docdespicable Reviews

The Daydreamer (1966)

Frustratingly Disappointing

[5/10 · 26 January 2007]

I'd wanted to see this rather badly for years - maybe that was the reason, when I finally got my hands on the DVD, that it was a let-down. Too-high expectations. It's nice to see the Rankin/Bass team NOT cashing in on a holiday, of course. We're treated to an all-to-brief bit of Jack Gilford's "imitation of a pot of pea soup coming to a boil" that was one of his signature pieces, early in his career. The vocal talents are, for the most part, a delight: Tallulah Bankhead as the Sea Witch has a field day with the little she has to work with; Ed Wynn, as the unclothed Emperor, is very funny, though at times he sounds like he's reading from the script, while Terry-Thomas is perfect as the first tailor; Victor Borge, though, seems a bit subdued as his partner; Boris Karloff, perfect as the Rat, makes full use of his mellifluous voice and long experience in radio and voice-over work.

But those are the real hi-lights. The rest sort of fade out of memory. There are some extremely effective sequences - the Little Mermaid's journey to the lair of the Sea Witch, for example, would have had me under my seat, if I'd seen it in the theater as a child - but many of the other voice actors (well, all of them really) seem wasted in their roles. The performances are fine, but it's like being at a buffet where you only get a small taste of the delicacies - you want more.

I think that's part of the problem here. Another is the number of Anderson stories drawn upon - none of them has the time to build any depth, and none of them provides a real sense of resolution. Added to that is the parade of stars. Ray Bolger as the Pieman - the point of this was... what? He doesn't get to do much of what made him a great performer.

All of which is to say that THE DAYDREAMER isn't a bad little film - but it isn't a very good little film either.

Cry of the Werewolf (1944)

No Larry Talbot, BUT...

[7/10 · 26 December 2006]

There are far worse ways to spend an hour or so of your time. This movie was more than likely made for pocket change and contractual obligations, true; but despite not having someone like Val Lewton (who could conjure up palaces out of orange crates) behind it, this isn't at all bad. Nina Foch is quite capable and sympathetic, and ably supported by a raft of character actors who are old hands at this sort of thing.

There's plenty of atmosphere and suspense, with just enough mystery to keep your attention. As with some of the best of the afore-mentioned Lewton's work, until the denouement, you're never quite sure whether this is all in someone's mind or if there's a real bogeyman (or bogeywoman) stalking the night. Lon Chaney Jr's reputation is safe - or even Henry Hull - but the mug who called this the nadir of werewolfery is being a little harsh. With THE WOLF-MAN, Universal set the bar pretty high, after all. But if you're looking for some good old-fashioned fun, you could do much worse. If nothing else, it's an entertaining example of what can be done with some talent, care and craftsmanship, even if you couldn't quite buy dinner for a family of four to six people with the existing budget. Definitely check it out!

Joys! (1976 TV Special)

Old School and New Blood

[7/10 · 11 October 2006]

Oh, how I wish this was on DVD/VHS! A couple of other reviewers found this a pretty sad affair, but I have to disagree. In some instances, for those of us who saw it as kids, it was the first experience of some of the "elder statesmen" of comedy, and getting to see them interact with some of the then-new practitioners was a particular treat.

The show opens with Vincent Price looking very sinister and mysterious in a trench coat and fedora, relating to us the facts in one the most amazing cases he's ever encountered. Hope discovers that someone has sent out invitations to a party at his house, and goes home to get to the bottom of things. What follows alternates between comic and creepy, as necessarily brief (sometimes 1 or 2 lines) appearances are divided by shots of black-gloved hands pouncing on the guests, until Hope himself is dispatched. He then delivers his sign-off with wings and a harp, calling down to Price that he'd at least like to know who done it - but before Price can reveal the killer's identity, he too is strangled. The camera then cuts to the studio audience, as the black-clad killer removes his gloves, his hat and finally his mask, revealing Johnny Carson, who delivers the punchline, "Now I can be on EVERY night..." For those too young to remember, there was a period when Carson only hosted "The Tonight Show" 2 or 3 nights out of 5, the remainder of which had a guest host, not a few of whom were "bumped off" at Hope's party!

This special wasn't a brilliant piece of timeless television art, but it had some fun moments - Les Brown and His Band of Reknown, holed up in Bob's hall closet ("You never know when you're gonna need a good music cue..."), Phil Silvers and Jerry Colonna getting in a bit of their respective character bits, and (despite other reviewers' disgruntlement to the contrary), Groucho's exchange with "Groucho"-disguised Billy Barty, "I'm paying you a lot of dough for this - I'd better be having a good time!" George Kirby gets to do a few impressions (including an amazing Eddie "Rochester" Anderson), Harry Ritz gets in his licks, and a number of actors we don't typically associate with comedy get to play for a few laughs. If I had a complaint, it was not seeing more of my favorite performers in it - Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, Jonathan Winters,... But there wasn't really enough time to do justice to all the guests as it was.

