two people shouldn't know too much about each other if they want to fall in love." They spend a couple of days hanging out and having sex, though they don't actually seem to be having fun, or getting particularly close in other ways. They make plans to meet that evening, but in a seven-minute sequence at the end in which the camera prowls the streets, they appear to stand each other up.

I wrote in my notes that Monica Vitti had perfected a "resting alienation face" which she uses for much of this movie. She is beautiful and sexy even when suffering from existential angst. Delon is more lively and less preoccupied with worrisome thoughts, but he has his own angst—his relationship with his family seems dicey, his behavior at the stock exchange is not always on the level, and before Vitti, his romantic encounters seem to have been with high-class hookers. When the two are on screen together, I can forgive the narrative doldrums. Francisco Rabal (pictured with Vitti) is only in the film for a while in the beginning, but he makes a strong impression as a man who seems exhausted by life (or maybe he's just exhausted by Vitti). Rabal can’t compete with the two stars in terms of looks, but he is a handsome man. In my notes, I referred to him as an older man, but Rabal was only five years older than Vitti, so he just looks more mature, more beaten down by life, perhaps. The settings, all drawn from real life, are fascinating, sometimes more interesting than what's happening with the actors. Of Antonioni's films of this era, this, at two hours, is probably the hardest to sit through without taking a break. I don't typically take breaks while watching films at home, but I did fidget quite a bit now and then. Still, a worthwhile experience for 60s film buffs. [Criterion Channel]

MAN-PROOF (1938)

Myrna Loy, daughter of romance novelist Nana Bryant, is staying at her mother's house on Long Island, anxiously awaiting the return of playboy Walter Pidgeon from a trip to Palm Springs, assuming that he will propose to her. Instead, she gets a telegram that Pidgeon will be marrying heiress Rosalind Russell, and she has been invited to be a bridesmaid. (I should say right here that one of this movie's faults is that we get very little backstory or character development so it's never clear if Pidgeon was leading Loy on or if he really had made promises to her.) Reporter Franchot Tone, a good friend of Loy's mother, thinks that Loy is better off without Pidgeon; Loy goes into a funk anyway, but manages to get it together to attend the wedding. At the party that evening, Loy gets quite drunk and warns Pidgeon to stay away from her because she will continue to try and win him over. In order to help Loy get over Pidgeon, Bryant and Tone get her a job at his newspaper as an ad artist. Things are quiet for a while until Pidgeon and Russell get back from an extended honeymoon. Loy seems to be genuine about wanting to remain friends with Pidgeon; he agrees, and then asks her to go to the fights with him because Russell is sick and can't go. Of course, one thing leads to another and the next morning, Loy calls Russell and says that she and Pidgeon are in love and he'll be getting a divorce. (Pidgeon's feelings about this are unclear.) Eventually, Loy, Pidgeon and Russell have a confrontation during which Russell admits that Pidgeon doesn't really love her but likes her money and her understanding nature, and that Pidgeon is probably incapable of love. Eyes are opening all around, and guess who finally realize they belong together?

This is an odd duck of a romantic comedy in the sense that the tone is light throughout until suddenly in the last 15 minutes, things get rather heavy and all the energy is sapped from the proceedings. It's an interesting twist but the screenwriters weren't quite up to making it work. Loy is the only character who we feel we have gotten to know. Pidgeon's feelings are obscure all through the film, and Tone is a cipher—we figure he'll end up with Loy but only because Loy and Tone are top-billed, and that's the generic expectation. The characters don't come off as very round, and oddly it's Russell (pictured) that I felt the most sympathy for in the final tangle. The acting helps with the movie's appeal. Loy steals the show, and her drunk scene is one of the best ever in a Hollywood movie because it feels real and not exaggerated for comic effect. Russell is fine acting all noble and understanding. Tone and Pidgeon are not my favorite classic-era leading men. Pidgeon is pretty good, light on his feet and not as plodding as usual. Tone is boring and I honestly wasn't rooting for him to win out, partly because he has no personality. (You'll notice I barely mention him in the summary because he really doesn't have much to do.) Bryant underplays what might have been an annoying role. I enjoyed John Miljan as Tommy, Pigeon's best man and good friend to Loy; in a later era, he probably would have been the gay best friend. There are plot threads and themes and visuals that would be better presented by MGM in THE WOMEN and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. Watchable mostly for Loy. [TCM]