Maybe I'm just seeing it through the golden haze of my youth, but I remember enjoying "Joys" quite a lot and wishing everyone had had a bit more screen time.

The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

Strange Eons...

[10/10 · 4 August 2006]

This is, without a doubt, the most amazing adaptation of HP Lovecraft's work to the screen that I have ever seen. Bar none. The only modern film that even comes close to capturing the feeling induced by HPL at his best is IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, and even that has its failings.

The key, here, then, is atmosphere. I mean, CALL OF CTHULHU is unquestionably true to the source material, but other adaptations have tried that (though not very hard) and failed. What makes this work is the filmmakers' decision to place it in the cultural idiom of Lovecraft's era - to portray it as one imagines Lovecraft envisioned it in the writing.

So we have a 45 minute feature (short, but still officially feature-length for the era), in black & white, silent, with a classic score. It begins in menace and builds to madness. There is an aura of foreboding in this film missing in just about any "later" feature you can name - and it never lets up. Even Hitchcock provided moments for his audience to breathe and unclench until the next sequence. Every moment of CALL OF CTHULHU is fraught with the notion that something terrible is about to happen, that there are "worse things waiting".

Stephen King has voiced the opinion that, after so much build up, the storyteller MUST show his readers/audience/victims the monster. This is debatable. CALL OF CTHULHU shows us the monster - in a fashion. The filmmakers take their lesson from the true masters of horror and suspense: Boris Karloff, among others, always assured us that the audience can do ten-times worse things in their imagination that anything that could be accomplished in full view. Here, we are shown just enough of the titular beast to provide fodder for our imagination, and it does not well serve one to linger too long on visualizing the Great Cthulhu in all his mind-shattering detail! My only complaints are that, first, some of the actors read as a bit modern in their appearance; but this is very infrequent, negligibly so, and the acting more than compensates. Second, the idols/statues - one is practically an art-deco rendering, and too slick for my tastes, while the other (lumpen, tribal and highly suggestive) is only briefly glimpsed. Third... well, the movie is too danged short! It covers the entire content of the story, is nicely and tightly produced and never really misses a beat. I just wanted more, dagnabit, which I suppose is more tribute than complaint.

If these folks produce another of Lovecarft's visions, if I can't be a part of the production, rest assured that I will certainly be near the front of the line to see it. Find it, buy it, see it, love it - for Lovecraft fans and aficionados, this is vindication at last!

The Twilight Zone: A Game of Pool (1961) Season 3, Episode 5

An Exercise in Subtlty

[7/10 · 9 July 2006]

Given the general nature of "The Twilight Zone", and the fairly broad array of genres that it includes in its repertory, it's easy to miss the point of this episode and dismiss it as a failure - but I think to do so would be a mistake. In some ways, it paraphrases "The Hustler", but then it has some original observations of its own to make. Essentially it boils down to "what's important in life" for any of us, and "will success really bring fulfillment". It's the old apocryphal story about the gunslinger (or fighter or card-sharp or whatever) finding himself faced with the new kid, who happens to be spoiling for a fight. The old pro has seen it all and become god-awful tired of it, but these people keep turning up to try him out. Of course, the Kid wins in the end, but is left with the feeling, "What just happened here? Why don't I feel like the king?" Serling usually does pretty well with old apocryphal stories, and this is no exception. Klugman is dead-on, and Jonathan Winters is a real surprise. Why, I don't know - in that era it was quite the thing to do to give comic actors a chance to demonstrate their dramatic chops, radio did it on a regular basis (if you haven't heard Red Skelton's or Milton Berle's guest appearances on "Suspense", do so at once!), and the funnymen invariably showed what they were made of. Under the heading of "Dying is easy - comedy is hard", a lot of pain and suffering goes into creating all that hilarity, and would be pointless without the inherent communications skills that express what has us rolling on the floor.

In any case, this is a reasonably well-known (and certainly well done!) episodes of TZ. There are better, and there are certainly more famous episodes - but there are rewards here for the attentive viewer.

And if you don't agree, you can always go to the cornfield...

House of the Long Shadows (1983)

Frustrating Paradox

[7/10 · 27 June 2006]

When I heard that the Last of the Big Time Bogeymen were being brought together (all four for the first and only time) for a good old fashioned fright flick, I almost drowned in my own drool. As a fan of the more "old school" horror/terror films - the Universal Gothics, the Hammer and AIP updates - I'd almost given up hope on ever seeing anything but invulnerable masked madmen wielding assorted gardening instruments and construction tools ever again. My heart raced and I lost sleep, staring at the ceiling above my bed, wondering, trying to picture in my mind's eye what it would be like...

Well, what it ended up being like was an exercise in frustration. HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS is, ostensibly, about icons, their validity and staying power. It takes an old and oft-filmed novel for its source material (in an adaptation that I prefer to any of the others I've seen, regardless of how well it represents the original novel), and casts the four men whose names have become synonymous with words like "legend" and "terror". It sets the main body of its action in a dilapidated mansion in the remote Welsh countryside, provides candles and lanterns in lieu of lights, and sends a raging thunderstorm down on the inhabitants. The stage is set - At which point, the makers seem determined do to all in their power to undermine their work. Between the erratic quality of the cinematography, the bland score, the obnoxiously bad performance of Desi Arnaz, Jr., and the infuriating denouement, it's small wonder that the release came and went like a thief in the night, no surprise that opinions are divided and absolutely astonishing that audiences didn't rise up in mutiny.

Though other members of the cast (NOT including Arnaz) range from adequate to excellent, our Four Grand Old Men carry this film, their presence the sole element that makes it worth watching. Price is at his most theatrical (not to say hammy or histrionic); Lee, at his grim, dour best; Cushing displaying his most vulnerable side, and Carradine his most woeful and nostalgic. It's ironically amusing to note that Carradine, as the father of the Grisbanes, is only four years older than Price and Cushing - those Grisbanes get going mighty young, don't they? While there are moments of thrilling suspense, pathos and sometimes black humor (Price's remark, "He must have heard her singing!" the dismayed observation "You sent him to his room for FORTY YEARS?!?" and Cushing's observation about being either the Old Waterworks or the Big Drip), none of these elements really get the attention they need. In fact, having assembled this potentially delightful homage, paradoxically, it's almost as though the filmmakers do so to illustrate that they AREN'T effective any longer. Whether this was an effect of the editing or a deliberate stance of the producers, who knows.

The long and short of it is, HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS is far from the movie it could have been. But even so, it's something of a landmark, if only for its lead cast (again, not including Arnaz), and worth watching, however frustrating.

Strangler of the Swamp (1945)

PRC finally Succeeds!

[6/10 · 26 June 2006]

It's really a pity more people haven't seen this little number from PRC - it has a tight story, good acting, amazing atmosphere, just everything so many of their features lack. The joke was, and in some cases remains, that PRC stood for Pretty Rank Crap (actually Producers Releasing Corporation). They kept Bela Lugosi from going hungry and delivered quite a list of entertainingly awful crud - I mean, they made Monogram look like MGM! Generally considered the studio where name actors went to pick up enough cash to pay off their bar tabs (which explains the presence of otherwise outstanding actors like J. Carroll Naish, John Carradine and George Zucco), by the law of averages, they were bound to hit the mark, once in a great while.

And here, they do. Despite, or perhaps because of the obvious sound-stage set, the film has an atmosphere of unreality, a similar effect attained in "City of the Dead" (1960) by the same means. Both films have an almost Lovecraftian sense of foreboding. The core of the film's success can be attributed to the "Strangler" himself, character actor Charles Middleton, perhaps most known for his turns as Ming the Merciless in the "Flash Gordon" serials and his menace of Laurel & Hardy in several of their shorts and features.

Please understand - "Strangler from the Swamp" is never going to give Hitchcock or the Val Lewton horror pictures a run for their money, but all in all, it is still a very satisfying film.

And yes, that Blake Edwards is THAT Blake Edwards!

The Mangler (1995)

There is a Fate Worse Than Death...

[1/10 · 31 May 2006]

... and this is it! Pew! Feh! Blah! What Chronos said, with knobs on! The only issue I take with the above review is that this turkey was indeed released to theaters - That's where I saw it. I was treating myself for my birthday. It was a special day...

But honestly, the ordinary passer-by would think that, between Stephen King, Tobe Hooper and Robert Englund, there would be SOMETHING worthwhile in this crapfest. That, however, is where a significant portion of the wretchedness lies - the outrageous disappointment. And I think I'm a fairly forgiving movie-goer. I've sat through, in my time, such epics as "The Loch Ness Horror", the execrable "Curous Case of the Campus Corpse, what is known as either "Anthropophagous" or "The Grim Reaper"... I even made it through "Cannibal Holocaust" with my lunch where I left it. I know no one sets out to make an awful movie. And Hooper gave us such terrific flicks as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Eaten Alive", "Funhouse", "Poltergeist" - Tobe: What the hell happened?!?