SUNDAYS AND CYBÈLE (1962)

Pierre (Hardy Kruger, pictured) was a French pilot in the Indochinese war and has traumatic flashbacks of strafing innocent civilians from his bomber, including a young girl who holds his gaze seconds before her death. Hospitalized for some time, he now lives with his former nurse (and possibly casual mistress) Madeleine (Nicole Courcel) and is still fairly fragile, suffering from bouts of amnesia. One day he witnesses a father dropping his daughter Francoise (Patricia Gozzi) off at a convent boarding school. She's sad but the father seems glad to be rid of her, and despite telling her he'll visit on Sundays, Pierre overhears him getting on a train with no intention of returning. On Sunday, Pierre goes to the school and, posing as her father, takes her for the day, exploring a nearby park. Like Pierre, Francoise seems to be dealing with some childhood trauma. At one point, she tells him that Francoise is not her real name, but she won't say what is. Over their Sundays together, they grow close, like real family. He's 30 and she's 12, and she says she wants to marry him when she's 18. The two are like two innocent children—it's implied that Pierre is seeking redemption from having killed children in the war. Eventually, Madeleine realizes what's going on. After seeing them interact in the park, she sees them as two damaged innocents having found solace with each other, but others see perversion rearing its ugly head, including Bernard, a doctor and rival for Madeleine's affections. At Christmas, as Pierre is trying to give her a special holiday, Francoise gives him a gift: her real name (Cybèle) written on a piece of paper and put in a small gift box. While trying to get a special gift for her (a rooster on a church steeple that she wants), everything falls apart.

I'm not sure how modern viewers, who have been trained (and generally rightfully so) to see ugly desires in an age-inappropriate relationship, would react to this tale. A review from 1962 indicates surprise that people would read pederastic tendencies into Pierre, but obviously we are meant to have that reaction, at least to some degree. Kruger plays Pierre with great sensitivity but with hints that he himself is uncomfortable with how emotionally powerful his bond with Cybèle becomes. A shot of him carrying Cybèle in his arms has been compared by some critics to the famous scene of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster lakeside with the little girl who he winds up drowning, and there is a scene in which Pierre becomes violent at a bumper car ride. Courcel is very good at registering her own mixed emotions, and Gozzi, who actually was 12 at the time of filming, is astonishing at expressing a wide array of feelings with regard to Pierre. Though she gets angry when she sees him react to others with violence, she is never actually scared of him; she seems to understand his fragility. Shot in black & white, and largely out of doors, it always seems like a gray and gloomy day, even when Pierre and Cybèle are at their happiest. Kruger is movie-star handsome, which makes it all the more impressive that he comes off as such a slight and tentative person. Ultimately, we are meant to believe that Pierre is not dangerous, and that his attentions are good for Cybèle, but we're also meant to see that their relationship could not have lasted in this world. An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, this seems to have faded from notoriety, though it is part of the Criterion Collection and is worth seeing. [TCM]

THE BIG TRAIL (1930)

In a town in Missouri, a group of pioneers have gathered on the way to "conquer the West," as the title card says, and head out along the Oregon Trail in a wagon train. Among the settlers: Ruth Cameron and her brother Dave, and the Swedish Gus and his domineering mother-in-law. The crusty Red Flack is leading the group with his suspicious sidekick Lopez, and he reluctantly hires Breck Coleman and his buddy Zeke (occasionally rather soused) as scouts. Breck is hunting the killer of a friend of his, Ben Griswell, a trapper whose entire load of pelts was stolen. The murder was made to look like the work of Indians but Breck, who lived among Indian tribes, suspects that Red is the killer. Along the way, Breck takes a liking to Ruth, but Ruth is enamored of fancy gambler Bill Thorpe, a man whose tales of family wealth and a big Louisiana plantation are not believed by Breck. Along the way, there is an Indian attack, a dangerous river crossing, a snowstorm, and a deadly dry spell. Red, Lopez and Bill all agree that it would be best to get rid of Breck, who obviously knows too much about their collective shady backgrounds, not to mention that Breck is making progress in his romantic pursuit of Ruth. As you can tell, the plot of this early talkie western is par for the course, but two things make it stand out in its genre: 1) Breck is the first starring role for John Wayne (young, handsome, and talented, pictured at right) who would wind up back in B-westerns for much of the decade until his next A-role in STAGECOACH; 2) it is one of the first Hollywood movies made in a widescreen format, Fox's Grandeur process. Only a couple of theaters in the country could show that format, so most people saw it in the standard square Academy ratio, but the widescreen print survives today, and it's very impressive. The black and white image presents gorgeous vistas and with wide shots that feature action in various layers of depth, it almost achieves a 3D effect at times. Wayne, caught before his heroic persona solidified, seems casual and comfortable and less serious than he became in the 40s. El Brendel, as Gus, is the comic relief, though his style of over-the-top ethnic humor hasn't aged well. The chief bad guys (Ian Keith as Bill, Tyrone Power Sr. as Red) are too obvious in their mustache-twirling villainy, and Marguerite Churchill as Ruth is fairly bland. Tully Marshall is Zeke and David Rollins is Dave. The amount of production work shows: there were apparently thousands of extras and animals and hundreds of wagons, and shooting was done over dozens of locations. Despite being over 90 years old, it still looks impressive and manages to hold interest over its two hour running time. [TCM]

REMORQUES (1941)

The crew of the Cyclone, a French rescue tugboat, is celebrating the wedding of one of their own when a messenger arrives with an SOS from the Mirva, a ship at sea foundering in a storm with a broken rudder. André, the captain, rounds up his crew, even the new groom—and even a man who is making out with another crew member's wife—leaving behind his own wife Yvonne (whom we learn has a possibly dangerous heart flutter) to worry about him. They head out in the howling storm and eventually manage to find the ship and toss them a tow rope, but there is trouble on board the Mirva. Marc, the unscrupulous and unliked captain, knows he'll have to pay a large sum for the rescue and is tempted to actually sabotage the operation by cutting the tow rope once they get within view of the shore, in which case the rescue fee wouldn't have to be paid. Some of his crew leave the ship on a raft, and Marc's unhappy wife Catherine joins them. Marc manages to pull off his sabotage plan, angering André and his men who have spent hours getting the Mirva back to shore. When the two confront each other, André punches Marc out and helps Catherine, who is leaving her husband for good, find a hotel in town. André is buffeted by emotional crises: when his bosses refuse to investigate the behavior of the Mirva's captain, André threatens to quit, and when his wife becomes more and more clingy (she has kept the seriousness of her heart condition a secret), he starts spending time with Catherine, leading to a torrid affair conducted in a dilapidated house on the beach. When Yvonne's illness becomes too obvious to ignore, and when a new rescue call comes through, André will have to make some decisions.