I have no gripe with King's original short story (about an indistrial laundry ironing/folding press that attains sentience), in fact, it's one of my favorites. He took a potentially ludicrous concept (a variation on a novella by Theodore Sturgeon, but inspiration is inspiration) and, like Sturgeon, turned it into a hair-raising example or reality discarded and gone horribly wrong. I should have been more wary - I forgot what a cock-up Hooper had made of the "Salem's Lot" miniseries. But how was I to know? Up to then, everything I'd seen by Hooper had been at least acceptable, and sometimes brilliant!

In regard to Robert Englund's part in this, I'm not sure where to aim the shotgun - was he just walking through it, offering a cartoon characterization (which is pretty much what the script deserved) or was Hooper behind that too? Whichever is the case, this is the only time I've seen Englund give an actively bad performance.

I would have asked for my money back, but I kept sitting there with my chin in my lap, thinking, "This HAS TO get better - it HAS TO..." Unfortunately, the Management take a dim view of people waiting until the last 5 or so minutes of the movie to request reimbursement. I decided to eat the loss and soothe my outrage with pizza, but I swear to god, if I ever run into Tobe Hooper, he better be prepared to replace the film's running-time's worth of my life back.

The Believers (1987)

Building Belief

[7/10 · 15 January 2005]

Back when this hit theaters, I missed it for some reason - I think the ad campaign left me rather nonplussed. In any case, I gave it a miss, only to take the chance on it some years later on video. And I have to say I was impressed! This is NOT a movie for the impatient viewer. Opening with family tragedy, it then takes necessary time to introduce its characters, really introduce them and give the audience time to get to know them and care about them. During the "character study" portion, there are only rare implications that something sinister is in the offing.

Other reviews have stated that the movie is slow, that it drags, that it's padded out with perhaps unnecessary exposition, but I must disagree - to believe THE BELIEVERS, one must "believe" a bit oneself. A film that drops the viewer into a breakneck chase from the outset has its place and its advantages in storytelling, but almost invariably such movies are about the chase, rather than the people. THE BELIEVERS is about the people, which separates it from the typical batch of "supernatural thrillers". Here we get the whole story, rather than a sort of synopsis, wherein we get only the "high points", those scenes which contain the most action or gore or both. TOTAL RECALL is an excellent example of this type of film, done well; one need only look at any of the horror/slasher franchise films to have an idea of this type of film done at a dead run, for money and the most shock value. They can be fun, but I'm not sure they qualify as art.

What makes THE BELIEVERS so disturbing is that, at its best, it *builds belief* in the audience. This might seem redundant, since, going in, we demonstrate a willingness to believe that is initially missing from the main charter(s); but in this case, we no longer have the emotional distance to simply watch and say, "Oh, I saw that coming," or "Blah - never in a million years." By the time Helen Shaver goes through her ordeal with that unsightly blemish, nothing about it seems far-fetched at all! Performances are, generally, successful. Young Harley Cross is excellent as young Chris, and the rest of the cast is populated with familiar faces or faces that were destined to become very familiar indeed, such as Jimmy Smits. My sole complaint comes from certain scenes with Martin Sheen - emotionally, he goes from conversation to screaming in an instant, and it just doesn't seem appropriate to the scene, especially when one considers that he's playing a psychiatrist - a professional group who are specifically trained in keeping their cool in the heat of a situation. Some of the dialog, too, occasionally comes out sounding like they shot the rehearsal.

THE BELIEVERS is not without flaw - nevertheless, enough good remains that it rewards the patient viewer with a rich storytelling experience!

She Gets Her Man (1945)

A Series That Never Got the Shot

[8/10 · 19 December 2004]

There were so many, MANY detective movie series during the '30s and '40s, and of such varying quality. One wonders, then, why Joan Davis, Leon Errol (both very popular in their day) and company weren't pushed for a series of their own. Granted we have only SHE GETS HER MAN to judge from, but it remains a real winner. Davis and Errol play beautifully off each other, and the denouement is actually a bit of a surprise! Too often in these comedy-thrillers, the hero or heroine are too brassy to elicit much sympathy from the audience; even comedy relief can get in the way, if the role is not properly written or cast - for instance, Lee Tracy, in DOCTOR X (1932) is so annoying, you almost hope the bogeyman will get him. On the other hand, in THE MAD GHOUL (1943) for instance, when Rbert Armstrong, as the wisecracking reporter, gets his, it's not only a surprise, but a real bummer! In SHE GETS HER MAN, a perfect balance of humor and thrills is maintained, much in the spirit (no pun intended) of HOLD THAT GHOST, and leave you wanting to see more of them doing what they do best. Bravo - well done!