This film by French director Jean Grémillon seems pretty solidly like a work of poetic realism, a film that stresses the sorrows of working class life, but presents them in scenes of visual beauty. Most of this film looks great, with nighttime scenes shrouded in fog and daytime scenes shown in gleaming brightness. Of course, the lives of the principal characters seem mostly lived in a sort of existentialist fog, and we're aware that, despite the bonhomie of the opening wedding party, there will be no happy endings here. Jean Gabin, the masculine but sensitive king of French poetic realism, is absolutely perfect for this role, and the beautiful Michele Morgan couldn't be better as Catherine. Their relationship could have been developed a bit more, but their chemistry gets us through the doubts we may have about how these two wind up involved. Madeleine Renaud is appropriately fragile as Yvonne even if the character remains something of a cipher. Some OK special effects (lots of miniatures) are used in the storm sequence. At heart, this is a predictable soap opera romance worth seeing for its visuals and lead performances. The French title translates literally as a vehicle that pulls or tugs, but the American title, Stormy Waters, is more descriptive. Pictured are Gabin and Morgan. [DVD]

MEDEA (1969)

We begin in ancient Greece with a centaur teaching a young man named Jason about nature, myth, and the gods. Jason is under the centaur's care because his father, the king, has been deposed by Jason's uncle Creon. When he grows up, Jason challenges the king for the throne of Corinth, and the king sends him on a journey to Colchis to bring back the Golden Fleece, at which point Creon will give him his rightful throne—if you've seen The Wizard of Oz, (or, more to the point, know your Greek myths) you may suspect how this will turn out. Colchis is a land of barbarians where the princess Medea leads the priests and people, sun worshippers, in a human sacrifice ritual during which they kill a child and spread his blood among the crops as an aid for fertility. Unlike in the Ray Harryhausen fantasy JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, Jason’s Argonauts are a rag-tag group of men on a small dilapidated barge, but Medea falls for him and helps him take the fleece. She then kills her own brother and hacks up his body in order to flee with Jason back to Corinth. Creon then decides to not keep his promise to Jason, which Jason seems fine with. An outsider who never feels accepted, and who is suspected of being a sorceress by the people of Corinth, Medea lives with Jason and bears him two children over the next few years, but when Jason makes plans to marry Creon's daughter Glauce, Medea is unmoored and plots a terrible revenge.

As he did with Oedipus, director Pier Paolo Pasolini brings a Greek myth (via Euripides) to life with stunning stylistic touches, both visual and musical, but with less success at coherence or meaning. If you don't already know the story of Medea and Jason, this film will be confusing at best and possibly a slog at worst, though it's always interesting to look at. Shot outdoors in surreal looking settings and in actual ruins in Italy, the visuals give a strong mythical, otherworldly feel to the proceedings, as does the strange background score consisting of metallic clattering, animal noises, and Japanese sounding music. Like the 1962 version of Euripides’s ELECTRA by Michael Cacoyannis, this film feels more like a series of rituals being enacted rather than a fully inhabited performance by actors, and that adds to the out-of-time feel of the film. Laurent Terzieff (the centaur) seems like he's reciting his lines from cue cards, and Giuseppe Gentile (Jason, at left) is handsome but never feels fully engaged (in fact, this is his only movie—he was an Olympic track and field athlete—so I suspect that he may have been Pasolini's crush at the time). Massimo Girotti, a well known actor with a long career, doesn't have a lot to do as the King, but he manages some gravitas in his few scenes. 

But all is forgiven: legendary opera singer Maria Callas, as Medea (pictured above right), acts enough to make up for everyone else. And this is definitely a compliment; it's not that she's overacting, but that she's acting with her face and eyes and body to convey Medea's inner states with conviction but without exaggeration, partly because she doesn't really have much dialogue. It's ironic that her famous voice is dubbed by someone else here, but her physical performance is astounding. As interesting as much of this movie is, Pasolini is not a stickler for narrative detail so I'm not sure my summary is accurate. The ending ([Spoiler!]) in which Medea kills her children and Jason's princess plays out in two different contradictory ways, and I have no idea what to make of that. The post-dubbing is frequently sloppy, adding to the almost amateurish feel of the entire production, or if not amateurish, at least slap-dash. I was put in mind of the Rocky Horror lyric, "Lost in time and lost in space, and meaning"; the time and space enigmas were positive, the meaning, not so much. [Criterion Channel]